A Verizon Payphone Stealth Move?

This past January, I wrote a story about what appeared then to be Verizon's secret plan to increase the price of a local call from a public phone a dime?from 25 to 35 cents. Part of the evidence was the fact that the new payphones Verizon was installing around the city came with plastic instruction plates that read "25 cents" on one side, "35 cents" on the other. That certainly made it look like something was afoot.

Yet when I spoke with Verizon representative Jim Smith, he flatly denied that any such plan was in the works. New York was one of the last states in the nation where a local call from a payphone still cost a quarter, and it was going to stay that way, he assured me.

"I believe that there are some covenants and restrictions around the current rate plan that's in place," he said in January. "I believe that as part of the rate stability plan that they have in New York, there's an explicit prohibition against messing with the payphone rate for a local call... I suppose we could appeal and say, 'Look, we gotta do it, the business needs the revenue,' but nobody's taken that step yet."

Now, however, a mere two months later, it seems somebody has.

The first 35-cent Verizon phone I heard about was discovered in the Astor Pl. subway station. Slowly but surely, it seems, creeping across the city like a cancer, those instruction plates are being flipped over and the phones are being recalibrated to demand that extra dime. It hasn't happened to every Verizon phone yet?the phones near the office here still cost a quarter, as do the Verizon phones in Brooklyn?but it probably won't be long before those plates are flipped as well.

When I called Mr. Smith again to ask him what the deal was, he seemed surprised by the news. He told me he was going to have to check on it himself and get back to me.

The question remains, why would there even be a rate hike? Verizon may be having its troubles, but they certainly aren't economic in nature. Simple greed might be one possible answer. Some people have speculated that the company may have something more devious in mind?that by making normal payphone calls as inconvenient as possible, Verizon is forcing people to use their much more expensive calling cards. Or perhaps it's a desperate reaction to the explosion in cellphone use.

I certainly didn't have the answer. But the next day, Jim Smith called me back to report that there had been, in fact, no rate increase in New York.

"You were either looking at somebody else's payphone," he said, "or there is the remote possibility that one of those instruction cards was inserted backwards. There's a possibility that that happened, although the [workers] who go through to maintain and collect the coins from those phones should have noticed that that was the case. But either way, it's still 25 cents for a local call in New York."

I was afraid he was going to say something like that.

Just in case they change their minds about that, though?you might want to start carrying a few extra nickels with you when you head out.