PLA Forums
Pranks => Prank Phone Calls => Topic started by: MIB on February 15, 2011, 05:56:20 PM
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Anyone remembers the commercials for Sprint (or it could have been MCI or AT&T) about a guy who calls his parents collect from a hospital?
It went something like this,
Operator: This is Sprint with a collect call from,
Bob: It's Bob we had a baby it's a boy.
Operator: Will you accept the charges?
Father: No. (hangs up and turns to wife) It's Bob they had a baby it's a boy.
Wife: Oh!
Did anyone ever do this? Call someone collect with a message and use your message as your name?
You can probably still do this today from payphones, if you can find one. It wouldn't make sense to call someone collect to give them a message since cell phones and landlines have long distance plans as some of them have free long distant if you call another person who uses the same cell provider or landlines that lets you make free long distant calls after a certain hour.
MIB
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I remember these quite well, actually.
"It's Bob. They had a baby. It's a boy."
"Oooohhh"
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It's actually for Geico insurance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JxhTnWrKYs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JxhTnWrKYs)
I can't find what year it's from, but it was probably the early 2000's. This would have been before flat rate long distance was common and before cellular phones really caught on. I got my first cell phone in 2000, but I don't think it even had free nights and weekends back then. I was paying around 5 cents per minute for long distance with Lightyear Communications, which was an awesome deal at the time. I made a lot of work-related calls and my phone bill would often reach a few hundred bucks per month. Unless you call international, it's pretty hard to run a home phone bill over $100 in a month now.
These were also the days before making phone calls via the internet was possible. No Skype and no Tinychat. Nightly PLA conferences were set up illegally, using business conferencing services such as Sprint. People would either beige box into a line and set them up from there or they would use a stolen credit card. Everyone figured it was safe to call into the conference as long as you didn't use the host pin. Most people, myself included, still diverted through the operator though.
Long distance used to be a big deal!
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How the hell did that phone commercial turn into a Geico commercial? :nonsense: :nonsense: :nonsense:
MOB
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Wonder if the phone companies were pissed about that commercial. This was also back in the days of annoying 1-800-COLLECT commercials with A-list celebs like Carrot Top.
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i posted that video in the youtube thread a while back...
its on p45 http://www.phonelosers.com/index.php?topic=805.660
EDIT: i would go earlier that 2000.. i think it was more mid/late 90's cause i seem to remember this commercial during my HS years...
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I've tried calling other Frank Garrett's collect, none accepted the call