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If you had enough credit to make a phone call, but didn’t want to waste your credits on a text, calling and hanging up is the rational thing to do as it costs n
by runarberg 6y ago
If you had enough credit to make a phone call, but didn’t want to waste your credits on a text, calling and hanging up is the rational thing to do as it costs nothing (provided you hang up before the other party answers). The price of a text for a teenager was significant back then. The other party might be a parent who could use a landline to call you back for cheaper, or a friend who called back using their parent’s landline.
Of course this tactic wouldn’t work in places where the receiver of phone call has to pay a portion of the price.
- ehnto 6y agoIn my country if you had no credit at all, for some reason you could still dial for long enough that the person recieved a brief blip and a missed call. That was invaluable as a teenager as if I was stuck I could blip my parents and they could call back properly.
- beamatronic 6y agoThis context is helpful. They hacked the system to take advantage of free notifications.