Never used a phonebox.....

[Adam B]

digger the goat said:

Adam B said:

Who / what do you write them for? Complete pain in the arse to receive IMHO

Why ?

Because I hav e a full-time job and banks don't open weekends, even if they did its a trip I could do without. So just transfer cash direct into my account. Safer than cash or cheques (which can get lost or accidentally destroyed)

[Dr Jekyll]

They'll have never flown from London to New York in 3 hours.

[Mr Will]

Adam B said:

RobinBanks said:

I still write cheques quite regularly. I reckon that I'm probably in a minority though.

Are there plans to phase them out? I heard a rumour about that a while ago.

Who / what do you write them for? Complete pain in the arse to receive IMHO

Yep, but really easy to send. Come in very handy if vodaphone/virgin media/someone else with a labyrinthine telephone system want you to make a payment. Two minutes writing a cheque and a covering note, one first class stamp and the job is done. Much better than spending 30 minutes doing the "please press 28, now please type in a 10 digit prime number, sorry your call is very important to us - please hold" game.

[CraigyMc]

Mr Will said:

Adam B said:

RobinBanks said:

I still write cheques quite regularly. I reckon that I'm probably in a minority though.

Are there plans to phase them out? I heard a rumour about that a while ago.

Who / what do you write them for? Complete pain in the arse to receive IMHO

Yep, but really easy to send. Come in very handy if vodaphone/virgin media/someone else with a labyrinthine telephone system want you to make a payment. Two minutes writing a cheque and a covering note, one first class stamp and the job is done. Much better than spending 30 minutes doing the "please press 28, now please type in a 10 digit prime number, sorry your call is very important to us - please hold" game.

So you'd rather spend the time and money on a stamp and walking to the post box rather than using an online system to put the same information into?
Who actually pays bills with anything other than a direct debit anyway??

[soad]

backwoodsman said:

I wrote out my first cheque in over 10 years, on Friday.

Bloody DVLA, they would only accept, cheque, or postal order.

No surprise there, they live in another world.

[Hoonigan]

Dan_1981 said:

Moonhawk said:

steveo3002 said:

porno mags

RIP Hedge Porn

I used to use a phonebox to phone the numbers i'd found in the back of hedge porn.

They'll never experience that feeling.

haha done exactly the same, we got the shock of our lives when a real life woman answered....

[Mr Will]

CraigyMc said:

So you'd rather spend the time and money on a stamp and walking to the post box rather than using an online system to put the same information into?
Who actually pays bills with anything other than a direct debit anyway??

If there is an online system it's my number one choice, if the choice is phone or post then post is quicker, easier and cheaper.

All are set up by Direct Debit. This trick only comes in to play in event of cock-ups. Call the money back via the Direct Debit guarantee, send them a cheque for the correct amount. Fully within your consumer rights and quicker and easier than arguing.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

There's an excitement about watching a live football match on Ceefax that will never be replicated. Especially staring at it thru extra time and a penalty shoot out because your team's match isn't on the tv or the radio.

I recall a league match, we were away at Swindon I think, level after 90 minutes at 1-1, just waiting for FT to appear on the right to signify it was all over, and then when the FT appeared the score was 1-2 and our strikers name was below with (90) next to it.

That was the best feeling in the world.

[boyse7en]

Pit Pony said:

My wife and I have explained to our kids how our courting years, pre-marriage, involved lots of frustrating communication.

Basically, I was in Coventry doing a degree in something I now hate, but pays me great money, and she was in nurse training in Birmingham.

So I have a list of her off duty in a letter, and I need to let her know when I'm coming to see her.

I go down the 5 flights of stairs and out of the 19 storey student accommodation and down the street, to the phone boxes. There are 6. There is a long queue of 15 people. I never queue. I walk to the next corner, 3 phone boxes, and a queue of 10. I walk a mile gradually getting into Hillfields, mugging centre of Coventry. I find a phone box. The phone is fked, I walk and I walk. Eventually I find an empty box with a working phone.
I phone the number. It rings and it rings and it rings. EVENTUALLY someone answers. This phone is one the ground floor of a 5 storey nurses halls of residence. I plead with her to write down the number of my phone, and go and find my Girlfriend, so she will phone me.

I wait. Someone taps on the door. I ask them to be quick as I'm expecting an urgent call from my mum about my dad who is gravely ill. 15 mins later I start tapping on the door. The bloke threatens to stab me if I don't fk off. I walk to another box, and start again. This time she answers. She's tried to get through, but it was engaged, but she knew I'd ring again. We talk for 10 mins. I run out of money. She phones me. We talk for ten mins and she runs out of money. We agree that I'll come over at the weekend, she's off by 3:30, I can come up to ward 6.

I get to ward 6. She's not there. She's left a message to say she's working on ward 12, but she'll meet me at the entrance.

She got my 3 letters I sent this week, and we go to her student room, where I have to be hidden overnight as if she has male visitors they WILL chuck her out of Nursing. In the night, the fire alarm goes off, and she tries to hide me in the wardrobe.

Our kids don't really understand, when I say "You've got it easy"

You must have been there about the same time as me!
I lived in Hillfields, so probably used the same phoneboxes you did, to call my GF who lived 200 miles away and didn't have a phone. I had to call her at work, which meant between 9-5 (so when I should have been in lectures/studying).


Related to the above, one thing that teenager now do not do is go for a night out without knowing who you will go with.
Everyone now uses mobiles to know exactly who is in which pub/club and what time they will meet up.
When I was at Uni, the lack of phones meant we would head out on a friday night to a popular pub with the hope that our friends would also frequent the same pub and we could go on from there. This occasionally failed, so we would end up either going home early, or heading off into the night with another group of people we met at the pub.

[TLandCruiser]

ianrb said:

Paper maps

Not for a very very long time.

[Adam B]

Mr Will said:

Adam B said:

RobinBanks said:

I still write cheques quite regularly. I reckon that I'm probably in a minority though.

Are there plans to phase them out? I heard a rumour about that a while ago.

Who / what do you write them for? Complete pain in the arse to receive IMHO

Yep, but really easy to send. Come in very handy if vodaphone/virgin media/someone else with a labyrinthine telephone system want you to make a payment. Two minutes writing a cheque and a covering note, one first class stamp and the job is done. Much better than spending 30 minutes doing the "please press 28, now please type in a 10 digit prime number, sorry your call is very important to us - please hold" game.

are you a retired gentleman whose daily highlight is a stroll to the local high street, and has never heard of direct debit?

[Mr Will]

Adam B said:

are you a retired gentleman whose daily highlight is a stroll to the local high street, and has never heard of direct debit?

Nope. 20-something guy living and working in London. Everything that can be automated is automated but when a one-off payment is required I'll choose the one that's quickest and easiest for me (sod the recipient!). It helps that my cheque-book, a pack of envelopes and a book of stamps live in my desk drawer and I have an outgoing post tray between me and the kettle. It honestly takes less time to send someone a cheque than it did to write this post.

How do you suggest I should make a one off payment when there is not a simple online system available? Hang around on the phone to make a debit card payment just because cheques are old fashioned? No thanks!

[Condi]

Mr Will said:

How do you suggest I should make a one off payment when there is not a simple online system available? Hang around on the phone to make a debit card payment just because cheques are old fashioned? No thanks!

Dontcha have an app for dat?

[Morningside]

Bit of a Unit said:

TV and other AV remote controls. Voice and gesture should be commonplace in the next 10 years.

It's quite commonplace now when I see Tony Blair on screen.



No smoking in pubs or at work. Does not seem that long ago when I used to have an ashtray on the desk.

I think that will extend to all transport.

I gave up 12 years ago.

[backwoodsman]

They will never have a mobile phone, who's battery lasts a whole 7 days.

[Pit Pony]

Moonhawk said:

Morningside said:

Pulling the choke out on cold wet mornings to start the car.

I bet not many "young folk" today have had to do that - let alone young folk in 15 years time.

You forgot to mention the Clothes peg (or the handbag - in the case of my wife) holding it out.

[Morningside]

Pit Pony said:

Moonhawk said:

Morningside said:

Pulling the choke out on cold wet mornings to start the car.

I bet not many "young folk" today have had to do that - let alone young folk in 15 years time.

You forgot to mention the Clothes peg (or the handbag - in the case of my wife) holding it out.

A requirement on a Mini although its supposed to hold if you twist it. Or pulling it and the cable comes out with it as well.

In car cassette players or I suspect even CD players as everything moves over to MP3/iphone adapters.

[JackP1]

Glad to know the one i was stranded next to worked when my stephone decided to die

[Pit Pony]

boyse7en said:

Pit Pony said:

Our kids don't really understand, when I say "You've got it easy"

You must have been there about the same time as me!
I lived in Hillfields, so probably used the same phoneboxes you did, to call my GF who lived 200 miles away and didn't have a phone. I had to call her at work, which meant between 9-5 (so when I should have been in lectures/studying).


Related to the above, one thing that teenager now do not do is go for a night out without knowing who you will go with.
Everyone now uses mobiles to know exactly who is in which pub/club and what time they will meet up.
When I was at Uni, the lack of phones meant we would head out on a friday night to a popular pub with the hope that our friends would also frequent the same pub and we could go on from there. This occasionally failed, so we would end up either going home early, or heading off into the night with another group of people we met at the pub.

Ah yes. Whilst doing my year in industry in Redditch, I decided to organise a party in the house I shared with an "artist" and an Unemployed Graduate. Now said girlfriend, obviously invited all her nursing mates, who came on the train, and had no way of getting back until the morning (Yeh) and I borrowed the office phone to phone my 5 mates, all on placements, via switchboards, to explain the weekends arrangements, and the address, and give directions (if you get lost drive to Police station, go in and ask them) and they all managed to come with booze and sleeping bags, and mix tapes.

Then there was the invite to my 4 mates from back home, who came in an untaxed, mot-less clubman.

8:30 comes and the party is in full swing. and my mates have not arrived despite the fact that they said they'd come early and go to the Indian for a takeway first.

10:30 comes. They arrive. They went to Coventry, with no map, and at 7pm after 2 hours driving around, they went to a police station, where they were pointed to the M42 and told they were just 35 miles in the wrong direction. How it took them 3 and a half hours to then find Redditch, I have no idea but I was too pissed to care. They slept in the mini in their clothes IIRC. I don't remember them leaving, although I still have a photo of one with sick on his jumper.

If only we'd had facebook. Not.

[Rostfritt]

Mr Will said:

How do you suggest I should make a one off payment when there is not a simple online system available? Hang around on the phone to make a debit card payment just because cheques are old fashioned? No thanks!

Considering I don't live near a postbox and never have any envelopes, I have paid a few bills by paypoint recently. Mainly so the old suppliers in the new flat don't have my name so less likely to mess my credit score up if they get things wrong (again).