When did you last use a payphone?

So long ago it was still only 25 cents.

It was only 25 cents last time I used one, in the 90s at some point. They had just started coming out with ones you could actually drive up to and not have to get out of your car to use it, too.

I’d say about 20 years ago.

I gave my wife her first mobile phone in January, 1996 as an Xmas gift. I finally got around to having one of my own sometime in 1999.

1994, ! used my AT&T account number to pay.

2000. My car broke down, it was raining and the store I ran in wouldn’t let me use their phone so I had to use the phone booth outside. I couldn’t get hold of my brother so I called my mom to get hold of him. I gave her the phone booths number to call me back to let me know if she got hold of my brother and when he would come. As I hung up, I noticed the sign that said “this phone cannot receive phone calls.” Crap! It was my last quarter. I waited for an hour for my brother to come. The next day he went out and bought me a cell phone so I’d never be in that position again.
It took me a good 2 years to remember to even carry the phone or even charge it.

Actually more recently than most of you—around 2004. My middle school had one and I remember using it once to call my parents. This was before I got my first cell phone.

An alternate question might be when did you last use a rotary dial phone?

I tried to use a pay phone during a snow storm in 1996 because my home phone wasn’t working. The the buttons on the pay phone were frozen.

2 years ago I tried to use a pay phone at the Seattle airport but couldn’t figure out how it worked.

Hey @seawulf575 I will bet there are some younger people that wouldn’t even know how to use a rotary dial phone.
And to answer the question I would guess mid 1980’s.

I’ve never used a rotary dial but I could guess how to use it :) Still, I’m old enough to remember using the Flash button to instigate a three-way call with my friends. That seems ancient now.

First years of the new millenium, around 2000 to 2005, while on holidays in Greece.
Way of payment was with a card though.
Latest coin phone must have been in the mid nineties.

I saw this YouTube video about kids and rotary dial phones. Hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OADXNGnJok

I mean, it’s not a payphone, but we have a staff phone we use as well as a gong, it’s an old style stand up model from way back where you lift the receiver piece away from the main body to your ear.
Customised to be used exclusively for them to come running whenever my need arises.

A payphone? Probably around 1995. A rotary phone? Eh, I dunno, 1989–1990.

The last time I used a pay phone, to make collect calls to my parents via AT&T while I was traveling and needed to tell them when I arrived somewhere—was 1996. I got a cell phone that same year, but this must have been the month immediately before.

Rotary Dial phones were available as late as 2008, but in 2001 I was visiting an elderly couple who still had an old black, standard rotary dial telephone and it seemed like it had been many years since I’d seen one, My family (parents and me) had one at their house (a yellow one) until about 1989.

Edit—Actually that yeller one was a touch tone. Must have been before that one, like 1980 or 1981 when we replaced our last rotary with a touch tone

The last time I can clearly remember was 1994.

Pay phones are still around and serve a good purpose.

My mom still uses a rotary phone.

Most people now have pay BIG BUCKS phones in their pockets. Some even charge per text message.

When I was in university 19 years ago.

I haven’s seen a pay phone in years.

SOME people spend hundreds of dollars on a phone…and treat it like a throw away toy. I don’t understand it.

Few people spend hundreds on cell phones. Most are subsidized and insured by the network providers, who lock people into multi-year contracts in exchange.

Many years ago. I went to pick up a date. She did not answer the door, so I called her on a pay phone and she answered.

When I had to call a locksmith late at night.
That was some time ago.

I can’t remember exactly. I think it was NYC maybe in the early 90’s?

I last used a payphone somewhere around Kremmling Colorado 10 or 15 years ago. We were fishing and stopped at a little store where cell service did not exist. And that was probably the first time since the mid-1990s. They were getting awful already, taken over by companies that could take $5 for a 2-minute call.

I take pictures of payphones (with my cell phone!) because they’re such oddities. I saw one yesterday at the Evanston Public Library. It had a dial tone. Here it is!

Few people spend hundreds on cell phones. Most are subsidized and insured by the network providers, who lock people into multi-year contracts in exchange.

Correct, they do not spend hundreds up front, but they sure pay for it in the end.

I buy a really nice 1— or 2-year old recently top-tier phone every few years from eBay, for $150 or less. My yearly cost for cell service (including the phone) is about one quarter of when I had a contract and “free” phone.

I see pay phones fairly regularly. They’re not everywhere as they used to be, but there are some around here and there – some in some libraries as you say, and other public buildings, malls, some gas stations, etc.

I have a FB friend, we went to the same high school, that posts payphone and phone booths he sees.

I have sometimes taken pics of pay phones for people who ask this question from time to time, but I rarely manage to organize enough to post them.