Cliff Russell had a quarter and a problem. He was a nickel short of making a 30-cent call-an irritation that has confronted uncounted millions of pay phone customers since rates were raised two years ago.
At a Waukegan gas station recently, Russell performed the well-known ritual: He dug deep into his pockets. He burrowed beneath the floor mats of his Chevy. He looked under the brake pedal and thrust his fingers behind the seat cushions. Nothing.
Too bad he wasn’t a few miles down the road in Round Lake Heights, which in recent days became the first of 12 Lake County communities where the price of a pay phone call has been rolled back to 25 cents from 30.
They were among 33 around the Chicago area, including Schaumburg, Joliet, Niles, Batavia and Harvey, which have already reverted to the 25-cent pay phone call.
A phone call has cost 30 cents in 161 Illinois municipalities since February of 1992, after Ameritech-then Illinois Bell-lost a class-action lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court and was ordered to pay back residential and business customers who been subsidizing pay phone calls.
Now, as the debt is paid off, a call from a pay phone is one of the few necessities of modern life whose price is going down.
Eleven more towns in the area will roll back their prices by the end of the summer, among them Waukegan, North Chicago, Berwyn, Lyons and La Grange, according to Ameritech.
Some 117 others-including Flossmoor, Rosemont, Bensenville, Carol Stream and Evanston-are scheduled to follow suit, most by 1996. But Chicago and a few other stragglers will most likely remain at 30 cents until February of 1997, when by law all Ameritech phones must revert.
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“It can’t happen too soon for me,” Russell said, exasperated after his change hunt. “It’s just a hassle to find 30 cents. Quarters are easy. Plus, I think 30 cents is a bit much for a local call.”
The ruling focused on $34 million in taxes the telephone company had been collecting for pay phone usage since 1955.
The problem was that Bell had not been collecting that tax from pay phone users. Since the tax only amounted to pennies, and pay phones can’t handle pennies, the phone company had been charging residential and business users for the tax.
The court said that was discriminatory and ordered the phone company to refund the money. Bell’s appeals to the Illinois Appellate Court and the Illinois Supreme Court were rejected.
The only way Ameritech said it could repay customers was to raise pay phone rates for five years. The state agreed. So Ameritech calculated how much it needed to raise in each affected municipality, and as that goal is reached, the price drops.
Ameritech submits monthly reports to the Illinois Commerce Commission, which is monitoring the payback. The process is generally going smoothly, said Frank Bodine, ICC director of telecommunications.
Still, pay phones in some communities like Chicago and Villa Park are behind schedule-the extra nickels aren’t adding up fast enough to pay off the settlement. The company cannot raise the rates any higher without approval from the state legislature, and it cannot collect the 30-cent fee after February 1997. “If they haven’t recouped it by then, the company just eats it,” Bodine said.
The rate hike for Chicago “will last the entire time,” he said, “and I doubt if they’ll get their money back.” Of the $34 million settlement, $24.8 million was due from Chicago, and the company said it has only recouped $7.4 million so far.
The proliferation of competing pay phone companies has hastened Ameritech’s efforts to roll back prices, a spokesman said. “We’re making sure we get back to 25 cents a little ahead of schedule because of the fierce competition out there,” said Ameritech’s Geoff Potter. “We want to make sure no one can undercut us on price or service.”
That is why prices in Round Lake Heights dropped recently, and why Round Lake Park is due for the price break at the end of the summer.
“I’m glad our prices finally went down,” said Cheryl Atkins as she stood by an Ameritech pay phone outside the Nicko Quick Mart in Round Lake Heights. “This 30-cent thing was beginning to give nickels a bad name.”