Phone boxes are now rubbish

In a moment of madness, the car decided to lock me out at the Tod Harriers mini mountain marathon yesterday .

Not a problem I thought. There's a phone box 50m away and I can call Cath and get her to come out with the spare keys. Cost around 20p?

Oh no. Walk in and it has the coin insert bit sealed. What were the options on the instructions:

a. Cash - Errrmmm, that's out because it is sealed.
b. Debit card - Swipe your card in the swipe thing. Errrmmm, there isn't one. So that's out.
c. Reverse charge - Dial 0845-'scam-a-landline' and reverse the charges. £3.50 connection and an unstated minute rate that can be found out upon request. (later found out to be 50p/min)

WTF????

So BT are actively discouraging the use of phone boxes and scamming the fools who do use them with extortionate fees (so people use them even less). What a shabby service! I wonder what visitors to this country must think of our cutting edge facilities?

Went into the pub instead and phoned home for the princely sum of £2.30, including a free pint.

Much better value!