A Stitch in Haste

Oh, wicked, bad, naughty, evil Lucent!

A widow rented a rotary dial telephone for 42 years, paying what her family calculates as more than $14,000 for a now outdated phone.

Ester Strogen, 82, of Canton, first leased two black rotary phones ... in the 1960s. Back then, the technology was new and owning telephones was unaffordable for most people.

Until two months ago, Strogen was still paying AT&T to use the phones — $29.10 a month. Strogen's granddaughters, Melissa Howell and Barb Gordon, ended the arrangement when they discovered the bills.
...
Lucent Technologies ... said customers were given the choice ... to opt out of renting in 1985. The number of customers leasing phones dropped from 40 million nationwide to about 750,000 today, he said.

"We will continue to lease sets as long as there is a demand for them," Skalko said.

Lucent is a bad company and must pay the penalty!

Or so the politicians and class action trial attorneys will claim. Mark my words — I'm guessing within a week.

Of course, my cable company, which until recently charged customers a monthly "rent" for remote controls, is arguably no better. Neither is Medicare, which requires my father to "rent," rather than buy, his nebulizer.

By all means condemn Lucent for this rather scurrilous practice. By all means note that unscrupulous business practices often do not end up being as profitable as they were originally thought to be (the so-called "doing well by doing good" thesis). By all means ask whether some sort of (admittedly paternalistic) "full disclosure" or "truth in phone leasing" rule might be desirable going forward.

But let's not pretend that there was anything patently illegal in what Lucent was doing. Without more, charging a price that people will pay for a service that they want is, or at least ought to be, neither a crime nor a tort.