Ma Bell making good on her threats?

[xylenol15]

As many of you know, the Bell system initially held ownership over the internal components of the Deco Tel sets. Consumers would "purchase" the phone yet only own the housing and so would still pay rental fees. Bell would own the working components inside. However, Richard Mountjoy wrote that the unwritten understanding was that the customer really did own the entire phone, but the rental fees were for the free repairs of the telephone. Also, Bell was reluctant to change it's business model. RM wrote that technically if the customer moved to non Bell territory they were supposed to turn in the phone to have the guts removed, but that this rarely, if ever, happened in practice. I also read somewhere that there was no mention of such a procedure in the BSPs.

So I was surprised to see these character phones with refurb stickers on the bottom, indicating that the bases at least were returned to the phone company. Could this have been done by someone moving out of the Bell system? There was evidence in another thread
that this proprietary attitude was indeed present, at least in one area. Of course, another possibility is that the base needed repair. Paul-f mentioned encountering Sculptura's with bad networks. What do you think?

[paul-f]

While the previous comment was made regarding the Sculpturas under discussion, it clearly applies to any phone containing a 4228 network.  They seem to have more than their share of failures.

Looking at the BSP for Snoopy, the photo in Issue 1 appears to show a 4228.

  http://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_details&gid=3010&Itemid=2

The BSP also includes instructions for removing the components when the phone is taken out of service.  It's interesting that it says:

"To provide the appearance of a complete telephone set, components such as the dial and handset cord will remain with the telephone set"

[xylenol15]

On a related note, I also found one with this odd sticker:

[xylenol15]

Paul, I just saw your reply. Perhaps the photo I last posted is one of those taken out of service? It would be interesting to see what has been removed/disconnected.