newbie here bear with me lol.

[rtp129495]

i am new to the forum but not to WE phones. where to start....well ever since i can remember i was fascinated with electronics in general. due to the simplicity of we phones it was easy to tinker with. i remember listening to the switches making a call and how much faster it was at connecting than digital. i always thought i was the only one who cared or noticed this. Also the sound of older rings (when your calling) which disappeared in the 90s. There used to be (in southern California) numbers xxx-0003 and xxx-0002 made noises when dialed and were free on WE payphones. One was a loud beep and one was noises that resembled screaming? weird but they were like on scales to use music terms. once the analog switches were replaced in 90s these disappeared and the numbers became peoples. so ended that. i was sad. as well as the old 411 ring when u called it. sad times for analog phone people.

     So to my next point the reliability of WE. i have never seen an electronic device as dependable. i've had different phones over the years(cell and cordless) and the quality sucks. only the ma bell era had solid reliability. even the current at&t sucks for service (signal and customer). it saddens me for a nation that had the greatest phone company and economy(i miss that a lot). they deregulated and it became the corrupt peoples Vegas slots at the cost of peoples livelihood. Now its about charge them for a service for 6 months then jack up price and rape you. its sad.

     In to more exciting news!!! The WE phones I now own/know of. Sadly due to my family ignorance the WE phones from there ma bell years and my youth were lost. Except for one I show below. A 502 non dialer for the garage. It still works and rings despite my parents getting Verizon home phone connect which took away the POTS line. it's wired to the box from Verizon. had to adjust ringer spring thou so the Verizon box would drive it. the Verizon box throws about 100v ac during ring but it still needed less spring. i found that odd but it works.

      As for my own a 500 rotary I just got on eBay as i had no rotary WE for a long while. A multiline 25xx i think its 25xx. which i just fixed the ring on. acquired that in the early 2000s from a friend. that's it for now. but that little black 502  reminded me of WE and i went looking for help to fix ringer online and was amazed to find this place. WE is alive and i love it. was such a good company. and i'm not just a weird phone freak lol. let me know what ya'll think. cant believe i wrote 4 paragraphs lol

[old_stuff_hound]

Hi rtp!

Even as far back as 1993 it was hard to find a good phone. Back then I had just bought my first house and wanted a phone as good at the ones I grew up with. I went shopping and all I could find at all the "regular" stores were feature-rich (for the day) but extremely low quality -- mostly wireless -- phones. I wanted the opposite -- not many features, wired, built like a tank. After a lot of searching I ended up at the AT&T store at the mall (I can't recall if they had any cellphones in those days!) and overpaid for a 706 desk phone. It's got more features than I wanted (speakerphone, though I admit that's come in handy), and a bunch of programmable speed-dials, but it's built like the old WE phones. I'm still using it!

Unfortunately, with the prominence of cellular, the trend of crappy landline phones continues to accelerate. These days, to get a good one, I think you have to buy an old one....