159. Making A Collect Call

Marco: Hello, everyone! And welcome to EnglishPod. My name is Marco.

Catherine: My name is Catherine. And today we're making a phone call. 

Marco: That's right.We are making a special type of phone call. We're making a collect call. So, we will explain what this means. Let's listen to the dialogue. Let's see if you can more or less guess what a collect call means. And we'll be right back.

A: This is the operator, how may I help you?

B: Yes, I would like to make a collect call.

A: Okay, sir, please dial the number. Now, please state your name.

B: Tommy.

A: Please wait a moment. Hello, you have a collect call from Tommy. Would you like to accept the charges?

C: Yes, of course.

B: Dad?

C: Yeah, Tommy, what happened? Are you okay?

B: Yeah, dad, everything is okay. I'm calling you because I want to know if it's okay for meto go to my friend's house today after school.

C: Yeah, sure, no problem. You scared me to death! I've told you to make a collectcall in case of an emergency only! Why didn't you call me from your mobile phone?

B:I ran out of credit and I also didn't have 25 cents for the payphone. Sorry, dad.

Catherine: All right, so, we're back. We've got a number of words and phrases to look at. Let's check out our words in 'language takeaway' first.

Language takeaway

Marco: All right, so, as we mentioned, we are making a collect call. So, what exactly is a collect call?

Catherine: All right, well,a collect call is a phone call you make when you don't have any money and the phone company charges the person who answers the phone. So, if I call my mom with a collect call, my mom pays. 

Marco: Not you.

Catherine: Not me.

Marco: And you can do this pretty much from any phone, right?

Catherine: That's right. You can do this from any phone.Normally people use payphones to do this. But there is one condition that is important with the collect call, the person who answers the phone, they have to say that it's okay that they pay. You can't just use this with anybody.

Marco: Okay, very good. So, actually when the guy was making this collect call, the operator asked him to dial the number.

Catherine: Okay, so this is an important verb that we have with making a telephone call. You make a call, but with the number, the phone number, you actually have to dial it. And that comes from those old phones where you don't push the numbers, you pull them.

Marco: Yeah, you have to spin the little wheel.

Catherine: Yeah, there's circles, and you pull the numbers and spin the wheel around. But the verb now is to dial a number.

Marco: To dial a number. That's right. Okay. So, you dial your number. And, well, actually, as we said, you're making this collect call because maybe you don't have any money. In this case, sometimes in your mobile phone,you have what we call credit.

Catherine: This is an important word. This is a noun. You have it or you don't have it. On my phone, for example, I have a lot of credit, but maybe if I don't have any credit,I run out of credit. I don't have any money left, I can't make a phone call.

Marco: That's right. So, this is what it means. When you have credit in your phone, it means that you have some money with the telephone company. So, when you make a call,they discount it from there. But if you don't have any more credit, you can't make any phone calls.

Catherine: Exactly. So, basically credit represents money.

Marco: That's right. And as you said, a collect call, you usually make from a payphone. So what is a payphone?

Catherine: Okay. We have phones at people's houses, regular phones, and we have cell phones which you can carry around. Payphones are public phones that you have to use money in order to make a call on.

Marco: Okay. So, usually you will see these at airports, for example. 

Catherine: Airports, train stations, any big public place where people need to use phones,they're less common now in some places, but basically you have to put the coins, the money coins into the phone to get the phone to work. If you don't have any money, you can't make a call.

Marco: Yeah, that's right. Okay. So, four key words there. Why don't we take a break and listen to the dialogue again?

A: This is the operator, how may I help you?

B: Yes, I would like to make a collect call.

A: Okay, sir, please dial the number. Now, please state your name.

B: Tommy.

A: Please wait a moment. Hello, you have a collect call from Tommy. Would you liketo accept the charges?

C: Yes, of course.

B: Dad?

C: Yeah, Tommy, what happened?Are you okay?

B: Yeah,dad, everything is okay. I'm calling you because I want to know if it's okay for meto go to my friend's house today after school.

C: Yeah, sure, no problem. You scared me to death! I've told you to make a collectcall in case of an emergency only! Why didn't you call me from your mobile phone?

B:I ran out of credit and I also didn't have 25 cents for the payphone. Sorry, dad.

Marco: All right, now we're gonna talk a little bit more about the phrases we found in this dialogue on 'fluency builder'.

Fluency builder

Catherine: So, this first phrase is a phrase that you might encounter in many different situations, but today's situation is making a collect call. So, we heard this phrase. Please state your name.

Marco: That's right. So, you have a verb here, to state your name, state your age, and that basically means to tell us, tell me, tell us what is your name.

Catherine: That's right. So, if I say "Hey, you, state your name."

Marco: That means I have to say my name, Marco, for example. So, you can use it for name, for age.

Catherine: Yeah, state your birthday, please. So, this is often what we have to do when we're on the phone with a service company. So, the bank will ask us what is your... state your birthday, please, or state your last name or state your phone number, they want to confirm our personal information.

Marco: Okay. As we heard it, so once you do all this, you make a collect call.The person on the other side has to accept. And this is when the operator said "Would you like to accept the charges?"

Catherine: In this case, to accept the charges means to offer to pay, okay? So, if you accept the charges, that means that the phone company will ask you for money when your bill comes.

Marco: That's right. So, you accept to be charged with money or you accept the charges that come with this telephone call.

Catherine: That's right.

Marco: All right. And now the dad finally says "Are you okay? Is everything all right?" Apparently,it was a very trivial thing. He just called to make sure that he can go to his friend's house. The dad said you scared me to death.

Catherine: Okay, parents often use this phrase in English. This means you had me very worried. I was so worried, so you scared me to death. That doesn't mean that the father died. It means he was very very very scared.

Marco: Right. Exactly. So, it's a phrase a little bit...obviously with exaggeration, but very common to hear, you scared me to death, you scared me a lot. And why did he scare him to death? Because he told his son to make a collect call in case of an emergency only.

Catherine: So, this phrase 'in case of an emergency' is a fixed phrase, you can see this on the metro, you can see this on the bus. But also you can hear this in conversation. And so, in case of an emergency means only when there is an emergency situation, a fire, an accident, something like that.

Marco: That's right. It may be on a train, you have seen...or on an airplane.You have a big red button or a lever that says 'pull in case of emergency'.

Catherine: That means don't pull it now, but pull itif there's a serious problem.

Marco: That's right.

Catherine: So, the father says "You know what? I told you only make a collect call in case of an emergency." That means if there's an accident, if the boys in the hospital, if there is something serious happening, then it's okay to charge to make this collect call. But other times like you forgot your wallet, that's not an emergency.

Marco: Yeah. All right, very good. So why don't we listen to our dialogue one last time? And we'll be right back.

A: This is the operator, how may I help you?

B: Yes, I would like to make a collect call.

A: Okay, sir, please dial the number. Now, please state your name.

B: Tommy.

A: Please wait a moment. Hello, you have a collect call from Tommy. Would you liketo accept the charges?

C: Yes, of course.

B: Dad?

C: Yeah, Tommy, what happened?Are you okay?

B: Yeah,dad, everything is okay. I'm calling you because I want to know if it's okay for meto go to my friend's house today after school.

C: Yeah, sure, no problem. You scared me to death! I've told you to make a collectcall in case of an emergency only! Why didn't you call me from your mobile phone?

B:I ran out of credit and I also didn't have 25 cents for the payphone. Sorry, dad.

Marco: So, making a collect call, very common thing as well.This is the scenario you will find in the United States, for example, if you go to a payphone, you don't have any money, you wanna call your friend, the tour guide, the airport, anything...you can make a collect call.

Catherine: That's right. And this is something that is, like I said,becoming less common with cell phones. But generally speaking, if you don't have any money and you have an emergency situation or you need to call someone, it's very important. Then you can make a collect call, you dial 0, zero, for the operator. And you say I want to make a collect call, and they will ask you these important questions. And then what the other person hears is, you know, "Catherine would like to make a collect call?"

Marco: Right. Exactly.

Catherine: Will you accept the charges? And if you're my mother, you'll say "Yes, of course."

Marco: That's right. Now, as you said, payphones, they used to be all over the place and you would have to put in a quarter. This is why the kids said that he didn't have any money for the payphone. But now you don't really see too many payphones, everyone's got mobile phones.

Catherine: That's right. And payphones are less and less common, although a lot of people like to use payphones just because they're private, not tracked.

Marco: Yeah, but what I found is that the airports now you can't use a payphone with quarters or money. Now you gotta use a credit card to use a payphone.

Catherine: That's right. It's become so expensive that you have to swipe your credit card to use the payphone. So, it's a changing world, Marco.

Marco: Now can we make international collect calls?

Catherine: I don't think so. No, I think it's just America.

Marco: Well, this is a very interesting topic. Obviously, we will see if in your country, you can make collect calls or how do you make a call to someone if you don't have any money?

Catherine: That's a good question. So, let us know, our website is englishpod.com.

Marco: We'll see you guys there.

Catherine: Bye!

Marco: Bye!