Widow Leases Phones for 42 Years

An Ohio woman spent thousands of dollars leasing two rotary phones over the course of four decades. Ester Strogen and her late husband first got their hands on the rotary-dial devices in 1964, and the Canton couple never saw a reason to cancel the contract, The Repository reports. But now Strogen's granddaughters are buzzing mad, estimating that their 82-year-old granny rang up more than $14,000 in payments on the phones over the years. But Lucent Technologies says they've got the wrong number -- the $29.10 fee was charged quarterly, not monthly, so Strogen paid only about $2,000 over the lease's lifetime, according to the telephone company. Now that the granddaughters are on the case, the black rotary dinosaurs have been replaced by push-button phones. And that makes Strogen sad. "I'd like to have my rotary back," she said. "I like that better."