BT chat lines

[remember]

I can remember in the mid 80s BT launching a telephone chat line. I think it must have been the first of its kind in the UK and i even remember the advert featuring the BT Buzzby Bird! It was clearly aimed at loners and vulnerable teens and cost a fortune. You would call the number and end up in a "chatroom" with loads of others, all talking at the same time (like an early type internet chat room). I can rememebr my mum would work nights and i would spend hours on the chatlines (which in those days were very innocent and manned by an opperator, not like today's filth!) talking with loads of people all trying to chat each other up. I can also rememeber when the plug was pulled (probably due to the massive phone bills parents up and down the country were receieving) it was at 5pm one friday afternoon and there was a host of us all crying down the phone to each other, pledging to be friends forever, as if it was the last day of term and then the line just went dead! That was the last i ever heard of them. Mind you i doubt anyone had actually used their real name or been honest about themselves.

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[sniffthehedgehog]

Re: BT chat lines

I recall having a 'thing' with the Chat Monitor, everytime I was came on 'chat' she'd 'beam me up to a private chat room - they quaintly called this 'Heaven' ...

We weren't all 'brain surgeons' and security guards ... some of us were just working late and fed-up ... but I recall we had a really close knit wee group, and yes everyine I 'knew' on 'Chat' cried like weans the day they 'pulled the plug' ...


So ended an era ... where ever you are now 'Monica' I and the rest of the regulars - wish you well . They were the best of times, they were the worst of tariffs truly we never how good things were, til it they we gone .... We didn't have txt speak ... we just had time on our hands


Sniffthehedgehog ....

[Richard1978]

Re: BT chat lines

The other thing I remember in the late 1980s were information lines, where the caller would get a few minutes of information on a certain subject.

One problem was if the caller didn't hang up at the end of the message it would keep playing in a loop, potentially running up a large phone bill!

I never remember using any of these, but my brother had a card for a service called Club Call, where you could get all the latest behind the scenes at most football teams. I don't know if he ever actually used it.

BT used to advertise a few similar services on the back of the phone book in the mid 1980s.

[Fifi62]

Re: BT chat lines

Was it called Talkabout? My best friend was addicted to it!

[polopudding1]

Re: BT chat lines

I worked for BT Supercall at the time who owned and operated Talkabout, Clubcall and Racecall. I had the job of going around to all of the Talkabout offices in the UK and dismantling them. The majority of them were located in Local telephone exchanges. I still have bits of their promotional material at home. They were happy days.
After that I worked for some private Chat Line companies. When OFTEL or OFCOM (can't remember) shut down the lines for good, some of these chat line companies kept the lines open and just played recordings of old chat line sessions. I couldn't believe how many people still called and sat there for hours listening to old chat sessions for 30p per minute!!!!! Money for old rope.

I can remember in the mid 80s BT launching a telephone chat line. I think it must have been the first of its kind in the UK and i even remember the advert featuring the BT Buzzby Bird! It was clearly aimed at loners and vulnerable teens and cost a fortune. You would call the number and end up in a "chatroom" with loads of others, all talking at the same time (like an early type internet chat room). I can rememebr my mum would work nights and i would spend hours on the chatlines (which in those days were very innocent and manned by an opperator, not like today's filth!) talking with loads of people all trying to chat each other up. I can also rememeber when the plug was pulled (probably due to the massive phone bills parents up and down the country were receieving) it was at 5pm one friday afternoon and there was a host of us all crying down the phone to each other, pledging to be friends forever, as if it was the last day of term and then the line just went dead! That was the last i ever heard of them. Mind you i doubt anyone had actually used their real name or been honest about themselves.

More...

[ayrshireman]

Re: BT chat lines

The other thing I remember in the late 1980s were information lines, where the caller would get a few minutes of information on a certain subject.

One problem was if the caller didn't hang up at the end of the message it would keep playing in a loop, potentially running up a large phone bill!

I never remember using any of these, but my brother had a card for a service called Club Call, where you could get all the latest behind the scenes at most football teams. I don't know if he ever actually used it.

BT used to advertise a few similar services on the back of the phone book in the mid 1980s.

I used the Rangers one quite a bit, and it was very popular. Rangers (this was the Souness era) were the biggest club in Britain at the time.