I thought when AT&T was broken up everyone had to quit renting their telephone and buy one, but apparently not. These people just discovered their grandmother has been paying rent for her rotary phone all these years ($14,000 total) and Bell Labs (aka Ma Bell) says there are 750,000 people still renting a phone instead of buying it outright.
Story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/renting_rotary
Background (1982 Time Magazine article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...955039,00.html