Phone bills in the 80s - itemised in any way? Pubs/restaurants

[MarathonMo]

Were phone bills itemised in any way in 80s, 1986 in particular.

Would phone records be different for business and more detailed re: commercial v residential?

E.g. a pub or restaurant?

Thanks

You could get itemised bills but I don't know when they started to be available. Certainly by the early 90s you could, so it's certainly possible you could in 1986. But it was usually only calls over a certain value.

Not sure if there was a difference between commercial and residential.

I'm pretty sure I always had itemised bills. No idea about commercial.

I am pretty sure there were itemized bills. I am sure that my Dad used to work hia way through it when it arrived!

Why do you ask out of interested? And as a 54 year old I think they were fully itemised - actually yes they were as I and my fellow students who shared a house tended to be analytical (anal twats) in sorting out who owes what...

Definitely could get itemised bills in the 80's, as I worked as live-in staff and my employers would highlight any calls I made each month, which I then paid for. This was 1982

Think you could request your bill to be itemised (residential)

You could in the early 90s, though it cost extra - couple of quid a month, so you might not have bothered unless you were in a shared property

According to BT in 1983 Itemised billing was introduced on a trial basis on trunk and international calls in part of Bristol and Bath.

www.btplc.com/Thegroup/BTsHistory/Eventsintelecommunicationshistory/index.htm

We got married in 1989 and remember getting itemised bills then as we had family living overseas we were able to see the extortionate cost of calling them!

I reckon the OP is writing a crime novel set in 1986 and there's going to be a clue in the bill.

Don't forget to mention us in your Acknowledgements, OP!

Thank you :)

Here's another one for you with brilliantly long memories....

1. Can you get old of old phone records? Could the police get hold of them, if needed, from that long ago? (Probably not as not computerised back then)?

Thinking that some people may have kept records, accounts etc? But probably thrown out eventually.

1. If a bill was itemised would all incoming calls automatically be listed too? Even if very short?

1. don't know
2. no, itemised bills were for outgoing calls only.

So intrigued as to why you are asking!

@fralla I imagine it is for a novel that the OP is writing.

I had itemised phone bills in the mid/late 80s. Outgoing calls only. My parents would rant about any expensive calls I’d made when at home and when at uni we would divvy the phone bill up accordingly after claiming our own calls from the bill!

I recall our itemised bills had a bit that was for local calls under a certain amount. So say four pounds of my bill was made up of quick calls but that portion wasn't itemised. This was in the nineties though.

I too am intrigued.

Incoming calls would not be on your bill as you don't pay for those. Unless you accepted the charge (my parents used to go mad at me reversing the charges for a lift home)

We didn't have itemised bills in my shared house in the late 80s because we all had to write down every call and how much it cost!

I was a student in the late 1990s, I remember
1 - incoming calls only phones
2 - Mercury did itemised Bills
3 - BT didn’t go itemised bills by default
4 - you could pay extra for BT itemised bills

No you can't get hold of old phone records from the 80s but if you are writing a novel (ie can employ some artistic licence) many people who were on their 30a and 40a then (my parents generation) kept all their paper records and my dad (up to when he died) still had every single utility bill he had ever paid ... the bloody boxes of totally wasted paper). They were scared of throwing them away.