The weekend before Halloween UO junior Matias Bervejillo was sent to the Lane County Jail for an open container violation. In an interview with Duck TV News, he claimed the county jail telephone service did not make calls to cell phones.

Bervejillo said, “We had people that wanted to bail us out, but we had no communication with them. There was the famous phone call that you get, it only called landlines, and we’re in a university town. I would love to see how many university students have landlines.”

The Lane County Jail uses a system called Global Tel-Link, which allows any person to make an outside call as long as that persons phone can receive collect calls.

Lane County Sheriff’s Sgt. Carrie Carver said, “[The] issue sometimes arises if someone sets up their phone where they cant make collect phone calls, and some cell phone carriers don’t accept collect phone calls. So for those people they can call the phone carrier and set up an account so they can get calls from people in jail.”

Carver says there is also a big misconception when it comes to the famous one phone call from jail.

“Really what we want is people to make all of the phone calls that they need to make because they have lives on the outside. Call their boss and tell them they wont be in for work the next day, arrange for child care, or care for elderly parents, things like that,” Carver said.

To find out if your phone receives collect calls, please get in contact with your service provider.