Sometime after they got it, so did their next-door neighbors (not necessarily the same model: they weren't - irony! - on speaking terms), and then sometimes you'd pick up the handset and find yourself eavesdropping on both sides of the neighbor's phone call. Fortunately, the manufacturer had anticipated this: there was a three-position frequency-selection switch on the side. (I can't remember if the base station hopped to whatever you set on the handset, or if you had to set it manually on the base, too.) That worked fine for a while, we used frequency #2, the neighbors used... one of the others, until (I assume - we never heard anyone else's calls) a further-away neighbor or two also got a cordless phone, and the next-door folks had to frequency hop.
They put up with that for a while, and then sadly reverted to corded phones until more-advanced cordless tech became available.