Granted, the “nickel and diming” of hotline numbers (1900, 0900, etc) was nowhere as bad as today’s cash shops, but a lot of us simply forgot they were always hungry for all our money
Here’s a bunch other hotline ads for you to peruse - https://www.retromags.com/gallery/category/1729-telephone-hotlines/
PS: I never understood these american numbers that used letters, how were you supposed to know what was the actual number?


Yes, it would be 8477. It wasn’t uncommon to see the number only version beside or below the word version. They are mostly there to make it easier to remember the phone number, since having a list of contacts wasn’t nearly as common back then, at least as a kid.