I was at Fred Meyer today and spent 15 minutes playing on their pay phone. I got nowhere with LD coin calls again. Not that it mattered since I didn't have any tones with me. I did call the refund department, though, which was listed on the instruction card. The lady asked how much I lost and I told her $4.25. She was really confused by this since she claims that the operator would never ask for more than $2.00 at a time. She would only refund me $2.00 which she credited to my home phone. (Some random local number I gave her.)
I tried to talk to her about how to place a long distance call with coins but she seemed to know nothing about it, other than that only $2.00 at a time is all that could be inserted. This would support the theory that only intralata calls are possible with coins.
A local operator I spoke with offered to help me place an intralata call and asked for the number. Unfortunately I didn't know any numbers offhand that would be intralata so I just gave her a random phone number, hoping it would work. She told me the number was long distance and that I needed to dial 00 for that. I asked if 00 would help me place it with coins and she said she didn't know. I tried and they wouldn't.
