this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
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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?

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[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

That's a more modern version. Q and Z were originally left off, which lets the numbers 2 through 9 have only three letters each. You wouldn't find mnemonic numbers listed with those letters. Which was fine, because they aren't common letters in English, anyway.

They got added when cell phone text messaging got big on flip phones. Then you had to have them.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

If you want to see a monkey, just call 555-123 SOO.

[–] DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago

Damn. That’s a great piece of info. I didn’t know about this stuff until I moved to the US. lol. Thank you for the education of course.