The last time I remember doing this was probably in the 1980’s to make a collect call home to my parents. Haven’t had a reason to speak to the operator, and don’t even know if you dialed “0” if an actual person would pick up today.
In 2012. My province added a new area code and calls now had to be made with 10 digit numbers instead of 7 digit ones. When I called my insurance agent using the 10 digit number I got a message that said I needed to include the area code even though I already did.
What to do? Since I’m an old fart, I knew the answer! I dialed 0 and a real, live operator answered and said that insurance guy was forwarding their calls wrong and I’d have to take it up with them.
Whenever the last time I made a collect call was. Probably about 1999. I was on my way to visit my sister at her new house and had to call to get directions.
I don’t recall at all. The last two times I tried to get an operator I rang and rang and rang, at least five minutes and got nowhere. The most recent was in Barbados in 2004 (my daughter was having an operation and I wanted to talk to her husband) and the time before that was in Belgium probably in the mid 90s. I do recall making a person-person call from the US to Switzerland and did get an operator, but that could have been in 1980 or even earlier and was likely the last time.
Um, probably the 1970’s. I forget what the discussion was about.
Only once definitively and we were making a semi-prank call in that we were going to sing a X-mas carol to the operator since we were wassailing and we saw a pay phone, and the operator was named Carol so she let us! I don’t remember any other time I’ve called 0 for the operator. I’m not quite sure what it does anymore.
Other than to ring the front desk in my office building or a hotel, probably in the mid 90s.
Not since I was in college in the '60s, and would call home collect. Do they still have operators?
Other than the above caveats, mid 1980s.
Maybe not exactly what the OP is getting at, but when I find myself stuck in “automated response call hell”, 9 times out of 10 if you hit “0” repeatedly, you will get to talk to a live, human being.
I believe my cell phone will still recognize O as a call for information/a human operator. To be honest, I so rarely use the darn thing for anything that I can’t be sure. On the landline I guess it was maybe 15-20 years back.
Summer of 1988. I was traveling through Japan and called collect to home.
Before we started dating, my Japanese ex-wife did a summer of Eurorail(?) pass and youth hostels would call home collect but ask for a nonexistent name. The family could decline the charge but would know she was safe.
That was also in the late 90s. Damn, my kids would ask why she didn’t just email them.
I don’t think there is any free service the operator can perform. Whatever reason you have to call the operator, there is a service charge. I guess you can just call and chat. I’m afraid to try it, it might be a long distance toll call.
Years ago, you cold call the operator and ask what time it is. Now he’d probably say “I can tell you the time in your time zone for a $2 charge, or $4 to convert to another time zone.”
About 1990 I made overseas person-to-person calls, but not by dialing 0. It was some combination of 0’s and 1’s that got me the human AT&T operator. (Though the queries associated with person-person are more difficult when foreign person doesn’t speak English.)
Thailand used to have ‘Home Direct’ phones where you pick up the phone and are quickly in touch with an AT&T operator. Unfortunately those phones are uncommon — there was only one in my province and it was locked up except during business hours (graveyard in U.S.) I’m unaware of any way to place an operator-assisted call from most phones in Thailand.
I frequently call numbers which I could call collect but I still must pay for them. I think last time I tried a collect call, U.S. to U.S., there were just two machines talking to each other. One machine said “If this is a collect call, we accept the charges;” the other said “If you accept the charges, say ‘Yes’ at the tone.”
A related annoyance was calling U.S. 800 numbers from overseas. I don’t mind paying for the call, but the number cannot be dialed successfully. If you first get a human operator they won’t put the call through, claiming the toll would be paid twice which is against their policy. (Finally, U.S. companies seem to be getting the message, showing regular numbers as well as toll-free numbers.)
God, I’ve only done it once.
August of 1994, I was moving to the US for graduate school and we knew it could be several days until I had a phone. As agreed, when I landed I placed a collect call to say I’d arrived.
That was first and last.
Now that’s funny.
Back in the days of 2400 baud modems and that amazing new gizmo called a fax machine I remember listening to some modem that had called my office’s fax machine. This was before modems became fax-capable modems.
Anyhow, the two computers beeped and whistled at each other uncomprehendingly for awhile. Then one got impatient & hung up. The other called back. I imagined their tone slowly rising as they got more an more impatient with each other. After the third try the one computer hung up in a huff, never to call again. So there!
Made me think of R2-D2 arguing with some other droid “speaking” a different language.
Like bibliophage, probably the last time I made a collect call. 1970s probably, possibly the early 1980s. by sometime in the early 1980s if not earlier, long distance direct dialing became cheap enough that there was no point anymore in calling collect.
Probably in the 80’s to request an “emergency breakthrough”. I think they call it “busy line interrupt”.
Before there was 911, it was common to dial 0 for an emergency. It was easier than looking up the number for the police or fire department. The operators were cool headed and knew how to handle the situation.
I can’t remember the last time I called 0. Probably over 30 years ago.
OMG! This past New Year’s Eve! We could not reach one of our parents to wish them a happy new year. An automated message kept saying the number was not valid, or something ridiculous. So, I called the operator to ask if they could “check the line”. I guess I am dating myself for I had to explain what that means for the Operator was too young to know! I was told they don’t have the equipment to do that anymore. How pathetic. (It’s all because AT&T, Verizon, etc. ever so slowly and craftily phased out line maintenance and SCATA systems giving feedback on line continuity). Long story short, we finally reached a neighbor to knock on the door and get them to call us!
So much for the operator…Dial “O” for Obsolete! 