You pick a phone company, any 
phone company.  Personally I try to stay away from my local phone company 
since they have my info.  You can get the customer service numbers for any 
phone company by going to their web site but I'll list a few on the end of 
this article anyway.

You call their customer service and start pounding on the zero button until
you get connected to a live person.  You can call either the residential or 
the business departments but it's best to call business because they almost 
always answer quicker than residential.  Once you get connected to a live 
person you should have a conversation something like this:

REP: Verizon business office, can I help you?
YOU: This is John, I'm an outside Verizon technician here in Boston.
REP: Hey there John, what can I do for you?
YOU: Well I'm trying to get an operator on this auxilary line but for some
     reason I can't get that to work here.  Would you mind just transferring
     me to the local operator?
REP: You mean the "0" operator?
YOU: Yep.
REP: Sure, I can do that, John.
YOU: Thanks!

There you go, free call.  A second later you'll hear a Verizon operator ask
how she can help you.  If you want to make a call from within the state 
you're calling from just tell her you want to place a call and give her the 
number. Tell her that you keep getting an error message when you dial it and
ask if she can try it.  If the number ends up being outside of her calling 
area she'll tell you that she needs to transfer you to a long distance 
operator. Some of them will ask which you prefer and some will just send you
straight to AT&T.  Then once you get the AT&T (or whichever LD carrier you 
choose) operator, you just tell them the same thing and ask them to put your 
call through.  And the call is billed to the line that they think you're 
calling from which is the phone company's number.

This will work for a call to just about anywhere in the world.  They can call
overseas and they'll just bill it to the local phone company that transferred
you to an outside line.  And I assume that means it will never even be 
noticed since the phone company probably doesn't bill themselves for phone 
calls.

And of course, you can ask the AT&T operator to emergency break into phone
lines that are busy.  Like if you're trying to get ahold of a friend but 
their line is busy because they're too stupid to get call waiting, the 
operator will interrupt your friend's conversation with a long beep and then
she'll say, "I have an emergency phone call from Roy Gerbil.  Will you 
release the line?" This works great for spooking people.  Especially when 
you do it nonstop for weeks at a time.  Not that I'd know anything about that
sort of thing.


Security Risks:
--------------
Is this a risky way to make free phone calls?  That I can't say for sure.  
I'm guessing that your weakest link might be the phone company you're using 
would notice that you're spending 8 hours a day on their customer service 
line.  I suppose that could look a little fishy to them.  So like I said 
before, a good idea would be NOT to use your local phone company to do this.

Another security risk might be if the rep. you spoke with about transferring 
you to an outside line suspected you of lying.  They might try to spook you
by reading off your number or something.  But if it's with another phone
company and they figure out that you're full of shit, I doubt you'd have 
much to worry about.  This has never happened to me though.  But that's 
because I'm an elite phr33ker and no Bell employee would dare question my
authority because they know the consequences.


Customer Service Numbers:
------------------------
Below are a few customer service lines from various phone companies.  There
are plenty more to choose from if you search the web a little.  If you're
only concerned with making an anonymous, untracable call and don't care 
about the charges, there are plenty of telcos that have non-toll-free lines
so your ANI isn't picked up at all.  

800-941-9900 Verizon MA
800-603-6000 Qwest
800-660-3000 Ameritech IL
800-753-0115 Bell South Florida
713-638-7335 Southwestern Bell TX
908-717-4600 Verizon NJ


Evening & Night Time Calling:
----------------------------
What about when you want to make a call during the evenings when the phone 
company is closed?  Well that's easy, you just call repair!  All of the major
telcos have a repair number that's answered 24 hours a day.  You might have
to sit on hold for a few minutes, but if you experiment with different phone
companies you'll find the one that has the least amount of hold time.  You'd 
say more or less the same thing to repair, just that you're out on a job and
you're having troubles reaching the local operator.


Diverting:
---------
As I mentioned, this method of free calling makes a kick ass diverter since 
whoever you call won't get your number on their caller ID.  But what about
the phone company having your number in their logs for hours at a time?  Well
you can always divert your phone call that you make to the phone company. 
It's an extra step and takes an extra minute 

Diverting is easy, you just call up your local operator and tell her you're
trying to call a toll-free number but you can't seem to get through to it. 
She'll ask what number you want and hopefully she'll dial it for you.  I've
heard in some areas operators won't do this for you.  So if that happens
break down in tears and tell the operator you're blind and in a wheel chair
so that she feels sorry for you and does it anyway.


Phone Company Alternatives:
--------------------------
If you'd rather not cheat the phone company, there's always the other large
companies out there.  Like I said, I used to do this with Target and Wal-Mart
but I had to deal with idiot employees who didn't know how to work a phone
properly.  Get out your yellow pages and search out other potential 
companies to do this to.

Once you figure out which company you're going to use, you call that place
(K-Mart for example) and tell them you want to be connected to the K-Mart
in Yahoo, OK (for example).  The K-Mart lady will say they don't have a 
K-Mart in Yahoo, Oklahoma and you say, "Oh yes you do, bitch.  I used to
work there and I know the number!  It's 405-482......" and hopefully she'll
connect you to whatever number you're trying to call.  There's plenty of 
other lines you could use on these companies, just use your imagination.


Who Do I Call?
--------------
So now that you know how to do all this I suppose you need a good number to 
call since you probably don't have any friends and you spend each evening
locked in your bedroom, reading UPL issues and thinking that they're 
actually cool.  Well do I have the number for you!  Call the PLA/UPL
Voice Bridge line at 305-503-6666 ext. 752.  You can sit on a chatline with
people you don't know and talk about what a cool article this is and how 
you're going to use this technique every night so that you can sit on a party
line and talk to people you don't know.

For more information on our voice bridge and to make sure you have the 
current number, visit http://www.phonelosers.org/bridge.html  
For more information on the author of this article visit RBCP's homepage
at http://www.phonelosers.org/rbcp/

rbcp@phonelosers.org

