Annoying... We have both paid and free hotlines. But nobody really cares, because practically everyone has a flat rate and can make unlimited calls without any worries. Well, except for special numbers that aren't included in the flat rate. And those are set up exactly as you described: they keep you on the line as long as possible. I've been trying to handle everything in writing for a long time now, whenever possible.
I'm sure writing an email to report a power outage would be even more ineffective than the situation described above. 😃
In Bulgaria, there is even a foundation that has developed an application in which they have collected all the alternatives to these paid numbers that could be found. This includes banks, couriers, insurance companies, even credit companies, which are so many in Bulgaria because people are poor. And these poor people have to pay to contact these companies. Mobile operators have long since made their lines paid as well, because they are fraudsters by default and many people call them because of the constant mess and fraud they commit with their contracts. Last year I had to call an insurance company, I needed information very urgently because of documents I needed for a medical examination. They transferred me from department to department without giving me the information I actually needed and I had to pay for it again...
I don't know why, but I associate these paid numbers only with fraud, and in Bulgaria they are already almost everywhere and of every single establishment and institution. Simply because the state is not working, it is absent and has been replaced by some fraudsters. Even for reporting scams related to the introduction of the euro to the Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) and the National Revenue Agency (NRA), this can only be done to such a paid phone 🤷♀️ So you can imagine that even though there are hundreds of thousands of cases, no one reports such signals. And that's what the point is in this case, for example.