Abstract: The inventive apparatus, hereto called an Automatic Telephone Dialer (ATD), is a telephone device that implements the inventive method. The ATD is designed to automatically and directly connect long distance phone calls to predefined long distance service providers' telephone switching equipment by means of automatically dialing the providers' long distance dial around prefix numbers, to provide protection to the consumer against unauthorized switching of the long distance service provider known as “slamming,” and to allow for the user to conveniently program and store a personal prefix, such as a three digit area code, that could be appended to the normal seven digits dialed in order to complete a local phone call. The ATD captures digits dialed by the telephone by monitoring the activity on the telephone line. As the digits are detected the device determines what intervention is required, if any.