Keef:
"I find that if they KNOW you're going to call the next unit down the line they often will pass on your details. "
How would they know you're going to be calling a certain ATSU (VFR I mean, not IFR)? I guess if you've filed a FPL which has a routing they might be able to know, but how else would they?
Maybe if in your inital call to them you said you'd be "routing through XXXXX's overhead etc etc...." then they also might know that you will likely be talking to XXXXX.
How did you mean?
tKF