Actually I played it when it originally came out (weekend before actually) so my experience with it was in regards to that time. However, I worked at Nintendo as a game counselor so was under a time crunch to beat it before all the puzzles got spoiled and was able to find out about his unbeatable status pretty quickly after finishing it.
Fwiw, I don't remember more than a couple calls about the running man other than those regarding the bunny hood. So not too many people were bothered by it, at least not enough to blow 60 cents a minute on it. The water temple, on the other hand, people blew massive amounts of money for help on that place