making calls

If you purchased a Skype Number, it is only a landline number (an incoming subscription) in which only incoming calls are covered. It does not come with any bundled outgoing minutes (local or long distance). Making outbound calls still requires Skype credit or a calling subscription that covers the cost of calls to the phone numbers you are dialing.

What are the different types of Skype subscriptions and pay-as-you-go options?

Skype Number subscription does not provide you any cost of making outgoing calls to other phone numbers. Skype Number subscription makes it possible to receive calls from phone numbers, but not making calls.

If you want to be able to make calls to other phone numbers, then you need credit or a subscription covering calling these phone numbers.

well that is beyond messed up. in my days with skype, and i was signed up with them from the beginning, it was not that way. When you bought (though in the beginning it was free) a number you could makes calls to land line or cell. Now it is way too confusing. Why, please tell me why, I would buy a number that I can not even use? Also, in the past (when things were better) you bought a subscription, which included a number, which makes sense. Now it makes no sense at all. 

When Microsoft bought them out, all seemed fine, at first for many years, but now ... this is madness. Also, one would have thought with them there would be better CS but not. So now I will have to ask for a refund. Unless I get a better more sensible answer as to why I should not. 

You are remembering incorrectly. Skype was never that way. There were times when a Skype number known as an Online number/Skype In, at the time, was included with the purchase of a calling subscription as a promo, in some regions. Not the other way around. Some people renewed that promo for quite some time, allowing their landline number to renew without incurring any extra charge. However, even those promos were discontinued years ago, dropping the free online landline number. The majority of users, like myself, have paid separately for a Skype Number and calling subscription for over a decade, even before Microsoft purchased Skype. The standard promo in place, was a 50 percent discount for a yearly purchase of a Skype Number, if you had an existing/ongoing calling subscription (before purchasing/renewing the number).

Paying for a landline number without bundled calling minutes has been the standard for decades. The only thing that modified people's perceptions of this is expensive landline and mobile bundles. Bundles which have generally been hundreds of dollars, way more expensive than the cost of a Skype number, even after purchasing a separate calling subscription.

First off that may be somewhat correct as I had it for decades. Ok? Second, in the beginning I was in communication with the original owner/creators and I believe they cut me a deal. And that had continued till I was unable to make payments (do to homelessness) two years or so ago but my account stayed active. So, maybe, it was locked in and maybe I had hoped it would stay the same, guess not. So, I have cancelled and better get a refund or just cancel charging my card as I see it is still pending. 

So, I'm stuck with Google Voice (least it is free) till they get stupid about it, which they are anyway in many ways. Rich people suck. Let the poor suffer but then try to rape them for all the money they do not have.