"ALWAYS be polite. ALWAYS be truthful. Admissions officers [should have read “Financial Aid officers”] are usually underpaid and overworked. They spend months getting yelled at by morally outraged parents. Don’t add to their difficulty, try to be reasonable. Be a team. "
“Be a team”, means that if you have something to say, do it as if you are on the same side. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being polite or asking questions. Admissions officers always were a source of information for us. Sometimes it is ok to communicate. It got our file out of the pile of no return (local community college did not send paperwork electronically and it wandered through several offices. Had we not communicated, there would have been nothing but limbo for the application.)
No one ever suggested making up excuses to call and annoy anyone. I would think that would have been obvious.