My 2 cents....
As someone who has NOT gone looking yet, and stumbled across geocaching by accident, I'll say yes, it's okay to call or e-mail.
Not for exact location, but to at least know if in the right area, let alone the right city.
I had stumbled onto the geocache site by accident, looking up coordinates for a village in Germany, it brought me to geocaching.com. Then I started poking around the site to see what geocaching was. Thought it was cool. Found out how to look up caches for my area (mind you, I still did NOT have GPS), found a clue to one that I thought I might know 'area' it was in. So...I e-mailed the owner of the cache, explained that I was new, was not asking for where, since I didn't have unit, but was I correct about the hint.
I was!
2 days later, ordered a Garmin Etrex Vista through Office Max (owner had told me to look in garage sale and ebay for units, I found post about good bargain), got my unit in between Hurricanes.
I haven't gone to look for cache yet, have been a wee bit busy this Hurricane season, but cannot wait. Have already ordered another unit for my brother-n-law for his birthday.
Okay, it was actually, about 10 cents worth...but yes, I think acceptable to ask for help when needed. Help is very different from asking for answer.
