Look for something that makes your wife nervous

07/20/2011

While brainstorming with someone for ideas for toll free numbers, we came up with an interesting factor to measure the creativeness of ideas. You have to look for something that makes your wife nervous. I know it’s not 100% but I think most successful entrepreneurs have someone who tends to be more nervous, to balance out their excitement and enthusiasm. Whoever that is for you, look for a number that’s so edgy that it makes a normal person go hmmm. Your consumer or customers, 5 years from now are only going to have more demands and be harder to get through to, than they are today. So start by looking for a unique theme or slogan with personality. For great marketing, think outside the box and say something that makes people raise their eye brows, and makes your wife nervous.

Terms of Dis-Service

07/18/2011

There are a lot of otherwise very attractive websites and toll free services available on the internet that are trying very hard to trap you and your business.  Most customers don’t realize how important portability is.  Your ability to transfer the number is what keeps them honest and unfortunately most internet services don’t like customers having the right to leave them.  They use tricky legal terms that ultimately claim ownership of your number.  So after you’ve printed the toll free number and got it in all your advertising you suddenly find out that the more you advertise THEIR number the more at their mercy you become.
 
That way if something better comes along, or they don’t do a good job or provide poor customer service, you can’t do anything about it.  This leads to doing a good job of getting customers started, but gives them an incentive to provide the cheapest customer service possible in the long run and no incentive to stay competitive on price.  They all look good on the website and when you’re getting started, but the only way to insure you have the ability to transfer your number away is to get it independently and transfer it to them.
 
The worst of these companies discourage customers from getting and transferring numbers in too.  They’ll say you don’t have to do all that work, that they can get you whatever number you want themselves.  But what they can’t get you or at least they don’t want to give you is the ability to transfer your number away.  The more they try to discourage you from transferring your own number over, the more you should look somewhere else for the service, no matter what a salesperson says.

Claims ownership of numbers:

RingCentral.com
CustomTollFree.com
Accessline.com
Phone.com
My1voice.com
Onebox.com
PhonePeople.com
eVoice.com
VirtualPBX.com
MyTollFreeNumber.com
Easytel.net
PATlive.com

Doesn’t list terms:

Tollfreenumber.org (because they don’t provide the service)
FreedomVoice.com (doesn’t list them on their site)

Read the exact terms of service for most of these companies from their own websites.

Backorders are on Sale until July 12th.

07/06/2011

The new data is out and monthly emails are going out. The Sale this month is numbers in the disconnect aging process. You can backorder these and we will try to grab them for you when they come out.

You only pay the one time fee for them and own them with no strings, IF we’re able to get it for you when it comes out. 800 numbers are $200 off and only $595 instead of $795 if you backorder them before July 12th. 888 & 877 numbers in disconnect are both $100 off, so they are $495 and $295 respectively. 855 & 866 numbers are still only $195 if we’re able to get them for you when they come out of disconnect. Only one customer can backorder each number too, so if you see a good number in disconnect be sure to backorder it right away!

This sale ends at 9 pm on 7/12 and sale prices are not combined with any additional discounts.

Are you really expecting something like 800-444-4444 or 800-400-4000?

06/19/2011

Here’s an email I got the other day which is typical in a sense, so I figured it might be helpful to answer it here for everyone, on the website.

I am looking for an available easy number for a small business i am setting up. I am looking for something like 1800-444-4444 or 1-800-400-4000. Numbers that are easy for people to remember. What could you find for me that meets my requirements?

Unfortunately, the answer is simple. With requirements or even expectations like that absolutely nobody is going to be able to help you. The person writing that hasn’t really analyzed or thought very much about what they’re asking for. There are 8 possible numbers like each of those, since the first number can’t be a zero or a one.

So the request is basically like contacting someone in the domain name business and saying that you’re a small business and want a short easy to remember domain name, something like A.COM. (with just one letter.) Nobody in their right mind would think that a domain name with just one letter would be available. Yet there are 26 letters and another 10 numbers, or 36 domain names with just one letter. That’s twice as many as there are of the toll free number they were asking for. So you could argue that what this customer was asking for is twice as hard as a single digit domain name.

Read more about how to respond to customers with unreasonable expectations.

Get a matching 800 number and local number

06/01/2011

It’s very hard to match an existing local number, but if you haven’t gotten your local number yet, this is a great way to try to get a matching local and toll free number.

Ask what exchange is available from your local phone company or cell phone company. Then enter that exchange (the first three digits) into the Toll Free Search Engine on the top of the page at TollFreeNumbers.com. Then in the top of the second box in the search results, you’ll see a section that says “We found some True 800 #s that contain…” your digits. It’ll also show you if any of the following four digits that are available spell things.

Ask your phone company or cell phone company if any of those numbers are available and you’ll probably be able to get those digits in an ‘800’ number and your local or cell phone number. It’ll look really nice on a business card and you were going to have to get a number anyway. So why not get one that matches to give you more consistency.

Why Mass Misdial Marketing is killing Toll Free

05/20/2011

There were over 400 articles about Primetel recently, and how they had almost 3 million toll free numbers, mostly just to make money from the wrong numbers. This surprised a lot of people but it’s perfectly understandable when you look at the Mass Misdial Marketing business model. If your income was based on the number of wrong numbers you got, and the number of wrong numbers you got was based on the number of good toll free numbers you had, how many toll free numbers would you want? The answer is easy. You’d want ALL of them or at least as many as you could get your hand on to.

The Mass Missdial Marketing business inevitably creates an ever increasing demand for large volumes of toll free numbers. This demand makes it almost impossible for new customers to get ‘800’ numbers any more, forcing new customers to advertise 855 numbers. This ironically increases the amount of wrong numbers from consumers who overlook or forget the 855 area code and dial the defacto toll free area code, ‘800’ area code.

So it’s actually very little surprise that we ran out of toll free numbers and had to open the new 855 area code, or that regular phone companies can’t compete and get ‘800’ numbers from the spare pool any more. The competition has increased to the point that regular phone companies simply can’t get ‘800’ numbers at all any more. The FCC already has regulations against hoarding toll free numbers. They simply have to say that Mass Misdial Marketing is NOT a valid use of toll free numbers, and that any company found to be using toll free numbers for MMM will be considered to be hoarding numbers and may be subject to fines and/or auctioning off their numbers.

Not even if they PAID you!

05/12/2011

I found a number for a customer and they asked me if what we were doing for $49 was the same as what evoice was doing for $30. The answer is simply that it couldn’t possibly any more different, and even if they were willing to PAY YOU literally hundreds of dollars to accept a number from them you’d still be better off paying for a number yourself and transferring it to them, so you have the right to transfer it away for any reason.

Most people assume that because they charge you something for getting a number that it’s the same as paying us to get you a number. But despite how the salesperson wants to make it sound, just because you pay a fee up front doesn’t mean you’re not essentially renting THEIR number, instead of owning it. This is literally a Trap! You have the right to transfer YOUR number away to another service at any time if you get it from us. But no matter what the salesperson says, if you got it from them, you’re stuck with them even if their service turns out to be nothing like what you thought it was going to be. Your ability to transfer the number is what keeps them honest and even if they were paying you, it would be just plain dumb to waive that right for any price.

10% OFF Everything Sale EXTENDED TILL MIDNIGHT

05/11/2011

This sale was extended! Everything is on Sale 10% off but ONLY UNTIL MIDNIGHT Wednday 5/11/11!!

There’s no Perfect Number

05/10/2011

Unfortunately the question isn’t whether we can get you the perfect number. You’re about 15 years too late to find the perfect number. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find a good number if you’re creative and thorough. Our goal isn’t to find people the perfect number but to find the best numbers available.

You’ll have to do a number of searches because unless you’re really thorough you won’t know whether the one you find is really the best. That’s why we give you the best tools and make it easy to do as searches as you want. And unlike most other websites, we don’t automatically lock up the numbers you find. Beat on the lookup tool and let us know if you have any questions.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!

05/08/2011

Having a small family business has several benefits and one of the best for me has been being able to work with my mother. (more…)