As of Sunday morning (10/24), 114,532 of the new 855 numbers are “In Use.” Actually half are still reserved but they’re pretty much as unavailable in terms of getting numbers, as numbers that are already working. This means that only 1.44 percent of the total universe of 855 numbers have been taken and 7,865,468 numbers out of the original 7,980,000 are still Available! (twenty thousand numbers are blocked because there’s no 555 or 911 exchange)

That means there really are Tremendous Opportunities! You probably wont get your first choice, if it’s an obvious number but all is takes for most terms is a 4, 2, or GO, GET etc, in front of your word to get it. If you sell GUTTERS for instance, you won’t get the word GUTTERS by itself, but try putting your state initials in front. Or better yet just try your company name. You don’t need the domain name Gutters.com to have a good website for your Gutter business. It only takes a little bit of creativity to find things when 98.6% of things are still available!

This is actually the perfect timing because there is still rationing, but we’ve worked through our backlog and can now reserve things in real time for customers. And watch what happens the first week of November because once we have 855 numbers in the monthly data our look up tool will start doing the creative searching for you and the system that was designed to find good numbers scraping the bottom of the barrel will suddenly start finding barrels full of good numbers!

1 comment

Our original $8.55 fee was simply to try to get your request to the top of YOUR phone company’s list. I designed my original plan for 855 numbers with the idea that there would be a limit on the amount of 855 requests that each phone company could put in per day. So I would have a limited amount of numbers available and a lot of people requesting them. But your local phone company may not have had as many requests. It was a way to help more people than I would be able to get numbers for personally.

Read more about the 855 request fee

2 comments

We’ve been doing 855 number activations for just $49, the same price that we always do regular activations because I didn’t think it was appropriate to raise rates dramatically because of the demand. But fortunately or unfortunately we simply haven’t been able to keep up with the processing. It just takes a significant amount of work to process each number and we can only work 20 hour days for just so long. We’re a very small organization and we’ve simply been taking twice as many orders as we have the capability to process each day.

I’m not raising the price because of the value of the numbers, or the fact that nobody else does what we’re doing like this for anything close to what we charge, or even because we’re trying to capitalize on the situation. When I launched our 855 plan the end of June, I realized one of the biggest benefits was that it would allow us to prove our place as leaders and the best value in the toll free business. But at the same time, I simply can’t keep doing this to the people that make our business so special. The people that work with me are my best friends and they would do anything for me and I have to do this for them. So for 3 weeks, starting just after midnight on Friday, October 15, until November 8th, when the rationing ends, the price for 855 numbers will be $89.

6 comments

With the FCC imposed Rationing, we’re only allowed to take out 100 855 numbers per day. That means we simply can’t just try to get every number that was requested and then give the customer the option to activate it if they want it as we had planned to do. We encouraged customers to put in multiple requests and backup requests too. So it wouldn’t be fair to assume that they are automatically willing to pay $50 for every number they requested. And if we take numbers out that customers haven’t specifically confirmed that they want to order, then we would be wasting our ration and slowing down all of the other customers that want to get numbers too.

Read more about the difference between 855 Requests and 855 Reservations

4 comments

Wow, we had a great day and got a lot of GREAT 855 numbers for people. We were expecting it to be slow and make you sit and wait every time you hit submit, like it usually is at the nightly drop when numbers go back into the pool. But it wasn’t slow. It went very fast and everyone’s yelling, I got four, I got 8 more, I got a bunch. It was chaotic and a real adrenaline rush, and after you use up your ration, we all kept looking things up going but… but…. all these good numbers!

Overall, we got over 60% of the Premium Requests. I’m writing up an email for the positive and negative results. If you had a premium request you’ll get an email this afternoon! Then we’ll check the next batch and get more ready for tomorrow, starting the regular requests. If we see any interesting patterns or have more feedback I’ll definitely post it.

8 comments

Our main site TollFreeNumbers.com is in 855 release mode at this point. We’re all set and ready to go, just waiting for the 855 Release! We stopped checking 855s just against our own requests and taking requests until they are out. Actually we’re going to wait a little past noon to start checking because the SMS system will just timeout at least for a little while. I’ve scheduled it to start checking at 1pm (eastern) but can move that up or delay it if necessary.

If you want to check to see if we have a request for a number yet and put in 855 number requests you can still do that at 855Numbers.com That is still checking just our requests, and let you place a free no obligation request for it if we don’t have an 855 request for it yet. If we can get it (in turn as we work through the cue) it’ll be a one time fee of $49, with no other fees or strings at all. We’re the only indepdent resporg that’s not trying to sell you the ongoing 855 service and gives you proof of ownership, empowering you to go to any phone company you want!

If you requested 855 numbers, we will say it’s not available any more in order to protect you and also because there’s no point taking additional requests for the same 855 number. Even if it’s not actually taken yet, it will be in the near future. But that also means that you can’t really tell if it’s been taken in the national database on our site either.

So if you want to check an 855 number that you requested from us, to see if it’s still available in the national database, use the AT&T 800 lookup. Most other 800 websites automatically grab what you find available because they want you to have to get it from them but AT&T doesn’t do that. They’re also probably big enough that they won’t have a problem with the surge of use and traffic either. They won’t find a lot of the additional things that we do, but in this case they will probably be helpful if you’re trying to figure out if the number you requested is still available or not.

3 comments

We had to cut off the Premium Requests, (right before midnight). We got a surge at the end but need to have time to review and prepare the list. We are also going to be using some the allotment from another resporg to insure we have enough capacity for the requests we got, which were just over 200.

1 comment

The new toll free area code, 855 will open up in less than 24 hours, tomorrow at noon, eastern time. The FCC limited every phone company to just 100 numbers so we’ll be submitting the first batch of Premium 855 requests right at noon Saturday. Those first 200 requests are almost sold out and will be closed this evening regardless.

We’ve sent out emails to the first batch of 855 requests are taking the confirmations and lining up those requests. We’re only doing that for the first batch of requests because I think probably 75 to 80% of the requests will be taken already after the first two days. There will probably be 75,000 numbers taken in the first two days by the 400+ resporgs who can each take 100 numbers. Hopefully your local companies have some of your requests in their top requests as well. That’s why we worked so hard getting your requests to your phone company early on.

We will be sending out emails all weekend to let people know if their numbers were taken. We’ll also have a list of the requests remaining on the website and send out links to confirm the remaining numbers.

4 comments

The 855 Release is being done in slow motion, starting on October 9th, but the FCC is limiting each phone company to just 100 numbers per day. The first days requests are the Premium 855 requests but we will start going through the list basically as they came in by Sunday, the second day. A high percentage of the requests will be taken by the time we get to them so even though we know how many numbers we’ll get per day, it’s impossible to tell how many days it will take to get through the list to get to you.

Each day we will check all of the outstanding 855 requests and notify customers when their number is gone and tell you what phone company got it, (in case it was your local company that we submitted your request to for you). So even though you might initially be thousands of requests down the list, many of them will be gone by the time we get there so you could easily move up a thousand or more requests per day, even though we can only get 100 numbers. We may also get some available requests from other resporgs that aren’t using their allotment which could speed up your request too.

You also have to realize that this hasn’t been done in a long time and they never did it this way before. So there’s ultimately no way to tell ahead of time, exactly how long the backlog will take to clear or it will be until we get to your request or whether it’ll still be there by that time. The only thing I can say is that we will do our best to communicate where you’re at and what’s happening through out the process. I can say that the rationing goes for 30 days, but I don’t think the backlog will last that long but I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes for at least two weeks.

3 comments

I’d like to do something special to thank the 66 customers that took the time to write the FCC and request that the 855 numbers be rationed. They’re part of the reason that the FCC created the limit of 100 numbers per day on each phone company. This limit will probably help at least 100,000 to 250,000 actual customers get better numbers. The vanity number resporgs play by different rules but they won’t be able to grab hundreds of thousands of numbers in the first few minutes, before regular phone companies can submit their requests for regular phone companies.

It seems only right that the people who helped accomplish this, should actually benefit from it. So I’m going to bump up the requests of our customer’s who wrote to the FCC to request the rationing to the second day’s ration of numbers, right behind the Premium Requests. This should increase dramatically their chances of getting their numbers.

I realize that many more customers tried to contact the FCC but weren’t able to get through properly. It wasn’t easy to get through their website and my email wasn’t all that clear about it either. Ultimately we have to draw the line somewhere, but I appreciate the effort. The rest of the regular requests will be submitted after these requests, in the order they were received, each day until we reach our daily 100 number limit.

My original concept of getting and distributing customer requests to their local phone company was designed with rationing in mind and my July 2nd ebook, “The 855 Window of Opportunity” stated, mistakenly at the time, that there was going to be rationing. When I found out it wasn’t the case, I wrote the FCC on August 2nd, to explain how this was necessary and request it. Their response was to post the request for comments in which many customers also responded too. The FCC essentially followed my August recommendation except that they are making the rationing even stricter, (which equals better) limiting everyone to only 100 numbers per day.

This is truly a huge win for regular end users and is exactly why we collected and gave your 855 requests to your regular phone companies. Many of them won’t have as many 855 requests as we do since they haven’t been promoting it as much, so many of them should be able to get your numbers. I’m very sorry to the vanity number resporgs that won’t get as many good numbers, but that means that 100,000 to 250,000 end customers probably get better numbers than they would have been able to if the high speed resporgs weren’t rationed. Many of those phone companies have multiple resporgs so they’ll get a few extra shares, but they’re still going to be extremely limited and more than a little annoyed!

855 is the new toll free area code that was originally scheduled for October 1st (and then changed to October 2nd). But on Thursday evening (9/30) the FCC delayed the new toll free area code release by 1 week from Oct 2nd to Oct 9th, and rationed each phone company to 100 toll free 855 numbers per day! This was basically what we recommended back in my August 2nd letter to the FCC and is a huge win for regular customers and smaller phone companies. It’ll mean that a lot more customers can get good 855 numbers, not only with us but with all the regular phone companies.

More about the 855 requests and 855 rationing

5 comments

The FCC limited each resporg to 100 new 855 numbers per day. But some phone companies have multiple resporgs, mostly from merging different companies. We talked for a few minutes to make a quick list of the regular phone companies that have multiple resporgs, since these companies could have an advantage getting 855 numbers.

It may not be as much of an advantage if it’s a really big company, since that probably means they have more customers that might be interested in getting 855 numbers. It’s also an advantage in a lot of ways if they didn’t really promote 855 numbers, although not caring could be a disadvantage too. I’ve listed several companies with the number of resporgs we believe they have. It gets confusing because some are in different names and some might have been dropped. But they still get the same ration of new 855 numbers.

The sweet spot is probably a smaller company that hasn’t really promoted 855 numbers and has multiple resporgs. And I included Sprint, not because they have multiple resporgs but just to point out that that they seem to be the only big company that doesn’t.

Big Companies:
AT&T (10)
Verizon (7)
Qwest (3)
Paetec (3)
Level3 (5)
Global Crossing (2)
Sprint (1)

Smaller Companies:
Birch Telecom (2)
Acceris (2)
Allstream (2)
Broadwing (3)
Broadview (2)
Nuvox (2)
Capsule/Covista (2)
Itc Deltacom (2)
Xo (2)

4 comments

Our goal is always to help as many people as possible. We work hard (an understatement today) and do fairly well but I have to say that we really feel good today. Exhausted but good. Yesterday’s announcement by the FCC imposing a daily cap on 855 numbers makes us feel hugely successful today. We didn’t just help a lot of our own customers today, but we had a significant hand in making the toll free system fairer today and gave not only our customers a better chance to get good numbers with us, but we gave everyone a better chance to get good 855 numbers with their local phone companies too!

We certainly didn’t do this alone and don’t mean to take anything away from the FCC that ultimately made the decision. I especially have to hand it to not only the 60+ customers that put their comments on the record at the FCC, but the hundreds of customers that attemped to reach them as well. Thank you for your support and for standing up and making a difference. We still have a lot of work to do to try to get the numbers you’re looking for, but this was definitely a big step forward.

3 comments

I went to bed at 5:30am when the last emails went out about the changes to the 855 Opening. I woke up five hours later and we’ve already had 91 Premium Upgrades! Don’t worry it’ll take more than 100 attempts to fill our 100 number quota for the first day. I think the second day will also be almost as helpful since that will probably happen at midnight and many regular phone companies won’t want to stay up and do it at 1am EST, when I’m guessing the next days allotment will kick in. So if the second days requests are submitted ahead of 90% of the other requests for that day, they’re not much less likely to be successful. Plus we may be able to get an additional 90 or 100 requests on the first day from another resporg too so although I said the premium upgrades were for the first 200, it’s probably a little more readily available than that.

By the way, the original advice we started with back in JULY, that you should contact your local phone company too, is now more valid and important than ever! Place a request here AND contact your local phone company too.

UPDATE: 10/1/10 1:45pm EST, We’ve had 150 Premium Upgrades ordered, but some of them aren’t valid so the real number is a little less. And more than 100 requests will be necessary to get 100 actual numbers for the first day. So we’re getting close to the end of the first day. We may be able to use a second resporg though and I think the second day is also almost as valuable.

I will probably cut it off by the third day or so, and not take any more Premium Requests. At a certain point, if you try to make everyone special, you’re really not making anyone very special.

8 comments

I was about to send out the final email to everyone that had requested 855 numbers going over the process and timing for 855 numbers coming out in just over 36 hours, when the FCC issued a ruling on the whole Equitable 855 Allocation question which yours truly started, and a lot of you had a voice in as well. And I have to hand it to the FCC on this, because this is honestly the best possible outcome I could imagine. This is a huge win for real customers.

855 number release will be Delayed 1 week and Rationed for 30 days

In order to more equitably distribute 855 numbers, the FCC announced this evening that they will be limiting each of the 450 Responsible Organizations that have access to the national 800 database to 100 855 numbers per day! They also delayed the release just one week from Oct 2nd to October 9th to allow phone companies to review the allocation scheme and make any necessary preparations.

1 comment

The SMS announced at 6:30pm this evening (Thursday 9/30) that the FCC delayed the 855 Release by 1 week. They also announced that they were adopting my request to ration toll free numbers, even more than I had suggested. Each phone company will be able to reserve 100 855 numbers per day starting on Saturday October 9th.

Stay turned for a post this evening on how we will be handling this, and an email will be going out to everyone that has requested 855 numbers shortly as well.

I just finished these and they already have to be updated because of the new 855 Rationing just announced.

• Is there any charge to request 855 numbers?

Read the full post of Frequently Asked Questions about 855 numbers.

2 comments

UPDATE 9/30/10: We are now at less than 48 hours from the scheduled 855 Opening, but the FCC has never responded about the 855 Allocation which they opened up for comments. There was a lot of discussion and they simply haven’t responded or said anything. It’s not an easy decision, but hopefully we’ll see something from them soon.

Anyway, we are getting all prepared for the launch and at the same time watching to see in case it’s delayed. So stay tuned!

Originally posted 9/2/10:

The 855 release currently scheduled for Saturday October 2nd, is just 1 month away, but could the FCC delay the release? I realize the FCC comments request stated that they didn’t want to change the 855 release date. But if there’s a need to, I thought it was worth pointing out, that there would be very little harm in delaying it. The date of October 1st, (later changed to October 2nd) was selected based on faulty information.

At the time the FCC scheduled the 855 opening (for the first day after the SMS said they would be ready by), the SMS was estimating that we would run out of toll free numbers all together before the end of the year. The projected exhaust date varies but has typically been sometime in the middle of next year. So delaying the 855 release if it was necessary, or beneficial for any reason, would be possible.

The other way to look at it is, that when they say they don’t want to avoid delaying it, that means they are considering the need to delay it. Just like when a politician or even the President says, “Let me be perfectly clear…”, that means he’s about to say something very unclear or something that contradicts what he or other people have said. This doesn’t mean the 855 numbers will be delayed, but there is at least some possibility. And honestly I don’t think that would hurt anything either if they did delay.

3 comments

There’s no cost or obligation to place 855 requests! We did this specifically so customers could place plenty of back up 855 requests. There’s no way to predict the odds of getting the 855 numbers you wanted but the one easy thing you can do is request backups.

If you wanted a number for your business name Prestige, don’t just request 855 PRESTIGE and say that’s the only thing that makes sense. Put in requests for 855-4-PRESTIGE, 855-GO-PRESTIGE, 855-GET-PRESTIGE and 855-MY-PRESTIGE. Put in several requests to insure you have more options. Assume we won’t be able to get your first choice and put in your second choices now, rather than after the Rush.

Again there’s no cost, and no obligation so there’s no reason not to do this just to protect yourself. After the dust settles, we will have done everything possible to get these for you but there’s a lot of competition and we’re not going to get a lot more than we do get. So make sure you have some Backups!

In the event that any Resp Org receives compensation based on that Resp Org’s agreement to assign a particular toll-free number to one individual or entity rather than another individual or entity, that Resp Org would be in violation of the tariff, and SMS/800 may discontinue or suspend that Resp Org’s service. (See The Bell Operating Companies’ Tariff F.C.C. No. 1 Section 2.1.8(A))

This “Reminder” of Tariff Restrictions was sent out to every resporg earlier today, . But it was a message specifically to one Responsible Organization in particular. They’re telling Loren Stocker of Vanity International that if he does his “self pricing” 855 auction, they’ll suspend or discontinue his resporg. So I guess we’ll have to watch and see if he gets the message or just ignores their warning and procedes with his 855 number auction despite the FCC regulations.

You can now request 855 numbers, the new toll free area code coming out Oct. 2nd right here at TollFreeNumbers.com by just using the lookup tool on the top of the page. You don’t have to do it through 855numbers.com, which we were using to place the requests earlier. We wanted to do it via a separate site because we were also sending the requests to your local phone company, but we can’t do that any more since there’s really not enough time.

There’s no cost, and no obligation at all! Just give us your name and email address and we’ll try to get you the numbers you want. You’ll get an email over the weekend of Oct 2nd and if we were able to get it, you’ll get a link to order it right online for $49. There’s no obligation. You don’t have to take it, because we want people to be able to request multiple numbers for backups very easily. Later today I’ll have a new FAQ for 855s.

2 comments

There’s no way to know ahead of time if we’ll be able to get any specific 855 numbers or exactly what the odds are because this hasn’t happened in over 10 years, and the environment is so different today. There’s not only no guarantees, there’s also a lot of competition.

The biggest factor in your odds is the actual 855 number you’re requesting. If you’re asking for something that’s obvious and would be on anyone’s list of most valuable numbers, you’ll probably have very little chance. But if you’re requesting more creative 855 numbers and something most other people wouldn’t think of, you’re much more likely to get it.

There is one easy free way to increase your odds of getting something good for your business. Request some backup numbers! There’s no charge to request additional numbers, and there’s no obligation to take them even if are able to get them. Assume for a minute that you don’t get any of the numbers you requested. What number or numbers would you want to look for if we don’t get what really wanted? There’s no reason not to request them as a backup right now. If you’re really worried about the odds, be smart and request a few more creative, backup or insurance numbers now so you have an 855 safety net.

2 comments

Today’s the day the FCC will probably provide more instruction about the 855 release allocation. Like many government offices tend to send out letters toward the end of the day on Friday. In this case I don’t think it’s a “document dump” or an attempt to bury it, but just the fact that the weekend gives them an easy deadline to get things off their desks.

It’s also two weeks till the 855 scheduled opening, and the DSMI stated in their letters that they would require two weeks to implement the rationing options they had available. So watch for interesting news coming from the FCC. We’ll post whatever we hear as soon as we see it and will be sending out an email this weekend to anyone that requested 855 numbers with an update as well.

We’ve simplified the request process for 855 numbers. All you need to do is use the lookup tool at 855numbers.com and if the 855 number you want is available, just give us your name and email address and we’ll try to get it for you. We’ll send you an email either way, and if we’re able to get it you have the option to take it for $49.95.

There’s No jacked up fees, no 855 auction, no obligation, and no payment up front. You just tell us what you want, and we’ll try to get it for you. We can’t send your request to your local phone company any more like we were doing because it’s getting too close to the release.

I saw a promotion that another company was doing offering $200 off an 855 request. That sounds good until you realize that only means they lowered their request fee from $500 to $300, and they still charge you $2000 if they get the number for you. (Originally they were charging $4000!) We charge nothing to take the request and if we get it for you it’s the same $49 we’ve always charged. We’re the only major vanity number service that isn’t Gouging for 855 numbers!

Just search for the number you want at 855numbers.com and if we haven’t gotten a request for it yet, you can just give us your email address and we’ll try to get it for you. No obligation, and no charge! If we’re able to get it you have the option to pay a one time charge of just $49.95 for it. We’ll give you free temporary service and then help you transfer it to any company you want with no strings at all. We’re empowering you to get the best numbers and also the best service, with any company you want!

5 comments

I was going to write to every customer about the response from their carrier and I did in a couple situations, but we have been sending out so many spreadsheets to so many carriers it became impossible to relay the response (or lack thereof in many cases) from every carrier individually. So I figured the best way to explain it was to write up a summary of all the different carrier responses. The responses ranged from appreciative for the help, to defensive, to indifferent with a little clueless mixed in along the way. But overall most of the companies just took the list and will add it to their own master list.

There is a lot of discussion on the 855 Allocation, whether there should be rationing or a daily cap on 855 numbers, and even whether the SMS/800 database will hold up under the flood of requests. A lot of customers even wrote in and I posted an article with all of the comments, but I really think the latest idea of slowing down the 855 request speed is the best solution. If we

See the full List of the Carrier responses to 855 numbers.

3 comments

I was on a conference call this afternoon (from 4:00 to 5:20pm 9/15/10) with Jay Carpenter and several people in the toll free industry and we were just brainstorming some of the proposed allocation methods for 855 numbers when we came up with an interesting idea that hadn’t been raised before and certainly seemed to have merit.

The problem isn’t really the amount of numbers that will be taken, limited or allocated, but the speed. If the SMS/800 was able to and established a policy whereby each resporg could only submit a specific amount of requests per minute, and that any requests above that would be ignored, that might solve the 855 number land rush concerns better than limiting the actual numbers taken. This could also help in the nightly number drop as well. The rate wasn’t mentioned in the DSMI’s previous comments about their limiting capabilities so I assume it would probably require some additional programming. But it would probably be a better solution from the SMS capacity perspective.

If there are 350 resporgs and each one is limited to 100 requests per minute the SMS800 would know that they wouldn’t have to process more than 35,000 requests per minute. Or it could be worked backwards based on the capacity. For example, if their system could only safely handle 10,000 requests per minute (probably a low guess), they could just divide that amount by the number of resporgs to determine a safe limit. This would practically insure that there’s no down time or overload. It would also mean that no matter how many numbers a phone company needed, they could probably still get them all on the first day. They just get them slower and can’t dump them all at once. They just have to keep requesting them.

It would require some programming but the amount of actual change to and impact on the system, would ultimately be less than even their current rationing capabilities. This change focuses more on insuring the SMS/800 stability than the equity of distribution, but it does actually solve the allocation equity, as long as the speed limit isn’t higher than the slowest connection type can reach. This isn’t complicated and doesn’t require resporgs to submit lists or draw straws or even change what they’re doing. The only question is how long would it take to install this capacity? The window for comments is closed but from the things that I’ve heard the issue hasn’t been solved or decided so I submitted this to the FCC discussion, even though it’s late.

If you have any comments feel free to post them here!

4 comments

If you requested a generic or obvious 855 number, that you think might be one of the top couple thousand of most valuable numbers that someone else might be able to think of, the odds of getting it will be extremely low. One of the first articles about 855 numbers that I wrote about what 855 numbers to request, suggested going after Second Round Draft Picks. That’s also why we suggest that you have an 855 backup plan, or a little bit more creative number that will still be valuable for you but won’t be as likely to have been requested by the vanity number sharks.

Read more about how we can help you get an 855 Backup Plan!

5 comments

On August 2nd I wrote a letter to the FCC explaining that without a limit on the number of 855 numbers each organization could take during the 855 release, the disparity between regular phone companies and the aggressive vanity number resporgs who play by different rules, have developed increasingly high speed capacity would cause increased hoarding and irreparable harm to the public.

Just because a couple resporgs have developed the capacity to suck up over 10,000 toll free numbers per minute doesn’t mean they should be allowed to. I initially proposed that each resporg administrator should have a daily limit of 1,000 numbers per day for the month of October. Upon lengthy reflection I think the limitation should be 500 per resporg administrator, for the first day and then 1000 per day for just 1 week. Faster resporgs will get their numbers first, but this will allow regular phone companies to get an equal number of requests in per day. It will also reduce dramatically the strain on the SMS800 database.

Read more about what the FCC and public comments on 855 Allocation

5 comments

The FCC sent out a request for comments last Friday, on the 855 Number Allocation. I think this was probably in response to my FCC letter from August 2nd, which explained why I thought it was essential to put an Anti-Hoarding-Cap on the volume of numbers that each resporg administrator can take per day. This would allow regular phone companies that can’t afford the ultra high speed request programs and access that the vanity number resporgs have developed.

My proposal is to limit each organization to 500 855 numbers on the first day and 1000, 855 numbers per day each day for just one week. After that companies could grab as many numbers as they want, and delaying that for one week isn’t going to kill anyone. But it is going to insure that regular customers and smaller phone companies aren’t shut out entirely of all the good numbers. This also has another very important benefit because this insures that the entire SMS system doesn’t get as overloaded at the release.

The SMS has had technical issues during previous new area code introductions because of the extreme volume of requests from every carrier at the same time. This is understandable because it doesn’t make financial sense to require the SMS800 to build the capacity to withstand a one time peak which probably won’t happen again for several years. Several recent comments and discussions this week have suggested that spreading out the rush would definitely be a benefit to the SMS as well. I’ve included these in an update to my original comments.

1 comment

Someone said that 855 numbers aren’t as well known or recognized yet so they weren’t sure if it was worth it. I think the question you have to ask yourself is would the 866 be worth it? Because you can’t wait until it’s well known to request it. If you wait until 855 numbers are well known, you certainly won’t be able to get anything nearly as good as you can now!

You're in the right place at the right time!

We charge a fraction of the Price.
We’re the only company getting 855 numbers for customers, that’s doing it for the same price that we always charge for numbers from the available pool. We’re not gouging or raising our prices for 855 numbers like everyone else just because there’s a higher demand for new 855 numbers.

We do more for customers than anyone else.
We’re the only company that’s also giving your request to your regular phone company too. Having multiple companies requesting numbers for you is one of the surest ways to increase your chances of getting the number you want. We also think this is good for the whole industry and helping all phone companies as well as the customer. It may decrease slightly the number of numbers we get for customers but we do this because we’re more concerned about increasing the customer’s chances of getting what they want than we are about maximizing our profit.

There’s much less risk.
Everyone else charges an average of about $50 just to try to get a number for you, even if they’re not successful! We’re only charging $8.55 which includes giving your request to your local phone company, which even the companies that charge thousands of dollars to get you a number don’t do.

We’re not trying to sell numbers for as much as we can get.
We’re not auctioning off 855 numbers which we believe is clearly against the FCC regulations about brokering 800 numbers as some companies are doing. I definitely think the auction process some services are doing would probably be considered brokering and would be illegal if the FCC reviewed it.

We’re not trying to get numbers for ourselves.
We don’t claim ownership of numbers and rent toll free numbers at all. Because if a phone company claims ownership of and rents out their own numbers, then even if they say you get ownership of the number, you’re essentially competing with them. They’re not going to put your request in front of any of their own requests that they think are worth more to them than you’re paying them for the number you want. We also don’t have outrageous terms of service, designed to screw customers as much as possible.

We have 15 years of experience and more satisfied customers than anyone.
We’ve helped more customers get vanity numbers than any other vanity number business because we have better 800 lookup tools and focus on the customer’s needs first. We’re literally the only major company for 855 numbers that’s charging based on the time and effort it takes, rather than the value of the numbers or how much people might be willing to pay.

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Someone sent me an email that a representative of one of the top phone companies sent them saying “There is no Pre-Release Request process as has been claimed by some companies.”

I think it’s clear that the representative was confusing the word REQUEST with RESERVE. It’s certainly true, there’s no way to RESERVE 855 numbers before the opening on Oct. 2nd. But that doesn’t mean there’s no way to submit 855 REQUESTS to your phone company before then, which would be stupid. Some phone companies don’t have any public way to submit requests, but most phone companies do or at least will at some point. And it’s ridiculous to make a blanket statement that, no phone company is collecting requests.

That’s kind of like saying you can’t give someone your Christmas wish list until Christmas day. It may be true that you can’t give some their Christmas gift until Christmas day, but it would be pretty dumb for someone to say that you can’t tell anyone what you want or hope to get for Christmas until Christmas day. If you waited until Christmas day to say what you want for Christmas, you might get a few leftover things that nobody else wanted, but you’re certainly not going to be able to get anything good!

Read more about why you not only CAN submit your requests ahead of time but you SHOULD!

Yes and no. 855 number reservations are issued by SMS800 database to phone companies on a first come first served basis starting at Noon eastern time, on Saturday October 2nd. Most regular phone companies also put their 855 requests in on a roughly, first come first served basis too. But some phone companies are carrying turkey platters up to the buffet line instead of salad plates and some phone companies have a team of people going up to the buffet and some have just one or two people.

The ones with the turkey platters and the most people aren’t the biggest phone companies either, they’re the vanity number resporgs. That’s because vanity number resporgs get to keep the value of the numbers they get for themselves, so can afford to pay for more access than any regular phone company could possibly justify.

So while the 855 numbers are issued by the national database on a first come first served basis, and phone companies may be putting in the requests in the order they’re received, the vanity number resporgs don’t have to wait for customers to request numbers, they are just going straight for all the shrimp and lobster off the buffet. So be smart about what you request and make sure you pick up a few hamburger numbers too, not just the filet mignon.

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Yes, I just wrote about Ebay openly auctioning off vanity 800 numbers, so maybe resporgs auctioning off numbers directly is just the next step. I don’t think this has ever been done openly before, though. Maybe it’s just a signal of where the industry is heading?

Loren Stocker of Vanity International is offering to get 855 numbers for customers, but if anyone else wants the number you requested, if he gets it, he’s going to auction it off to the requestors OR ANY THIRD PARTY! So he gets to “SELL” any toll free number that more than one customer wants. In my opinion this directly violates the phone company rule of issuing numbers on a first come first served basis, and can only be described as “Brokering” 800 numbers.

What do you think would happen if AT&T took requests for numbers and then instead of activating them for the first customer that requested it, turned around and publicly auctioned them off to the highest bidder?! First of all, AT&T would NEVER do anything like that, but if they did you can bet that the FCC would be all over that as clear number brokering, which is supposed to be against the FCC regulations ( see FCC Sec. 52.107). You could argue that this goes on behind closed doors at some vanity number resporgs, but to state publically that you’re doing this could be risky and sets a dangerous prescident to allow a phone company to openly auction off 800 numbers.

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We do more to get you the 855 numbers you want than anyone else! There are other people in the vanity number business that are willing to try to get the new 855 number requests for you but they definitely aren’t giving your request to your own phone company too. That’s because they want you to have to pay THEM to get it. Their goal is to maximize the money they can charge, not to maximize the service to the customer. We’re the only ones truly trying to maximize the customer’s odds of getting you a new 855 number reserved.

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Other vanity number resporgs are offering to get 855 numbers. They are charging between $500 and $5,000 (for the same thing we charge $8 or $49). To be fair I hear the company charging $5,000 (CustomTollFree) has lowered their price to $2,995. It’s not easy to tell though, because they obviously don’t want to put a price right up front. I don’t blame them. If I was gouging people like that I wouldn’t talk about the price very much either. I’d probably just make up lots of reasons why they were so much better at getting numbers.

I guess some people may just assume that if they’re charging that much more they must be doing a better job at it. The truth is, that they just have a very different business model. I’m sure they’re getting at least a few customer requests, but vanity number brokers aren’t worried about customer requests anyway. Vanity number resporgs don’t need customer requests to go after anything they think would be valuable. They just suck up as many numbers as fast as they can.

I run my business very differently. I don’t think it’s ever appropriate to gouge customers even if the demand is so high that they think they can get away with it. I run my business differently and simply charge a small fee based on the time and effort required for it. We’re charging a whole $8.55 to submit your request to your regular phone company and then we’re going to charge the same $49 we always charge if we can get it for you too (minus of course the $8.55 you already paid). There’s simply no justification for charging more, other than a few people may be willing to pay it. If you’re desperate, and willing to pay thousands of dollars, you can find someone to take your money. I prefer to charge an honest price even if the demand goes up and everyone else thinks its smarter to gouge! That’s why I say this is a Gouge Free Zone.

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In 2009 when the SMS/800 released 22,000 new ‘800’ numbers that were converted from exchanges that used to be set aside for RCC numbers, one company got over 10,000 of the 22,000 numbers in just over a minute. This same or the recently took 500,000 toll free numbers from the available pool in just over a month. With 855 numbers coming out October 2nd, this raises the question, “Just because some companies CAN take 10,000 per minute should they be allowed to?”

The analogy I’ve come up with is an All You Can Eat Buffet of 855 numbers. There will be 8 million numbers put out for the first time at the buffet. The SMS/800 will give them out on a first come first served basis. But some companies have bigger plates than others. In fact some companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per month to get plates that are hundreds of times bigger than other resporgs. So some companies go to the buffet with salad plates, while other companies run to the buffet with giant turkey platters. Some companies also have as many as six resporgs. They’re filling six giant turkey platters at a time, at the 855 buffet. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that, All You Can Eat Buffets, tends to lead to over eating!

That’s why I believe the FCC has to impose a daily cap of no more than one thousand 855 numbers per day per administrator just for the first 15 to 30 days. That’s not per resporg, it’s per Administrator, because some reporg administrators have spawned multiple resporgs which are ultimately for the same organization. Nobody should be allowed to bring multiple plates up to the buffet. And 1,000 numbers is clearly enough because that’s more than even the largest phone companies do on average per day in all toll free area codes.

An Anti-Hoarding Cap clearly won’t hurt anyone except companies trying to hoard an excessive amount of the best 855 numbers. It’ll help insure that the SMS/800 doesn’t get as overloaded, and will insure that every company has a fairer more equal opportunity to get 855 numbers.

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The FCC ordered the opening of the new 855 area code to be delayed from October 1st until October 2nd at 12:00pm (noon) ET.

The FCC has suggested in letters that it may ration 855 numbers when they come out but hasn’t confirmed or specified how this will be done yet. I wanted to take a moment to explain why this isn’t just important, it’s absolutely critical to the process, and to all real customers.

I wrote a detailed post yesterday about the differences between vanity number phone companies and regular phone companies because that’s necessary to understand why rationing is so critical. When 866 numbers came out in 2000, vanity number resporgs were the exception rather than the rule. Sure there was a mad rush and the whole system bogged down. But regular phone companies weren’t competing against Vanity Number Businesses who’s whole purpose is to suck up numbers as fast as possible.

Vanity number businesses get to keep the value of the numbers they get, where as regular phone companies just give the numbers they get to customers without any real payment for the acquisition at all. Many regular companies use the volume of calls to subsidize the set up cost, so they actually spend money getting new numbers for their customers, they don’t make any.

That means that the vanity number businesses can afford way more connections and capacity to get numbers from the SMS/800 database than even the biggest phone companies could possibly justify. They also have more experience at sucking up numbers too. So without rationing, the vanity number businesses would literally suck up a humongous amount of numbers before regular customers at regular phone companies even had a chance. Rationing the numbers means that even smaller phone companies will at least get to submit some requests before the vanity number businesses suck up everything IF the rationing is done in small enough increments.

Read more about how we need strict 855 Rationing with DAILY limits.

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Everyone has a different take on 855 numbers. I saw someone today reserving 855 domain names. http://www.855domainnames.com/ They probably aren’t as marketable as people might assume because they will ultimately only appeal to a single party who probably will also feel like they own that name. It may be a little early to register domain names because it really won’t give you much leverage in terms of getting them when they come out. I also don’t think 855 is quite the brand name that 800 is, but it’s something to think about.

When the last new toll free area code came out in 2000 people had cell phones but their cell phone wasn’t what it is today and the cell phone was usually just for talking when they were in between their office phone and their home phone. Today the world of phones is getting more and more diverse to say the least. There are 10 new voip startup companies every time you turn around, and your ISP is offering phone service. Google is now a phone company, sort of. The lines are getting more and more blurred for everything in the telecom world every day.

So who do you request an 855 number from?

Unfortunately all phone companies aren’t equally good at all things. The way we created the list of phone companies for 855numbers.com was to analyze our log of phone companies that we’ve released toll free numbers to over the past two years or so. The logic was simply, if no customers had transferred numbers to them they wouldn’t need to be there. There are certainly a lot of “phone companies” that don’t do much with toll free numbers. Cell phone companies for instance almost never do anything at all related to toll free service. Some voip companies fall into this category as well.

Read more about what phone companies not to request an 855 number from

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Loren Stocker, one of the vanity number brokers, is already complaining to other resporgs about what we’re doing at 855numbers.com. I guess that’s to be expected. Allowing regular customers to put in requests for the numbers they want with their phone companies hurts people like Loren who has a resporg just to grab numbers for himself. You can bet that he’ll be one of the first out there trying to grab up as many of the best numbers for himself as possible, not for end users.

Another big vanity number shark, CustomTollFree.com, is offering to get people 855 numbers for a $295.00 request fee and $5,000.00 additional fee if they are able to get it for you. You could say we’re competition but they’re clearly going after a different market, so I’m not even knocking that. Now that I think about it, it would probably be alot easier to get 50 numbers for high paying customers (which I probably know too) than it would be to deal with 30,000 customer requests at $8.55, but I think helping more people like this, not to mention the phone companies s better for the industry as a whole. (Although I have to say I didn’t appreciate how many questions and issues 30,000 customers would ultimately have!)

We have had some issues and I feel like my email will never be possible to get through any more. But that’s what happens when you stretch and try to do something nobody has ever done before and rush it as much as we did. So I have to apologize that I can’t get to every email at this point, and that we had to rush so much to get this out (mostly because of the FCC moving up the time frame). But I don’t apologize for trying to help as many people as possible, get their requests to their phone company as quickly as possible. I don’t get to sleep very much right now, but I do sleep soundly and feel good about my business model and that I’m helping not only my customers but the industry as a whole, much more than any of the vanity number brokers and sharks ever could.

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A quick word of advice on what 855 numbers to request. Go for the good second round draft picks, not just the most obvious first round picks. The vanity number sharks will get their requests in faster than regular phone companies. That’s just life and our present reality. Their business model requires them to get bigger and bigger connections to the SMS, much bigger than any regular phone company could possibly justify or use. So if you’re only requesting 855-LAWYERS and 855-DIVORCE etc, even if you’re the first at a specific phone company to request one of those the chances of getting it are lottery ticket small.

That’s why I think the smart money is going after what I’m calling the good second round draft picks. Those are numbers that aren’t in the top 1000 most valuable numbers. They are much more likely to be successful and are still very valuable. I’m not saying don’t go for the long shots, just make sure you have some backup options. You can always drop them if you get your long shots.

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I wrote a little bit about why we set up 855numbers.com in the 855 ebook, but someone asked that again and I think this was a better explanation. In order to simplify the rationing, just imagine that every phone company gets to take 100 855 numbers on the first day. We would only be able to help 100 people get numbers, just like every other phone company. But by building a system and essentially opening it up to every phone company and then giving them the list of their customers requests, we can help customers get in the top 100 numbers on 100 different phone companies. So in a sense the rationing is what made this necessary.

Rationing also means that no matter how much I promote 855 numbers to people, I would only be able to get 100 numbers in the above example. So why would any individual phone company spend much time or effort promoting 855? But this way not only do I have an incentive to promote it, but I’m almost the only one that does.

I’m also the only one in the toll free business not trying to sell toll free service. So I can do this in a way that doesn’t push any one company, just to help customers get their request on the list with their existing company and help the whole industry. So we’ll definitely be doing some significant PR to get the word out about 855 numbers. But back to the first point above, I didn’t want to do much promotion outside of my existing customers because I wanted to give them a head start first. So I guess I am pushing one business, my existing customer’s business!

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The most common 855 question we’re seeing about the new 855 numbers is, “Can we get this number or numbers for me.” Some customers are asking this because they have a list of numbers and want to know if they put their request in before the opening, or to ask if we can let them request a large list of numbers. Some people are asking this because they want to know if we can put the request in for them and some want to know if we can activate it right here to start.

For all four variations of this question the answer is, No. We can’t process a list of numbers at a time because with hundreds of people submitting at a time, doing a single number at a time is hard enough. Having all of those people submitting lists of numbers at a time would probably make the computers little processors fry!

Read more about why we can’t put 855 requests through ourselves, for the customer!

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Last Friday June 25th at 4:30pm, the FCC quietly announced that they had moved up the release of the first new toll free area code in a decade. 855 Numbers will go into operation October 1st. They had previous suggested that they would open 855 sometime between October and March of 2011. They also announced that there would be rationing of new 855 numbers although they didn’t specify the method yet.

We have been working quite hard lately to develop a site that customers can use to request any number they want with any phone company they want it with. The Pre-Release Request process begins on Tuesday July 6th at 3:00pm EST at www.855numbers.com. Customers will be able to request any 855 Numbers from the phone company of their choice for just $8.55.

I haven’t written much on the website recently because although I’ve been writing a lot, I didn’t want to put it on the website until I had something really complete. I’ve prepared a brand new 15 page ebook about the 855 Window of Opportunity, that explains the process and everything you need to know to take advantage of this great opportunity. I’ll start putting about this on the website over the next couple days but you should definitely start with this ebook right away.

This is clearly the biggest opportunity in the vanity number business in years and it costs almost nothing to get started. You just have to be at the right place at the right time and that’s Tuesday July 6th at 855numbers.com at 3pm. Mark your calendar and get your list ready for the 855 Landrush.

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As of 6/1 there were 3,392,802 toll free numbers in the Available pool. But how many of them are really “good”? Unfortunately there’s no good definition of good that a computer can use to filter or sort 3 million numbers. We can however determine how many of them are bad in terms of vanity numbers. There are no letters on the 0 or 1 key. And the 9 key is almost as bad, since it’s only got a WXYZ, so numbers with 1, 0 or 9 are certainly not going to be much help as far as vanity numbers.

Out of 3.4 million numbers there are only 100,073 numbers or about 2.9%, that don’t have a 1, 0, or 9, which could be potential vanity numbers. That shows not just how few numbers there are but how picked over they are. There are more options if you consider partial vanity numbers. You may have to put a couple astrixes in front of the word you want to find a combination of numbers and the word. This works best with short words. Even this doesn’t work for popular words though. We’re just reaching the bottom of the barrel, and literally running out.

Stay tuned for 855 numbers which will be coming in a couple months. And the good news with them is that the pent up demand and unavailability to get anything else, will probably work to benefit the usage and acceptance of 855 numbers.

I actually wrote this article while our website was held hostage a couple months ago and went to link to it from the previous story and realized I had never posted it. The previous article about 400,000 number being sucked up by one phone company in one month is a perfect example of what I was talking about. I don’t know why they took them or any of the story behind that, so this article isn’t written about that, but it certainly relates.

Someone asked a question that I thought was smart because it brought out a very interesting point. Yes, there are regulations against hoarding and brokering toll free numbers. And this is often used as a way to scare customers and make them think that they’re not allowed to sell their number. That isn’t what the language of the regulation says because it’s not targeted toward customers. I believe the regulation about hoarding and brokering was originally written with phone companies in mind, not customers.

Think about it. How much damage would it do if the phone companies took all of the good numbers before end users had any chance to get them, and were selling or brokering them to the highest bidder? Then think about how damaging it would be if customers were allowed to buy and sell their numbers openly? There’s absolutely no comparison. Phone companies hoarding and brokering is clearly the real threat.

Read more about how phone companies violating the regulations threatens the 855 numbers.