This is a holiday weekend and we’re driving back from Kentucky today so I thought this would be a good time to post an especially nice testimonial. It was a little too long to post in the Testimonial section, so I figured I’d post it in the regular blog since it’s a holiday. Have a happy 4th of July weekend and hopefully a nice success story will help inspire you too.

Bill, Rita, and Gloria-

I’ve been waiting until I had sufficient time to write a proper “thank you” comment. I don’t know where to begin to thank you guys for all of the advice and help in obtaining 1-800-Trial-Pro for our law firm. Our office, family, and close friends actually had a celebration once we were comfortable that the number was ours.

My search for the right toll-free number lasted about six months. At times my family, close friends, and I really worried that I was obsessing too much over toll-free numbers. Not only would I test new word and number combinations daily, but I maintained meticulous notes of new combinations which I would often try on your website well into the early morning hours. I actually started having dreams about toll-free number combinations (I started to feel like Jim Carey in the movie “The Number 23″).

Read the whole letter about 1-800 TRIAL PRO

Someone asked if we “made” 800 numbers and I jokingly responded, Sure we MAKE vanity numbers. We “make” a lot of really great 800 numbers for people every day. I was joking because I don’t usually think of it as making toll free numbers. Toll free numbers were around before I started this business. The difference is that they were just numbers, they weren’t vanity numbers that spelled anything or increased the response rate for their advertising.

We take a resource that already existed and change how it looks to make it more useful for a customer. That’s pretty much a description of “making” things in most businesses. In our case we don’t make a physical product, but that doesn’t mean we’re not making something. In a sense we take what would otherwise be random digits and someone else may have had and gotten rid of, and help match them up with the customer that wants a memorable number for their advertising.

We turn random digits into powerful marketing tools better than anyone else anywhere. It’s not exactly pulling a rabbit out of the hat, but it can be a great tool for your business. If you want some help pulling a rabbit out of the hat, give us a call. We can’t do it all for you but a little experience can definitely help and we’ll be glad to help you for a few minutes and give you a little help if you call us at 1-800 MARKETER.

According to the SMS there are 6,008,080 available toll free numbers left as of June 27th. I threw in “Experts Agree” just to poke fun at the Fake SMS that keeps claiming experts agree that there is a toll free shortage or some kind of toll free emergency, and that rationing is on it’s way. Smsgov.com always uses the phrase Experts Agree without ever including any facts or details whatsoever. They hate it when I quote the actual 800 number facts that show there’s a 15 to 30 year supply depending on the week because they have no facts, just hype.

If the fake SMS says “Experts Agree” without citing any names, that means they’re lying and made up the rest of the story. They never name any experts just like they never mention who belongs to their fake organization the Toll free Advisory Committee, that doesn’t exist. In fact they never even say who’s writing any of their articles. Their website is set up to hide the identity of whoever is posting their sky is falling posts so that they can make things up and say absolutely anything without any facts and get away with it.

Ask yourself what makes a phone number memorable? There isn’t very much written about what makes a phone number memorable but there is a lot of material on remembering names that can help us understand this. I did some research on how to remember people’s names and found some ideas that can help make phone numbers easy to remember too.

Repetition

One of the most important tips I found repeated in several places was repetition. You should always repeat someone’s name back to them as soon as you can in the conversation. In terms of phone numbers, you probably can’t get the prospect to repeat your phone number back but you can repeat the number. That’s called Advertising.

Read the rest about Use, Making a Connection, Uniqueness and how this relates to Phone Numbers

The Ring To Number is where the toll free number is sending the calls and the Phone Company or Carrier is the one that sends the calls wherever you want the calls to go. This sounds obvious when you think about it, but a lot of people seem to get confused and think that changing the ring to number means that they’ve changed or selected a new carrier. The easiest way to explain it is that the phone company is the cord and the ring to number is the outlet. And changing where it’s plugged in, doesn’t change the cord getting it there.

I think this stems from another thing that people get confused about sometimes. You do NOT have to use the company that provides the local number to get toll free calls to the local number. Therefore changing the ring to number to a phone line from company A doesn’t change the toll free service over to company A. In order to transfer your number to a different phone company you have to fill out a resporg change form to authorize the new company to take over the number. It also tells them where to send the calls and who to bill.

From the local phone company’s point of view incoming toll free calls are just calls going to that local number like any other calls to that local number. The local phone company doesn’t even know or care that you have a toll free number pointed to your line until you till out the transfer form. They’re each totally separate. So when we say you have to select a toll free carrier or change the toll free service that doesn’t require you to change your ring to number. It means you have to fill out the transfer form for whatever company you want to use. And don’t assume that just because you sent them the form that it’s automatically transferred either. You have to follow up to make sure it did get done too.

We give you free temporary service to get you started but the whole idea of our service is to transfer your 800 number or SEND it to whatever phone company you want it with. So releasing your 800 number is part of our job, much more than it is for regular phone companies. That’s why we make releasing numbers such a priority and do them so much faster and easier than anyone else.

We’ve come up with an acronym to explain how we process toll free releases here at TollFreeNumbers.com.

It’s called SEND.

Same day processing;
Email the customer;
Notify the new carrier;
Doesn’t have to match exactly.

Read what we do to SEND your 800 number off!

Google Voice has been limited to the pre-existing customers since it was announced, but Network World reported recently came out that Google reserved 1 million local numbers with Level 3, signaling that it may be ready to roll out the Google Voice in a big way. Google Voice provides many of the enhanced voicemail services that the major voicemail services provides and also lets users unify their phone numbers and have a single phone number ring all of their phones.

Google Voice doesn’t presently include 800 numbers but Google Voice 800 Numbers may follow and if they offer Google Voice Number Portability and a search function on just those 1 million numbers, they may create a big local vanity number market.

As of June 20th, 2009, there are 6,045,772 toll free numbers in the spare or available pool. That’s down by 17,482 numbers in the past week. At that rate there would only be enough toll free numbers left to last for 29 years or until the year 2038.

I don’t know about you but I’ve got enough things to worry about for the year 2038 already. That’s when another form of the Y2K bug for Unix will hit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem It’s just as silly to worry about the year 2038 bug today as it is to worry that we’re running out of toll free numbers in 29 years.

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.

1 comment

If you meet several new people at a party which ones are you more likely to remember the name of? Someone with an easy to spell name or someone with a name that reminds you of something? Or maybe even better, someone with a name that reminds you of something related to that person.

A nice numeric number like a number with some repetitive digits, patterns, or ending in zeros is easy to dial. They’re kind of like names that are easier to spell. It’s nice to have a name that’s easy to spell. But it doesn’t really make you that much more memorable when you meet new people at a party.

Words beat Patterns of Numbers because they mean something.

A number that spells something related to your business is like a name that reminds you of something related to that person. Unlike an easy to spell name, a name that reminds you of something DOES make you much more memorable when you meet someone new at a party. That of course translates into more interaction with those people the next time you meet them, which in the vanity number side of this analogy means more calls and more sales.

Easier to remember names also translate into more calls and more sales!

2 comments

Toll Free Fact: The top four companies in terms of 800 numbers, have just under 70% of the almost 8 million, “800″ numbers. The interesting part is that consumers have never even heard of two of the four company names.

I’ve been working to update the resporg list in our look up tools. Over the last four years or so there have been 66 resporgs removed and 73 new ones have been added. However some of the new ones that were added are actually old resporgs spawning new resporg IDs.

Large regular phone companies tend to have multiple resporgs because of acquisitions. Those companies have been parring down and getting rid of extra old IDs. You’ll see a few of those in the resporgs removed list from big companies. But vanity number companies are starting sister resporgs. The biggest organization actually has six separate resporgs now.

Maybe they’re trying to diversify or maybe that makes it easier to ask for more numbers for a new unknown resporg rather than one of the biggest already. Maybe it’s just to get away from their previous reputation or maybe they’re afraid of being considered a monopoly. Whatever the reason many people in the toll free number business are setting up multiple resporgs. If you have any possible reason, leave some comments!

There’s a list of the 66 old resporgs that have dropped off and 73 new ones with the websites listed if we could find one. I find the website is a good way to get an idea of what type of business they’re in. However, some of the interesting ones you may want to pay the most attention to, are the ones without a website.

The list of NEW and OLD resporgs

1 comment

This seems to be the modus operandi or standard policy of some customer service representatives. I recently had a call from someone who is really upset because his number isn’t working. I looked it up and we released his number almost a week ago to RingCentral. I sent him an email with the resporg history showing that it was released and their email requesting it. I even blind copied the people who had sent the email pointing out that he has this number up on his new billboards. I tried to politely get the attention of the people that deal with it and told the customer that this clearly showed that it was released to them 6 days ago and that they should definitely have it up by now.

It shouldn’t take more than a day or two to set it up after it’s released.

There’s no reason for it to take more than a day or two after the number is under a new company’s control before they set it up. It might take a day to upload into a switch or something, but it sure as heck doesn’t take a week. We even go the extra mile emailing not only the customer but the resporg when we release a number. We process them the same day, even when they come in after hours as this one did.

Most companies take their time releasing numbers taking at least 3 to 5 days so we email the resporg to let them know it’s released so they don’t wait 3 to 5 days before checking to see if it was released yet. Some carriers know us and how fast we do them but even if they don’t an email usually helps to make sure everyone is on the same page and it gets set up as quickly as possible.

It's laughable how they can blame us for shutting of THEIR customers!

1 comment

Last week there were 6,084,315 toll free numbers available and this week there are 6,063,254 toll free numbers available. That means 21,061 more numbers are in use this week than last week. That means we would run out of numbers in just over 24 years or the year 2033, at this pace. So despite the fake SMS’s constant posts about a shortage and rationing, that’s as honest as their fake organization is.

Looking deeper into the numbers though I did noticed an interesting statistic. There are basically twice as many 888 numbers in disconnect at the moment as any other area code. I think that’s a factor of some house cleaning by larger phone companies. These are the actual SMS 800 statistics not an unknown organization pretending to be relevant by claiming the sky is falling.

Someone asked me a simple question today. If there are over six million numbers in the spare or available pool of the national 800 database, as I’ve been mentioning recently, then why is it so hard to find a really good one? I think there are 4 main reasons why it’s harder to find a GOOD number today than ever before.

Everyone understands the importance and value of a good number today.

Back in the early 90s when toll free numbers and vanity numbers first started taking off, not as many people really understood the benefits of vanity numbers or really cared what their number was. People were used to phone numbers being numbers and every little advertiser wasn’t trying to find a vanity number. They were still more of a novelty as they hadn’t really proven themselves to the degree that they clearly have today. Today the debate over vanity numbers is over and everyone that’s paying any attention at all, knows that a vanity number increases the response rate to all of their advertising.

Read all of the reasons why it's hard to get a good number today.

2 comments

When you write a testimonial on our website, your testimonial appears on thousands of random pages on TollFreeNumbers.com and All.TollFreeNumbers.com with 10 or more other testimonials a funny thing can happen because of Google’s cached database and their snippets. When you search for a term and your name in the same query to find out if your name appears connected to a certain term anywhere, if the page that Google saw your testimonial on also had the term you’re quering on the same page from a different testimonial or on the page content, it’ll make it look like they’re related.

It will return the quote containing your name along with the quote containing other term and make it look in the search results like it’s all in the same spot and related, even though it’s probably totally unrelated. It may just be from a different random testimonial. When you look at it again it doesn’t say what you thought it did. The only place that it even looks like it says that is in the snippet because it shows you the sentence for each item even if they’re not connected at all.

You can test this by finding the page that contains your name and then looking at the cached version that Google has and you’ll find what Google was finding, two unrelated comments that it puts together in the snippet. It may worry you at first but in reality, nobody is really going to see those two together because you would have to search on both of those things and even if someone does that they probably won’t see the same cached version. And even if they do, people don’t click on the cached content very often. They go to the live page which won’t show any connection between your name and that term. So don’t freak out, it’s just a funny glitch to searching the cached system and Google’s snippets.

As of Saturday, June 6, 2009 there are again 6,084,315 numbers in the national database. There are 63,693 more numbers in use this week than the week before. So this was a bigger week than usual. There are also more numbers coming out of disconnect this month are also most others. We’ve had more backorders this month than we’ve had in any other month in a long time. So there are also a lot of numbers being returned to the pool as well.

2 comments

Every month there’s at least one golden number that jumps immediately off of what seems like everyone’s list of numbers, when we send out the 800 watch monthly reports. We sent out over 41,000 or so I think this month to people who have signed up for our Keyword Lookup, so as you can imagine what is obvious to you is probably obvious to a couple other people too.

Unfortunately it takes a while to send out over 40,000 emails every month and the database takes some work to up date, so unfortunately that dream number may already be gone even though you just got the email from us. Numbers with such obvious extreme value also wind up getting a lot of attention so there’s a much higher likelihood that it’ll be taken before it goes through the full aging process. Some of that depends on who the phone company it’s with is and how susceptible they are to backroom deals.

So don’t assume the system is fixed or there’s somebody out to get you just because the obvious number you wanted isn’t available. We really do want to help you get the best possible number, but sometimes the most obvious perfect number is too obvious and isn’t available any more. But don’t worry, we won’t charge you for anything we can’t actually get for you. And in the case where a number isn’t available any more we won’t even charge you the $4.95 we charge to do the research on a backorder.

2 comments

The sale on regular activations and random 800 numbers which was announced in the 800 Watch for this weekend is extended through Monday June 8th, 2009. There was a delay in sending the 800 watch by a day and some may not have gotten it until Saturday so I wanted to give them a chance. This is only available to subscribers of the monthly email and only on regular activations but we really want to help everyone get the best possible 800 numbers.

1 comment

I’ve seen a number of toll free numbers listed on ebay. The values vary dramatically, but unfortunately the vast majority never sell. But today I think they set a record for the highest 800 number listing at 7 million dollars (ebay item# 170341309535) view screenshot. There’s very little chance of it selling but I thought the fact that someone thought this number was worth several million dollars was interesting.

I did a little checking and the number is used for a taxi service called 800-4-MY-TAXI which I linked to from the image above which is the header of their website. I’ll have to redo my ebay 800 number listings post with the newer numbers since I have a lot of them. But I thought I’d point this one out while it was still active. Not that anyone is going to fork over 7 Mil, but it does remind us of the value of really low numbers and numeric 800 numbers too.

2 comments

Toll free numbers are invisible so it’s easy to understand how they might get overlooked and even lost. And they don’t have to go physically into your home or office to yank it out. It just changes status in the phone company database and shows up in a small note buried inside your bill.

A lot of the time numbers get disconnected or lost when you change phone companies and don’t realize that the toll free number was never changed. It also happens when you have the bill paid automatically by credit card and you forget to update your information when you get a new card. It’s easy to overlook a toll free number, especially when you’re not using it very much.

Toll free numbers are like season tickets to a sporting event. You own it and have the right to keep using it. But if you don’t keep it active and pay for it, it’ll eventually be taken away. Nobody debates whether or not you own your season tickets. I guess technically you don’t own that physical seat, but you have a right to keep sitting there (as long as you keep it active by paying for it). But if you don’t continue to pay for those seats they’re probably going to give them to someone else. You may own your house but if you don’t pay your taxes eventualy they’re still going to take it away from you.

There’s two main points here. First of all, just because you own something doesn’t mean it can never be taken away from you or that you’re going to automatically own it for life. At the same time, if someone says you can’t “own” a toll free number, tell them that you don’t own the seat you’re sitting on at a ball park, but you do have the right to keep sitting there, which is really what counts! When we say we give you proof of ownership, that’s ultimately just an easier way to understand the fact that we give you independent proof of your end user rights, to keep using that number as long as you want to keep it active.

When a number was available but was taken since the last update, it still says that it was taken since 5/1. That was true before today 6/3 but I just realized we completed the whole update without changing that date this month. So when it says that it was available but was taken since 5/1 we’re fibbing a little. That’s supposed to says 6/1 now. Sorry!

Unfortunately we can’t fix that very easily without doing about 12 hours of work to reprocess the whole database at this point. So we’ll probably have to live with that mistake for a month. I’m very sorry if that confuses anyone this month.

Someone asked me a question in an email last night that was very simple and straight to the point. Why do I need you if I can go to any phone company myself?

You’re not using us because you can pick any phone company you want. You could pick them directly, although they won’t help you find a good number as much or set it up as fast. The big difference is that when you activate your 800 number with us, we give you independent proof of ownership and you’re guaranteed to be able to transfer the 800 number (you’ve got in all your advertising) away when you need to.

Your ability to transfer your 800 number away is what keeps them honest and insures you’ll always have a competitive rate and good service. You don’t want to rely on the people with the incentive to keep you there, for your ability to transfer away because many companies will suddenly quote confusing technicalities in their terms to tell you that THEY own the number you’ve been advertising.

A customer recently asked one company if they own the number or not. The representative said, “Yes, you own the number as long as you keep it with us.” I guess that’s better than some companies because some companies claim they have the ability to take it away and give you a different number at any time, even if you are staying with them. You have to really read the fine print in the bottom of their terms, because even asking the sales rep can be very misleading. If they say you only own it as long as you keep it with them, then you don’t really own it at all. And you may wind up at their mercy since you often can’t change the number once it’s in all of your advertising!

This is a holiday weekend and we’re driving back from Kentucky today so I thought this would be a good time to post an especially nice testimonial. It was a little too long to post in the Testimonial section, so I figured I’d post it in the regular blog since it’s a holiday. Have a happy 4th of July weekend and hopefully a nice success story will help inspire you too.

Bill, Rita, and Gloria-

I’ve been waiting until I had sufficient time to write a proper “thank you” comment. I don’t know where to begin to thank you guys for all of the advice and help in obtaining 1-800-Trial-Pro for our law firm. Our office, family, and close friends actually had a celebration once we were comfortable that the number was ours.

My search for the right toll-free number lasted about six months. At times my family, close friends, and I really worried that I was obsessing too much over toll-free numbers. Not only would I test new word and number combinations daily, but I maintained meticulous notes of new combinations which I would often try on your website well into the early morning hours. I actually started having dreams about toll-free number combinations (I started to feel like Jim Carey in the movie “The Number 23″).

Read the whole letter about 1-800 TRIAL PRO

According to the SMS as of May 30th 2009, there was exactly 6,148,008 toll free numbers in the available or spare pool. To put it into a little better perspective that’s about the population of the state of Indiana, or the city of Rio de Janeiro.

There were 40,830 more toll free numbers active this week than last week. That means we have only a 12.5 year supply of toll free numbers left so at that rate we would run out of toll free numbers in 2022. If you want to see how many numbers there are left for yourself just look through the ALL.TollFreeNumbers.com directory in the 877 area code.

The New Data from June 1st is online, so let the searching begin! (We’re not sending out the 800 Watch monthly emails until tomorrow so you get a head start if you’re here searching today!)

Doesn’t the FCC or the Real SMS care that the fake SMS (smsgov.com) is spreading fake news stories about the toll free industry? Does it bother the FCC that a secret organization hiding their identity behind a fake Netherlands address is pretending to be a government authority? Is making up a completely fake organization that looks like part of the government allowed? Why does smsgov have a government type seal on their homepage and have sms and gov in their name if they’re not trying to make people think that they’re related to them?

The Fake SMS is trying to scare people into thinking we’re out of 800 numbers all together and that they’re able to lie and make up so many posts? Letting this anonymous person write post after post designed to scare people and create an uproar, makes the FCC look like they don’t care about what anyone does in the toll free industry. I hate government intrusion and am very conservative almost libritarian at times, but the things the smsgov is saying are wrong and it is clearly wrong and are bad for the industry and make the FCC look powerless to shut them down.

Allowing an anonymous person to look like a gov entity and put out fake news is clearly a security risk!

This isn’t a programming oriented site and I stay very tightly focused on the topic of toll free numbers most of the time. (hence the name!) I’m also not a programmer or developer really, although we’re doing more and more programming and development than we ever did before. But while attending a Google developer conference I had the fortune of seeing in person the announcement of something that doesn’t just rock the programming or computer world, but has the potential to change or at least make a major impact on the way that we communicate. And since this blog/website is ultimately about communication, and because will ultimately be sure a milestone, I wanted to take a few minutes to share with you about the “Wave” that’s coming.

Read more about the new Google Wave

1 comment

Microsoft announced Wednesday their new search engine called Bing. Actually they called it a “Decision Engine.” The one thing that stood out to me of course, was that they claimed that they were going to be including a company’s 800 NUMBERS right in the search results if you search for a company name. Yeah, that’s awesome and very smart. Toll Free Numbers are one of the most important things for reaching any major company.

Bing isn’t active yet (because it’s launched by Microsoft?) but is coming online in stages and should be available starting on June 3rd. So we’ll be right there testing it and checking to see how good they are at finding the right 800 numbers for companies and how many companies they have numbers for. By the way, doesn’t this sound right up the alley of ALL.TollFreeNumbers.com?!

I flew from NY to San Francisco yesterday to meet with some engineers at Google to tell them something very unusual. I flew 3,000 miles to tell them that my programmer and I just added a new feature to Google! Not many people outside of Google can say that.

We just turned Google into a toll free number lookup tool. They already had the ability to show if a toll free number is used since most used numbers will come back when you search on the specific number. But Google couldn’t tell whether a toll free number was active in the SMS800 database or what phone company it was with. But we just launched a new site, ALL.TollFreeNumbers.com with this information as soon as they spider and index it they’ll be able to tell users right in the snippet of the search results this information for most toll free numbers.

I’ll share a lot more about this in several upcoming posts but this number geek has to go meet a bunch of computer geeks.