We are making a directory of toll free providers to assist customers in selecting toll free numbers and we try to make it as easy as possible to transfer your number. We provide an 800 Number Transfer Form for PNG in most of our toll free manuals. They are generally the best for going to a cell phone or voip line or for a very small local or rural phone company. The best rate plan is usually the 3.9 cent one. The main exception is if you use it less than an hour or two most months. Then the 5.9 cent rate is better because it has no monthly fee.

That form is a combination of the account set up form and the toll free number transfer form that we have developed specifically for numbers that have already been activated by TollFreeNumbers.com. One of the most important tricks to speed up the account set up portion is to include the front page of a current phone bill, in the same name and address that you’re putting the toll free number into. It does not need to be the bill of the Ring to Number, but it does need to be current and in your name and address. This helps to speed up the account setup process (for new accounts). We also have a page that answers Questions about Filling Out the Resporg Form if you need that.

There's more about transferring your 800 number to PNG

Can an easy to dial 800 number (not even from the US, but in Australia!) really cost as much as a Steve Austin’s bionic arm, eye and legs? This may sound extreme, but the right phone number can definitely make the response rate to all of your advertising “Better than it was before. Better, stronger, faster!”

Yes, the FCC has regulations against hoarding and brokering toll free numbers in the US, but there are no such regulations in Australia where 800 number sales are already going into the millions of dollars. Now anyone can offer an item at any price they want and you may be able to negotiate a million dollars off. See http://1800123456.com.au/ to place your offers or watch some cheesy videos. But the real point is just that the right toll free number can be invaluable to your business.

Click Here to leave a comment about this or whether you think it would be good to have an open market like this in the US?

We activate and release about 1000 toll free numbers per month to almost every major carrier. It may seem surprising to think that a major phone company would be unwilling or unable to process a transfer request properly but it happens more often than you would believe. You also need to follow up on transfer requests, and can’t assume that just because they got the paperwork that they’re going to put it through properly. The fact that your phone company is rejecting your request internally for an excuse like this is proof of that.

We aren’t as big as any regular phone company, but this is all we do and we have the best documentation in the business. Your Toll Free Birth Certificate™ IS legally the “phone bill” for the purposes of transferring toll free numbers. If you’ve given that to them and they’re giving you a hard time, then the problem isn’t really you or your paperwork, and you can’t necessarily take their response at face value and act as if it were valid, because it’s not valid to refuse to even process a request without their idea of a phone bill.

There are several things you can do and we’ll try to help you with this issue here.

Someone emailed me a question that comes up sometimes. It’s is a very simple question and there are a couple ways to answer it. I figured it was worth posting so I could try to tie all of the aspects of that question together in one place.

Do we have a current list of all the good numbers in disconnect and available this month?

Continue reading if you're looking for our secret list of the best #s

Waiting for the perfect number is kind of like waiting for the perfect guy or girl to come along. It’s good to have high aspirations, but at some point reality also has to enter into it at some point too. I always tell people it’s good to know what you want but you also have to take what you can get too. And unlike girls, you can start with one and then add another if a better one comes along without getting rid of the 1st one.

We have some more strategies to help you get that perfect number.

We celebrate Christmas twice here. Once on December 25th and then again April 25th, exactly four months later when the numbers that were disconnected on Christmas get released. We work hard to get the numbers you backorder in the disconnect aging process literally every night. We get a little bit of a break on holidays, but it’s 4 months delayed. And what could be more Christmas-y than a sale. So we’re giving $10 off orders for TODAY ONLY if you enter the coupon code “Merry Christmas”

This post is intended to help you with the answers to some common questions people sometimes have filling out Resporg forms. The most common question is who is the current, previous or old resporg/carrier?

We are the old carrier, our official resporg name is Respog.com and our resporg ID is QZA01. You can also include our fax number (800-FAX-0095) on the form if there’s room, although you don’t send that form to us, but it might save a couple seconds for the people within the phone company who do.

There's more about filling out the resporg change forms.

Toll free numbers are portable PERIOD. If a company says they can’t transfer a toll free number, they are really saying that they won’t transfer your number. Absolutely ANY service that offers toll free numbers can port toll free numbers into their service (if they want to). But there’s nothing that forces them to do it if they don’t want to or won’t. They also don’t want to look bad so they will always say that it can’t be done as if it were physically impossible.

There are only three basic reasons why some companies are unwilling to transfer numbers or some representatives at a company may say that they are unable to do it.
1. They are just dumb, (about toll free) and don’t know how to do it.
2. They are lazy and don’t want to be bothered. (It can be a hassle)
3. They want to keep control and trap customers with their service which is often significantly more expensive.

Read the rest about toll free number portability

Call Source, a shared use and routing company nabbed almost half of the 22,000 new toll free numbers released on 2/15. It only took about two minutes for all 22,000 numbers converted from RCC numbers into regular toll free numbers to be exhausted and Call Source got almost HALF of them. How many of them were taken for actual end users is an interesting question though and they weren’t the only ones that got a huge chunk either.

Who else took 30% of the RCC 800 #s released?

When you activate an 800 number with us we give you the option of putting the toll free number into any name you want. If you don’t specify a different name, in the Official Customer of Record field, we will use both the billing name and the company name in our records. This posts explains how you can change this if it’s necessary and just as importantly, when you really have to.

Changing your Toll Free Birth Certificate

ome businesses are hard to describe or the description is so obvious that everything even related to that word or phrase is long gone. Whatever the reason, sometimes it seems like everything you try is already in use. This is when you need to apply extra creativity and one of the best ways to get creative is to think of it in terms of a slogan.

Read some more about coming up with creative 1-800 SLOGANS

We all hear how important link building is and want to promote our website, but you have to be very careful who you trust. Even a great service may outsource the work to the wrong people, which can be devastating to their business. If you use an outside service they have nothing at all to lose because they’re not the ones that are going to get penalized for their shady practices. You won’t believe the spam links I found for these successful toll free services.

A customer had a “Car Wash” analogy recently that I thought was interesting. He said he didn’t want to make the his 800 number active because he doesn’t want cars to start showing up at the car wash until he turned the water on. That makes some sense.
How to start up your 800 number correctly won't get you flooded

4/13/08 UPDATE: The April database is all online and we sent 33,400 800 watch emails Friday and Saturday. So the numbers are out and judging by the server load the searching has already begun. Thanks to Dan for getting the new third server online to insure we have the capacity for these peaks.

How would you like to see the most popular numbers that are Available? We send out the 800 Watch reports to 32,000 subscribers each month and we capture the top 10 numbers in the Available list and have sorted them by how many times each number is suggested. We don’t share this type of information very much because it just encourages squatters to go out and grab them all. See Why there is No Shortcut. Some of these have probably already been taken since this data is from the beginning of the month and several more will probably be taken after this is published too. But every once in a while I like to share a little extra with our visitors.

Just because they’re listed here or sent out to a lot of users doesn’t make them good, but given the size of our user base the better ones do tend to get suggested more. So I hope this is helpful or at least interesting. And NO, we’re not going to give this information out to people again. If you wanted to see something valuable, you should see the disconnect list. We can’t ever give that out though because it would hurt the people who’ve backordered numbers.

Click Here for the full list of the best 2500 available numbers

First of a credit card is a method of payment, not a guarantee of payment.
It may help to think of a toll free number as a “credit card.” It’s ultimately a license to charge phone calls instead of retail purchases, but other than that, it’s the same thing. If you can find a company offering credit cards at competitive rates to anyone over the internet without a credit check, I’ll pay your phone bill.
It seems obvious if you look at it from the company’s point of view.
There are other 800 service options available

A lot of people talk about voip without really understanding the different types of voip service and who they are really appropiate for. This is an interesting artcle about the different “flavors” of voip service that have emerged and what type of audience they are targeting.

I don’t pretend to be an authority on VoIP but I really liked this article. The 3 Flavors of Business Voip. This doesn’t really go into or relate much to toll free service, but it is related and something that many of our visitors are looking for some information about. That’s why I wanted to point to this helpful article and resource.

The article explains the three H’s of voip, “House”, “Hosted” and “Hybrid” The article also covers the migration to voip which is sometimes overlooked along with a real insiders guide to how to price it out. The author Dan Baldwin is the author of the “Telecom Survival Guide” and a knowledgeable telecom broker and consultant I’ve known him for years.

These are just a couple recent webpages that talked about toll free numbers. I’ve posted comments on some and just wanted to mention them for myself as much as for anyone else, so I can find them again more easily if I need them or write about something similar in the future. Recent toll free posts

Whenever you translate a Custom 800 number wrong that is usually the one that’s available.

After you spend two bleary eyed hours trying everything under the son one at a time (you should be using the Keyword Lookup long before you go that far) the one number that you translate wrong will inevitably show up as available.

I guess that makes sense since the one you spell wrong or translate wrong is much less likely to be a number that other people would have asked for before of course. But whatever the reason it is certainly frustrating!

When you search for or order a vanity number on TollFreeNumbers.com it’s usually easier to use the letters you’re looking for instead of translating it to digits. This actually makes it easier for you to remember what you were thinking of later on as well. If you order the wrong number, we'll help you!

Years ago having an automated voicemail system made you sound professional and like a larger organization because only the biggest companies could afford large pbx phone systems that were required for these systems. But like any good tool, it can be abused and used incorrectly.

This voicemail company is an amazing example of how NOT to use voicemail.

stands for “Available” which means numbers can be activated immediately for a one time search fee of only $49. We give you better proof of ownership and free temporary service for the first 100 minutes or 30 days and have it working for you in an hour or less in most cases. It’s extremely easy to activate the number and to have it up and working, usully within a couple minutes.

Just click on the number you want in the Alternatives section or just enter the number into the Instant 800 Lookup on the top of the page. Then click on the link in the search results for Immediate Activation. It explains the process and links you to the one page order form that sets it all up. There is more information about the Activation process in the Activation section if you need it. You can do the whole activation process right online yourself, but give that a try and let us know if you have any additional questions or need anything else.

Simple Scrapbooks Magazine wanted to say good bye to one of their editors in a way that involved their readers and used a clever toll free vanity number to add a more human touch to the effort.

Using a vanity toll free number can add a human touch to your marketing

They used 888-HUG-STACY together with a voicemail service (Freedom Voice Systems) to allow their readers and their whole organization to leave voicemail messages for her. This allowed a lot of people to leave very personal thoughts and even though she was leaving it strengthened their connection in a great way. We got their number up immediately and switched it over to FVS within 24 hours to meet their rushed deadline.

stands for “Disconnected”, which means that this number was canceled by the phone company or the customer and is in the aging process before being returned to the Available pool. Regular phone companies can’t see these, because they only look for the available numbers, but the vanity number squatters watch these numbers religiously. They grab anything with any vanity value whatsoever within the first seconds. That’s why they always seem to have better numbers than you can get through your regular phone company. Regular phone companies are actually only getting you the leftovers that the vanity number squatters didn’t want.

We can help you fight back and compete with the vanity number squatters, by allowing you to backorder a good number in disconnect. We’ll confirm the number and then calculate the exact date it comes out of disconnect and try to beat the vanity number squatters and grab it or you that first second it comes out. It’s literally a race so they are NOT guaranteed until we get them. Overall we typically get about 50% of the numbers. We only accept one backorder for a number on a first come first served basis. It’s also important to understand that backorders can be cancelled via email any time up until they come out of disconnect, but they are NON-REFUNDABLE after they come out. If we’re able to get it, it’s your number with no strings.

If you want this number you have to backorder it online. Enter the number into the Instant 800 Lookup on the top of the page and then click on the Backorder link in the search results. After we confirm it, we’ll do the research for you to see exactly when it or they come out of disconnect. By the way, you can request multiple backorders with a single backorder request. Give that a try and let us know if you have any additional questions or need anything else. There is more information on backorders in the Backorder section.

If you don’t transfer your toll free number, the free temporary service we give you will expire after 30 days or 100 minutes of use. You won’t lose the number and you can still transfer it to whatever company you want to use it with the same way.

All you need to do is get a transfer form, usually called a responsible organization change form, from the new company you want to transfer the ongoing service to. Fill that out and send it back to the new company with the Toll Free Birth Certificate™ that we send you in the toll free manual. Click here for more on how to transfer it and waiting.

This really isn’t specific to toll free numbers but if you’re using the biggest local phone company in your area, you may be getting hit with extra fees for things you don’t want. That’s because your local phone company will add fees for other companies without validating them. It’s up to you to check your bill and ask for them to be removed. This post by the Telecom Association on Unwanted Charges goes into the most popular unwanted charges, including voicemail, directory assistance, internet listings, dial around and even unwanted phone lines and all of the ways to try and prevent them. It’s just one more argument against your local phone company, but it really wouldn’t matter whether you have your toll free number through them or not, they’ll still try to slip these things by you and into your bill.

Happy Easter from everyone at TollFreeNumbers.com including Alexis, having a little fun with Easter decorations.

If we knowingly allow brokers to buy numbers on our service and then turn right around resell them are we an accomplice to that broker who may be violating the FCC regulation against hoarding and brokering? Click Here to read more and give your opinion.

Do you want to display your new toll free number in the caller ID when you call? Unfortunately regular caller ID is pretty dumb and when you make a call with your local number there really wasn’t any easy way to show your toll free number since you’re technically not making the call with your toll free number, you’re making the call with the local number. But thanks to a new smarter caller ID system from Acudata, you can now provide more information via caller ID than ever before.

Accudata Technologies Smart Caller ID uses the speed and power of the internet to deliver the caller information regardless of their carrier, even if it’s blocked or ignored by the local phone company. It provides more information, can be updated in real time, allows you to show your new 800 number to anyone with this new smart caller ID. This service is new and unfortunately will still take some time to catch on, but I think this will be a very helpful tool as it becomes popular.

Contact Accudatatech.com for additional information about this unique new service.

Update: Another excellent resource I just found on Caller ID is YourCallerID.com

People sometimes ask if they can wait and keep the number on our free temporary service for a while, until they’re ready to start their advertising. They usually ask this because they imagine that this might be helpful and save them some expense. In reality it saves them almost nothing since they mainly pay for the use on the number and before they advertise it they would have hardly any use. On the other hand trying to wait until the last minute could cost them quite a bit in several ways. read more about the down side of procrastinating

One of the most common mistakes a lot of people make regarding toll free service is that they think they need to get their toll free number through their local phone company that gives them their local line, or that they need to transfer it back there if they want to use it with that local line. Not only is that false, but they are often the worst place to transfer your local line. Any phone company can send calls to that local line whether they were made to the local number or toll free calls that are forwarded to that local number. From the local phone company’s point of view, they are the same thing.

There are several reasons not to use them including that they are more expensive, harder to work with and more restrictive than a separate long distance company would be. And not only are there several disadvantages to using the local company but there are also NO advantages to using them either. People often say that they want everything with one company but that is definitely not an advantage to the customer. That is ONLY an advantage to local company because they know you are less likely to change anything, even if they do a poor job. Read all 6 reasons not to use your local phone company