800 Numbers on Caller ID = Telemarketers
People sometimes ask me how they can put their 800 Number on their Caller ID? The answer is that you probably can’t and that you also don’t want to because it screams TELEMARKETER. I know when I see an 800 number on my caller ID, I answer “Hello, can I help you?” without giving out my name because there’s a good chance it’s a telemarketer.
You don’t have to take my word for it. I looked through the search results for “800 Number” and “800 Numbers” for the last couple days on Twitter to show what people say about 800 numbers on their caller ID. Believe me, I didn’t edit out the positive tweets. (I’m starting to get the hang of twitter by the way @1800marketer)
Toll Free numbers aren’t physical lines. They’re like call forwarded numbers that simply forward the calls to whatever local number you want the toll free calls to go to. When you make outbound calls on the line that you forward the calls to you’re not calling on the toll free number, you’re calling on the local number. You can have multiple toll free numbers forwarding to the same local number because toll free numbers don’t change or affect the local number they’re forwarded to.
If you have a PBX phone system (like the telemarketers do) you can program the number you want to show up on caller ID. Regular people don’t have this and can’t change the caller ID information. Otherwise caller ID probably wouldn’t be that helpful, would it?! Unfortunately scammers also know how to hide their caller ID and often put up fake toll free numbers in.
So just because a toll free number shows up on your caller ID, doesn’t mean that the person calling you is actually connected to that toll free number at all. I mention that because people often ask me how they can find out who owns a toll free number that showed up on their caller ID. Unfortunately if it was a scam the toll free number probably isn’t related to the caller at all. Sorry.
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Bill Quimby (678 comments.) says:
January 21, 2010 at 10:39 pm
I talked to someone else today about this and they had all the logical reasons why it helped to be consistent and route the callers through their main number, etc. I understand that but unfortunately logic doesn’t necessarily beat emotion.