Transferring, activating & canceling reservations
Sometimes people ask if they can transfer a reservation or they go to their carrier and try to transfer a number they reserved on our site. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. You really can’t transfer a reservation. You can’t even yank (NASC) a number that’s reserved the way you can an active number.
If a representative tells you the number you reserved isn’t available that is usually because they are looking in the spare pool of numbers that are available, and when you reserve a number it’s taken out of the spare pool. Otherwise anyone else would be able to get it, and that wouldn’t be a very good reservation.
If a representative tells you that you need to cancel the reservation so they can get it for you, don’t believe them. Canceling a reservation means that anyone can get it and there are definitely a LOT of sharks that are very smart and very fast. They figure if someone reserved it, it must be valuable to someone. So many of them will reserve it first and analyze it second. If it’s important you NEVER want to unreserved it, even for a second. This is especially important if you’re transferring the number to a smaller company because most small companies aren’t resporgs so they have to go through another organization which they don’t control so there’s no way for them to get it done quickly.
Some phone sex companies have high speed programs that constantly suck up numbers blindingly fast all day long. You can take a random 8-0-0 number that has 1s and 0s and doesn’t spell anything and drop it into the pool into the spare pool and run a query in another window at the same time and it’ll be taken by the phone sex company before you can even click. They’ll get ANY number in less than a split second. I really don’t want to have to say I told you so.
Our whole system is designed to help you get the best number and then transfer it to whatever company you want it with. But you have to follow the system. We help thousands of customers get and transfer their numbers all the time and we know how to do it. The only safe way to transfer a number is to activate it and use the standard resporg change process. Here’s a link to the page that explains the process and links you to the secure order form to activate your number. Http://www.TollFreeNumbers.com/activation.shtml
After you activate the number you’ll get our toll free manual which explains the transfer process and includes your Toll Free Birth Certificate™ which is your proof of ownership so you can transfer the number. You send that in with the resporg change form that you get from the company you want to transfer it to. It doesn’t usually cost anything to transfer your number and it usually takes a few days. (see http://www.TollFreeNumbers.com/speed.shtml for the average speed)
If you were just canceling your reservation because you don’t need it, changed your mind or just reserved more than you needed, don’t worry about it. We really don’t cancel reservations. We keep them for more than 15 days in case customers change their mind, ask for time or just run a few days late. We don’t have a way to cancel reservations for two reasons: First, because after 30 days sometimes we reuse them for other customers or add them to our own pool. Secondly because it’s just not necessary. Unlike other carriers if you wanted to use it with another service than ours, that’s great. That’s really the whole point of our service anyway. So if you don’t need the reservation don’t worry about it, and if you do need it, just activate it and we’ll help you transfer it anywhere you want it safely and efficiently.
See an actual example of why you can’t or wouldn’t ever want to cancel a reservation: The quickest way to lose a resevation
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Bill Quimby (211 comments.) says:
November 28, 2007 at 2:17 am
I just got off the phone with someone and came up with an interesting analogy. Most people don’t know or understand the toll free business so it’s often helpful to make analogies to the domain name business which more people are familiar with.
If you had a domain reserved at one registrar, and wanted to use a different registrar, would you really want the original registrar to unreserve it and put it into the spare pool and then go to the other registrar and ask them to reserve it?
Now imagine that it takes the new registrar a couple days to actually process and get the name out of the pool for you. Would you really want to leave your domain name exposed for anyone? Of course not!
That would be stupid to do because you would risk losing your domain name and it’s equally stupid with toll free numbers. The only difference is that sometimes reps at different phone companies don’t realize the competitiveness of the toll free squatters or want to admit how slow their own organization can be. And they’re not the ones that are risking anything if your number gets lost, you are.
So don’t try to short cut the system. If you used our system to find a good number, activate it and you can transfer it to any phone company you want safely and as efficiently as possible.
Todd says:
December 1, 2007 at 7:59 pm
I made some reservations more than 15 days ago, but since it still said Resporg.com and 1-800 MARKETER when I looked them up, I thought they would still be there. When I ordered them I was disappointed to find out they were gone, yet they still show your company. Why would it still show your company has them if they’ve expired and aren’t with you any more?
Bill Quimby (211 comments.) says:
December 1, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Todd,
First off, reservations never last more than 45 days unless someone calls and asks for the reservation to be dropped.
The Resporg information which is what you’re seeing when it says 1-800 MARKETER is updated monthly. The only thing we can check live is whether it’s available or not. And when you can only see whether it’s available or not, it’s hard to tell when a reservation has ended if someone else picks it up, because it’s still “not available”.
Nobody wants you to lose numbers but please don’t count on them lasting the full 45 days, because as our volume increases we may run out of reservation capacity so we may need to take off the oldest ones earlier at times.
I tell people it’s 15 days so that we don’t have to tell many people that they lost their number when they come to us at 18 days. But I can’t do much about it at 48 days, even if the Resporg information for that number hasn’t been updated yet (that’s done monthly).
My goal is to help people get numbers and throwing back or turning away someone ready to buy doesn’t help anyone. If you ever have a question in the future, just drop us a note or give us a call.
Bill
TollFreeNumbers.com » The quickest way to lose a resevation says:
December 4, 2007 at 1:10 am
[…] Transferring, activating & canceling reservations (3) […]
Ron Simone says:
March 27, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Can you explain something:
I would like to reserve several numbers that you’ve provided, but I may not be ready to ‘go live’ with them now, or for months yet. What does ‘Activate’ really mean? In other words, can I own phone numbers like domain names….hold them but not use them immediately?
Thanks….great service!
Ron
Bill Quimby (211 comments.) says:
March 27, 2008 at 11:29 pm
Ron,
There are two recent posts that I think cover some of this, but the short answer is that we don’t have a specific deadline although sometime after a year they may be considered abandoned. But there are also several reasons why you should transfer them sooner rather than later, (see fake it post) and several potential downsides to waiting too (see waiting can cost you post) and there is no real benefit to waiting because toll free numbers cost so little per month just to have.
See: waiting-can-cost-more-than-you-realize.html
See: fake-it-till-you-make-it.html
.Bill Quimby.