Some customers don’t get backorder details

The first thing we do when a customer backorders a number is to research it to make sure they are the first one that backordered it and to see that it’s still in disconnect.  We also look to find out when it comes out and what phone company it’s with.

We usually provide this information to the customer in an email within 48 hours of their order.  But the purpose of the backorder process isn’t to give out a date and phone company.  The purpose of the backorder process is to get numbers for customers.  And if giving out the date or phone company seems counter productive to getting the number for the customer, in some select cases we don’t give it out. 

For instance if someone backorders numbers which then seem to go back working with the phone company or get transferred to another phone company instead of going through the normal process, we have to stop giving out this information on future backorders.   This is a judgement call and may vary based on a number of factors.

We want to be open and help customers, but sometimes giving out information can be detrimental to actually getting a number for that client or any client.  We do this to protect our customers and prevent anyone from abusing the system which actually helps all of our customers. 

UPDATE: Another important reason not to give some people the phone company information is because they often hurt themselves and cause the phone company to take it out of disconnect. More and more phone companies are keeping any numbers they think are worth while, especially any ’800′ numbers. So contacting the phone company is getting increasingly dangerous on numbers in disconnect! So this is actually for the customers own protection when we see a pattern that indicates it may be hurting them.

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    3 Comments »

    Bill Quimby (678 comments.) says:
    February 19, 2008 at 9:22 pm

    This was just an excerpt of an email that I thought was relevant and may be helpful:

    If not giving out that information or in some cases giving out the wrong information increases our chances of getting a number for a customer (either for you of for someone else) we have an obligation to do that. We do this to protect you as much as everyone else.

    You wouldn’t want us to give out the phone company information undermining your chances to get a number or not allow you to backorder numbers would you? We usually only do that for people that seem to be trouble makers and seem to be causing more trouble than they’re worth. But the bottomline is that we don’t do this to get $4.95. We do this to get numbers for our customers. And anyone who seems to be taking advantage of the system has to be watched and limited.

      Bill Quimby (678 comments.) says:
      November 17, 2008 at 11:55 pm

      This is a recent email conversation we had that I thought might be helpful in case anyone else winds up in this situation:

      Craig,

      Our obligation is to help the customer backordering the number. Would you want us to give the details of one of the numbers you backordered out to other people before you backordered it? Our system is designed to maximize your odds of getting a number you backorder with us.

      Some customers that backorder a lot of numbers don’t get ANY information, if there’s any reason to believe they may be going through the phone company directly.

      That isn’t because we want to hurt them, but our obligation is to do anything we can to help customers that BACKORDER numbers to get them. If you don’t backorder a number we NEVER give out the specifics. The website is set up to give people an idea of when things come out but not tell them exactly. They have to backorder the number for that.

      Bill

      Rita,
      Are you serious? I am an existing customer inquiring about the details or a number that I recently cancelled, but WAS considering reserving no or in the near future. I cancelled it because I didn’t want it to become a surprise charge on my card without knowing the date.

      It was a pretty simple question. Not to tell you how to do your job, but it seems like pretty bad customer service for you to respond in such a short, non-cooperative way.
      Craig

      The order is cancelled therefore I am not providing the information of when it’s set to release.

      Thank you
      Rita

      Rita,
      that wasn’t my question. I wanted to know when it was set to release from whoever holds it now. Thanks
      Craig

      Craig,
      You canceled that backorder.
      Rita

      The purpose if anyone bothered to read this far is to point out that we can’t give out the details of a disconnected number to anyone that hasn’t backordered it.

        Bill Quimby (678 comments.) says:
        November 18, 2008 at 11:21 am

        I should also point out that we watch the final results of numbers that are backordered and then canceled very closely. If we miss them, we miss them, but we’re obviously don’t like anyone going around us.

        Bill

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