The big phone companies are all asleep and their 800 reservation system is 20 years out of date…
The 800 reservation system of most companies is basically broken. It was set up 15 to 20 years ago when there were plenty of numbers and before most customers really understood the importance of getting a memorable number. Unfortunately most phone companies still take vanity number requests this way, with a phone company representative getting a customer’s first few choices and sending them to another department who checks and tells them none of them are available (because your first choices very rarely are) and this goes on and on, often taking days or even weeks to go back and forth. A couple services have a lookup tool, and several more send their customers to a site like mine to look things up themselves and then just ask them for the number they found. But most still go back and forth like this until the customer gives up or resigns themselves to accepting a mediocre or random number.
We’re the alternative to this and can help you get the best number, give you better proof of ownership, activate it and then switch it back to whatever company you want.
The other problem is that the regular phone companies only look at and query the SMS/800 database of spare numbers, or numbers that are currently available. They don’t look at or even see numbers that are in disconnect. (You can try looking for the number you found in disconnect here at AT&T if you want to but it won’t be available through them or any major carrier) The end of the disconnect period may also be called transitional status and our lookup will say that it was “changed” recently. This can also confuse phone company representatives and cause them to give you the wrong end date. By the way, that’s one of the reasons why I don’t mind if so many other phone company representatives use my lookup. Because no phone company representative or even a resporg administrator in another company, will be able to hold a candle to the sharks who have this down to a science.
Honestly, I don’t pretend to beat them across the board but because I am only going after a couple numbers each night for actual end customers, I am able to get a reasonable percent of them. But if a number is really critical or you can’t afford to wait until it drops on it’s own, I have another process called “Cutting In Line”, which can get a number before it comes out and everyone has a chance at it. This takes more time and effort and is even a little more expensive, but for the really best numbers is often the only way to get something that the sharks are really hungry for.
If you can’t wait for the number you want to come out of disconnect or if you really NEED to get this number and can’t rely on, “trying” to get it for you, or if it’s a good number that other companies are going to be after you’ll probably have to Cut In Line.



No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Leave a comment