1-800 MIDDLEMEN?
I got a call today from someone that misprinted a significant amount of material with a number. Usually my heart sinks because their second sentence is usually that it’s going to a message that tells you to call another line, which means it’s Primetel and they’re screwed (no phone sex pun intended!) But this one was better, their misprinted number was with CSF. Since I use CSF for some of the access to the national 800 database it wasn’t hard to send an email to them to make that connection and inquire about the number.
This illustrates how the potential for abuse arises if you want someone else to negotiate for you. It may seem natural to just contact them and request the number, since I have a working relationship with them. Almost anyone else would do that in a heart beat, and might very easily get the number for a song or just as a favor for my business, and then sell it to the client for as much as I thought I could get from them. It would be very easy to probe the customer to figure out how much it would cost them to reprint and mail everything they just sent out with the wrong number on it.
Using an 800 Number Consultant to Negotiate for you is an expensive mistake.
So before you jump to have someone you just found over the internet “negotiate” on your behalf, stop and think, because anyone in the toll free industry probably has much better relationships with the other people with the numbers than they do with you. This is why I always recommend that either the customer does the actual negotiation, or they hire someone THEY KNOW AND TRUST from outside the toll free industry, if they don’t have time or don’t want the other party to know the size of the company that needs the number. (That’s what lawyers are for)
Do NOT ask someone in the same small niche industry to do it for you, because it’s not a telecom negotiation, it’s a business negotiation and people in this industry tend to get away with too many things so there’s way to potential for abuse. Not to mention that it’ll easily add a couple thousand dollars to the price, and reduce the communication between the end parties. There is one or two companies that will sell you this type of service but that’s practically guaranteed to cost you an arm and a leg or two more. You’d be way better off to hire even the most expensive law firm you can find to do it for you. The only part that requires a phone company is the actual transferring and we can definitely help you with that part.
I built my business for years doing that for large companies and I had to get out and change my business because it’s like being a used car salesperson to people who don’t know anything about cars, without any book values. The potential for abuse is huge. Take it from the original 800 Number Consultant, have someone internal do that part of the leg work or hire an attorney, not a snake oil salesman.
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