Ebay allows Selling Vanity Numbers
Sure, there are FCC regulations against brokering toll free numbers but Ebay doesn’t seem to have any problem listing them. At one point they removed a couple listings but they clearly don’t care at all about it any more. I’m sure they have bigger things to worry about. One broker blatantly claims to have sold more than anyone else on ebay and clearly doesn’t hide anything whatsoever. This isn’t a secret. I think it’s time to say that Ebay clearly allows people to sell toll free numbers and nobody else in the government seems to care at all either.
I’m not saying this is an entirely bad thing. I believe a free market is helpful in some ways. I’ve been watching toll free listings on ebay for quite a while and will put together several of the hundreds of listings I’ve seen into a resource that might help show the perceived value of numbers. Although I think a lot more numbers are listed than ever sell. But one thing is for sure. There’s no need to pretend that you’re marketing something else of little or no value along with a toll free number on ebay any more. Ebay doesn’t care in the slightest whether people list toll free numbers for sale there.




800 Toll Free Numbers says:
August 10, 2010 at 1:32 am
I thought FCC have regulations concerning hoarding and warehousing of toll free services? How come eBay is having special attention on this case? Ain’t this unfair?
Bill Quimby (678 comments.) says:
August 10, 2010 at 12:13 pm
I’m not saying Ebay is brokering toll free numbers. If you put an ad in a newspaper to do it, that doesn’t mean the newspaper is guilty of doing it. Ebay is allowing this activity to go on. But nobody seems to care about them doing it so I guess why should ebay have to be the phone police and stop them. They’re paying for their listings.
Bill
Me(new comment) says:
December 5, 2011 at 6:21 pm
I was just looking ebay regarding toll free numbers, some of them are saying that the toll free service (routing) is for sale and that the number is included. Is that illegal?