Toll free portability
Toll free numbers are portable PERIOD. If a company says they can’t transfer a toll free number, they are really saying that they won’t transfer your number. Absolutely ANY service that offers toll free numbers can port toll free numbers into their service (if they want to). But there’s nothing that forces them to do it if they don’t want to or won’t. They also don’t want to look bad so they will always say that it can’t be done as if it were physically impossible.
There are only three basic reasons why some companies are unwilling to transfer numbers or some representatives at a company may say that they are unable to do it.
1. They are just dumb, (about toll free) and don’t know how to do it.
2. They are lazy and don’t want to be bothered. (It can be a hassle)
3. They want to keep control and trap customers with their service which is often significantly more expensive.
It’s often hard to tell whether people are in group number 1 or group 2. For instance, many cell phone companies and voip services are definitely in one of the first two groups. It’s not their fault. That isn’t why people use their service and most representatives don’t know much about toll free numbers and just repeat what they heard other representatives say, which of course gets a little wackier each time. The funny thing is that people often believe even the wackiest things that representatives of really big phone companies say just because they work at a big phone company.
The companies that offer flat rate service are usually the ones you see most often in group 3. They don’t want to let anyone transfer a toll free number in because they could transfer a heavily advertised number in and get a lot of usage before they catch it. Probably even more importantly they don’t want anyone to be able to transfer their number away from them. If you get a number originally from them, they can say you got the number as part of their service so you can cancel their number but you can’t take it with you if you want to leave them. This means you get trapped, or held hostage! That’s also why you want to get your number from someone independent like us rather than just taking one from the service you want, because it seems easier.
No discussion of portability would be complete without mentioning which numbers are not portable. Some companies, usually vanity number squatters or brokers use “shared use” as an excuse not to allow companies the right to transfer numbers away. This is appropriate if there are multiple customers each using a small piece of the number.
Unfortunately these companies tend to use shared use as an excuse to hoard thousands of numbers and as a reason not to allow them to be transferred. They usually don’t set them up with more than one real customer. So they’re not sharing anything but they use it as an excuse to hold the customer hostage and refuse to release it. Our service is the exact opposite since we not only encourage people to transfer their number away, but we require it.
We have a lot more information on how to transfer your number, trouble shooting 800 issues and what to do if the carrier says it was rejected. But this page is just answering the question that some people ask, whether a number can be transferred to another carrier.
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Bill Quimby (610 comments.) says:
April 24, 2008 at 11:29 am
One more important note to add is specifically or cell phones. Don’t even bother calling a cell phone company about transferring your toll free number there. They will without a doubt look at you like you have three heads and try to convince you it’s impossible even if your number is already pointing there.
Save yourself a lot of confusion and hassle and just use the PNG form in the Toll Free Manual if you are pointing your toll free number to a cell phone. You can also consider using any of the enhanced voicemail services if you want some of those additional features.
Vladi Daskalov says:
May 12, 2008 at 1:14 am
I bought a toll free number from you last year and I switched it to another service provider. But now i want to disable the number for about year or so and they are telling me that if I disable it I will loose the number if I don’t pay them 4 $ every month. But when I both the number from you you told me that I will never loose the number that I have now. My question is how can i disconnect my number from my current service provider and still keep it if I want to reactivate it in the future.
Regards!
Vladi Daskalov
Bill Quimby (610 comments.) says:
May 12, 2008 at 10:23 am
Vladi,
We give you the number with no strings, so you essentially own it. But that doesn’t give you any guarantee that you will automatically own it forever. You have to keep it active with whatever company you want to use it with. You can have it disconnected if you either ask them to disconnect it or don’t pay the phone bill which is essentially one way of asking them to disconnect it.
You don’t have to keep it with that company but you do have to keep it active somewhere. And since it costs them a little bit every month to host the toll free number for you, even if you don’t make any calls, it’s really appropriate of pay at least a nominal monthly fee, usually of a couple bucks. There’s nothing that says you have to advertise it or answer it, but if you leave it disconnected after a while the phone company will either drop it or reuse it for someone else.
Bill