Mass Misdial Marketing
“Mass Misdial Marketing” is the term we coined to describe companies that collect hundreds of thousands of toll free numbers strictly for the wrong numbers they receive. Wrong numbers are just a nuisance to most people but there are actually a couple companies that make a lot of money from wrong numbers. Most people have never heard of this because even if they run into this they don’t realize it’s a business and that the message they heard is really just an advertisement.
You’ll see a news story pop up every so often about how a church or government organization loses their toll free number and then finds out that it is going to a message that’s ultimately promoting phone sex or something along those lines. This sounds like a coincidence but it’s anything but. These companies actually collect hundreds of thousands or even millions of toll free numbers all for the wrong numbers they receive.
There are a couple different things they may do with them, such as promoting a “Talk line” for phone sex, a 1010 expensive directory assistance or even a mortgage business. One common theme you’ll see is that they always play a short message that’s only a couple seconds and refers you to a different number. They just put a commercial message on instead of telling you the call was disconnected. The reason they do this is so that they can send the message back to the originating phone company that the number was disconnected and not to charge them for connecting the call.
We are used to this type of thing in the internet domain name world. If you type in a generic term or something one digit away from a popular domain name you’ll often get a webpage that looks legitimate but is really little more than a page of pay-per-click links. The domain name owners make money from the “wrong numbers” the same way. The difference is that most people don’t think of toll free numbers the same way or realize how many numbers these Mass Misdial Marketers really have.
I don’t think Misdial Marketing is wrong. I often recommend that savy and creative marketers look for wrong numbers for any major competitor. It’s a great tactic that is often almost invisible and can get you customers for free, just for answering the phone. But MASS Misdial Marketing is different. Mass Misdial Marketers don’t look for wrong numbers from related businesses, they look for wrong numbers from anyone and they usually wind up hoarding huge amounts of numbers. They claim that they are using them to promote their business, but in reality they are just abusing the system. And until the FCC changes the regulations against hoarding and brokering 800 numbers, or at least changes the definition of hoarding to include quantities of numbers held primarily for the purpose of playing commercial messages, I don’t think
Disclaimer: I’m not advocating or pushing for any change. I merely wrote this article to make it easier to explain how companies make money from wrong numbers. I don’t mean to impugn or imply anything derogatory about any specific organizations.
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Bill Quimby (678 comments.) says:
December 6, 2008 at 11:45 pm
There’s a new Mass Misdial Marketing Company that has a different approach. They simply play commericals or special offers to customers over the phone. They’re increasing the competition for ’800′ numbers and making the shortage much worse!
Bill
linda says:
November 11, 2010 at 3:29 pm
I just dialed a number my bank gave me and got one of these. I’m not too happy that this phone sex company now has my number in their database. Does this mean I’ll be getting more calls from telemarketers? I’m on the Do Not Call list.
Karl Kelman(new comment) says:
January 27, 2012 at 4:40 pm
“collect hundreds of thousands of toll free numbers strictly for the wrong numbers they receive.”
Here’s what I think is wrong with that: Now Joe’s Pizza can’t get 1-866-JOE-PIZZA as a toll-free number because somebody’s hoarding it for a dubious purpose.
On the Internet, there are regulations about misusing domains that are confusingly similar to a real business.
I could see the value in that with toll-frees as well.