I’ve built this business for over a decade and have gotten literally thousands and thousands of vanity numbers and am not only the most successful vanity number acquisition service, I’ve probably gotten more numbers for end users than everyone else in the vanity number business combined. If you really want a number in disconnect, there really is no other good way to get it, and remember the first person that requests it is the only one we’ll get the number for.

Fill out the information below to request the number you want and we will research it and get back to you within a couple days to confirm it’s availability and that we are scheduling it for you. It only costs $4.95 to request it and we will only charge you the acquisition fee AFTER we get it for you. I like working on a pay for performance basis because I know how to deliver. I like getting great vanity numbers for my customers and I’ll look forward to helping you get a great number for your business too.

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Ebook test page

The DIGIT DICTIONARY is a list of all the words that start with each three digit combination This is used in conjunction with my Core Word System.

The connection to the SMS does occasionally go down. You can do a search for ***-**** or without entering anything in the digit fields and if the connection is working it should return 10 866 numbers (that is unless all 8 or 9 million numbers currently available are taken). If the SMS system is down, it will still show you the resporg for active numbers but it won’t give you the links to sign up for numbers it finds available. Actually if you only search for popular phrases you may not even realize that it’s down since it may not find many numbers that would have been available.

It’s also important to realize that the 800 database is larger than most people realize or can visualize. People sometimes expect to be able to get a list of all the numbers available. The funny part to me is that when I explain that there are too many to make a single list they ask if I can at least send them a list of all the “good” numbers available then? Then I have to explain that, that is even harder since there’s no effective way to measure and sort out just the “good” ones. Then they suggest something like 1-800-800-8000 or 888-888-8888, not realizing the absolute impossibility of ever finding anything like that. 

The SMS/800 manages the national database of all toll free numbers. They work with the Responsible Organizations (the phone companies that have access into the SMS/800 system) but can’t do much for end users. Their website sms800.com has some resources and may be helpful too, but most people really only want to know how the system works in relation to getting the best numbers.

There are some limitations in the current resporg system. For instance it only returns a maximum of 10 matching numbers even if there are more. It also starts with the 866 numbers then 877, 888 and lastly 800 numbers if there are more than 10 numbers available It also puts a short hold on a number when it returns the number so it will show up as not available when you check a second time within 5 to 10 minutes. This is to prevent you from getting the same 10 numbers over and over again. This means if you want to find ALL the numbers that start with WORD, you can do a search for WORD*** and hit lookup repeatedly. It’ll give you different numbers each time until there are no more matching numbers. This can be very helpful but remember the Results Emailer will only remember the last result for each search if you do multiple searches.

If you’re not able to get the old customer to give it to you or to get the old phone company to help you the only way to get a good number is to be faster than the companies that do this as their business. It’s not easy, but I’m developing a network of resporgs that run scripts on an even larger number of terminals to catch that number for you. This is the same way registrars back order domain names and it’s not perfect or guaranteed by any means but at least it helps to give an end user a chance to compete against the phone sex companies and number hoarders.

The fee for Back Ordering is a contingency fee so you’re only charged if we are successful in obtaining the number for you. The fee is based on the area code because that generally determines the priority that has to be placed on it. 800 numbers have to be placed in a higher priority due to the higher demand and competition. In special situations a higher amount can be offered to place a higher priority on a number as well, but the fee is usually 795, 595, 395 & 195 for 800, 888, 877 & 866 numbers respectively.

One additional note: We can only Back Order a number for one customer, but on a really good number multiple parties can theoretically pursue a number before it’s released. So whether you want to back order a number or cut in line, you should do it as soon as possible. I’ve gotten numbers a couple hours before they dropped into the pool, but it’s much better to start early on in the process to insure that you are the first person that calls about that number.

Cutting in line is what I call the process of trying to get a number before it drops into the pool. When a number is disconnected it’s held by the releasing carrier for 120 days before it’s returned to the pool. That period allows the old customer to reactivate it and also acts as a cooling off period to help minimize wrong numbers. That also gives you a window to find the number and get it before everyone has a chance at it. You’ll usually need to contact the end user or old customer of the number. You may be able to get the end user information from the phone company that’s responsible for it. The phone company doesn’t show up in the regular resporg database once a number’s in disconnect status, but my Resporg History report shows not only the current phone company responsible for the number but any previous phone company too.

The larger phone companies are harder to get information out of and can also be harder to get someone to help you. It’s usually easier if you can get the end user information because an end user is often more willing to help and they generally don’t want the number any more and may not realize that it was still theirs. You can use that to your advantage by explaining that the phone company keeps numbers in limbo for an extended time and that even though they have already disconnected it, it is still being held, all of which is true. So you’re just asking them to waive the waiting period so that you can reactivate it now. This along with a nice thank you gift and a simple agreement for them to sign can often get that great number before the end user.

These huge hoarders suck up returning numbers so fast (within seconds) that regular phone companies that wait for a customer to request a number never have any chance at all any more. These giant hoarding companies basically make it so a regular customer has absolutely no chance any more. No matter how many times you check in the normal process through any phone company, you’ll never see the good numbers, even if you’re looking for a number that was being returned at just the right time. The phone company’s don’t look at anything but numbers that are currently available. You could ask them for a number that they are literally about to return to the pool and they won’t even realize it. They just don’t look that deep and don’t calculate the dropping time.

Even if you knew when a number was going to become available the phone companies just aren’t designed to react fast enough. You can’t compete on your own or in the regular way with the companies that have huge banks of computers and automated scripts that do this as their business and literally suck up everything with any value at all. These companies have literally shut out regular end users and essentially made it impossible to get a good number in the normal process. You’re going to have to go beyond the normal process to beat them. These are not things you’ll hear about at any major phone companies. These are the secret ways I’ve learned over the past decade to go the extra mile and try to beat them. The best way for good numbers is by cutting in line before it drops and a second by using my backorder process.

It certainly seems that way a lot of the time, especially when you just start searching. And to a high degree, that’s pretty true for toll free numbers just like it is for domain names. That’s why most experts in the domain name business know that the best way to get good domain names today is to catch them when they’re deleted and returned to the available pool. The toll free number business is similar but it also has a couple advantages to the domain name business in this area though because good vanity numbers are much harder to recognize than good domain names. They are often used for other uses and the owner may not even know what it spells to you not to mention that they’re basically invisible to most phone companies too.

This is good because it means that even more good vanity numbers get returned to the pool than domain names. The bad part is that just like the domain name business, when a good number becomes available, it’s sucked up within seconds by a phone sex business or vanity number broker. Even the biggest regular phone companies can’t compete with these professional suckers who track every number and run fast scripts on multiple terminals at once to grab them the moment they’re returned.They have gotten so many numbers and continue to get them at such an alarming rate that I believe they are clearly harmful to the whole industry.

I have more information on some of these companies, but we’re developing a new system to allow the end user to backorder numbers that are in the process of being returned and we will use our own scripts together with a network of resporgs dedicated to beating the “suckers”.

As I’ve said above, I activate your number with my temporary local service and then you have to transfer the number to the carrier of your choice. This temporary service is good for at least a month or more and I do everything possible to make sure nobody ever loses a number but they have to transfer them as soon as possible to insure their uninterrupted use.

There’s no fee to transfer a number to any regular carrier although some voicemail services may charge a fee. Any of the ones I work with waive this fee for numbers from me though, because I help to make their life and the transfer process easier. Most carriers are big and bureaucratic and they’re designed to make the transfer process slow and drag their feet to try and win a customer back, but I’m not a big company and I definitely don’t drag my feet . In fact I even developed a special email transfer process that for some carriers eliminates the need for the faxed forms and helps to speed the process even if they still require the form for their records. With this I we can transfer a number to some carriers in just a couple days.

I’ve also seen some carriers or toll free services that say that it takes as much as 3 to 5 weeks to transfer a toll free number from one carrier to another. Even a larger bureaucratic organization shouldn’t take more than a couple weeks and some can get it done in just a couple days or a single day in the very best case. Just tell them that you have a special contact at the releasing resporg and that he promised to release the number within 24 hours of the request so if takes more than a week or two to get the number released it’s their fault and the releasing carrier will show you how long it took for their request just to get sent. (Slow and inefficient resporgs are one of my pet peeves).

When you activate a number you can specify the carrier so I can pre-approve the number for them and so that I can give you the contact information if I have it for them. If you don’t know what carrier you want to transfer it to, you can still transfer it anywhere you want. Just ask the carrier for a “Resporg Change Form” or they may call it an “L.O.A.” (short for letter of agency). You fill this out with your information as the end user if it asks you for your current or previous carrier, put down “Resp-org.com” and fax this form back to your new carrier. They will send it to the department that handles transfers in their company or their carrier, who will ultimately send it to me to release. I also recommend that you send the email I sent you with the proof of ownership as well, since some carriers request a bill copy. This really isn’t required but I added that to the email since it’s easier to give them what they want than to prove it’s not supposed to be required. Anyway, you really don’t need to do anything with or contact the old carrier, but let me know if you have any problems. I am happy to help you. I only ask that you at least read the information I provide about this before asking me questions that are explained here.

This is an important question because if they are thorough and creative nearly everyone can find something available. They may not be able to find their first choice. Most people don’t, at least not without a significant amount of additional effort. But on the other hand, most people who put in a real effort can at least find some reasonable options, with my system.

My first recommendation about what to do when you first find something available, might surprise you. That’s because unless it’s your first choice or extremely close to it, my advise is to do – nothing. That’s right, you don’t need to do anything when you find one option available, at least not if you’re serious about getting the best possible number for your business. If your goal is just to get A number then you can reserve or activate that number. You reserve the number if you want to make sure it’s not taken in the mean time. But if your goal is really to get the best possible number for your business then you need to go through ALL the options before you pick your number because this is an important decision for your business. It’s always much easier to pick the best possible option when you have all the options in front of you.

We’ve literally invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and worked on this system for many years to help you find a great number for your business.  So if you have any questions or need more help let us know. 

Lastly I want to thank the people that have made and continue to make this tool work, Bud Jay and Ryan Maple.  Their continuous effort over the years has made this the best lookup tool of it’s kind.  Their pictures are in the header at the top of this column and there’s more in the About Us section as well as The brains behind the Lookup.  We also have some exciting things coming that are going to be a quantum leap forward as well too. 

There are several other related issues we could add here too, but this section is already long so I’ve put them into separate posts to keep things more manageable.

There are a couple legal issues related to toll free numbers.  There’s nothing that says it’s illegal to transfer a number, but there are regulations against hoarding and brokering.  The FCC regulations against hoarding and brokering are designed to prevent the type of squatter industry that developed in the domain name world.  Essentially you’re not allowed to be a “car dealer” in the toll free business.  But buying or selling your individual car does NOT make you a car dealer.  None of the regulations are geared toward casual users and there are no phone police.  There is more about this but I’ve put this in separate pages because it’s not necessary even for most advanced users to of to deep into this.

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• 90% of Americans say they use toll free numbers.
• More than one-third of Americans estimates that they make 60 or more toll free calls per year.
• Demand for new toll free 888 numbers for business and personal uses averaged above 238,00 requests per month, since introduction of the 888 code on March 1, 1996. That’s in excess of 2,800,000 new 888 numbers per year. This led to the creation of 877 numbers.
• Toll free calling generates an estimated $157 billion in annual sales of goods and services in 1997.

In addition, experts say that 84% of current Internet users rely on electronic media to search for product or service information in order to make a purchase (Source: InternetTrak). Being able to locate the 800 number on the Internet greatly improves the success rate of any Internet ad or Web site.

Sources: Individuals, Inc.; PR Newswire; Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions

• The average phone order from a catalog can be 30% to 70% higher than the average mail order.
• As telephone buyers generally use credit cards, they will order more merchandise and higher ticket items 95% of the time.
• A productive ad featuring an 800 number can generate approximately 30% more orders.
• In a study accomplished by Bellcore, paper ads that were almost identical were displayed and monitored. One group had an 800 toll-free number and the others didn’t. The toll-free number ads received six times the number of calls as did the regular long-distance listings. It also seems that this will hold true regardless of the socioeconomic level of the caller.

(Source:”Zip Feature Article”)

• If you want to decrease returns by as much as 50%, use an 800/888 number on product literature. This encourages customers to call in and resolve difficulties with a trained expert.

(Source:”Telephone Marketing Report”)

• Fund-raising organizations have increased their response approximately 25% by adding that 800/888 number in commercials, print ads or direct mail pieces which previously used only addresses.

(Source:”A.I.S.800 Report”)

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1-800 numbers were developed in the late 60s by AT&T as a convenient way for businesses to pay the tolls for their customers who contacted them. (Remember when everyone thought long distance was so expensive?) As the service became more popular, toll free subscribers began finding new and innovative uses for the service. As usages and popularity began to grow companies began to realize that consumers preferred to do business with companies with 800 numbers.

By 1984, when the Bell System was dismantled by the Justice Department, there were over 3 million 800 numbers in service by AT&T, and new long distance carriers were clamoring to provide 800 service. These carriers were assigned blocks of 800 numbers with common NXX (prefixes), so the phone numbers available depended on the carrier you spoke to and if you left your carrier, you would have to change your 800 number. The numbers weren’t portable.

One of the steps in creating a more competitive toll free market, was to implement the current SMS/800 system which allowed true portability of 800 numbers so you could change phone companies without having to change your number. This gave toll free number subscribers much more ownership rights and made the popularity and value of good 800 numbers sky rocket, so much so that within 18 months of the introduction of number portability, very few of the 7 million 800 numbers were left for new subscribers.

Then after rationing 800 numbers, the telecommunications industry chose 888 as the next toll free area code, introducing another 8 million new numbers to the toll free pool (less a couple hundred 888 numbers that were held out of the pool at the request of the 800 owner). 888 numbers have been in use now for several years and are fairly well accepted and understood by a large part of the country as equivalent to 800 numbers. But as 888 numbers began to dwindle, 877 and later 866 area codes were introduced as well. 855, 844, 833 and 822 are also reserved for toll free use as they are required.

I’ve always known that an educated consumer was my best customer and that the best way to promote my business was by being a real resource.  It takes more time and effort to create a site that people will want to link to, but in the end that’s much smarter than buying the traffic with other marketing tricks.  And having a lot of valuable content also increases the likelihood that someone will actually want to use your service too.

The amount of resources that go into the Keyword Lookup is scary when I stop to think about it.  If you were to process the queries that our servers do each month, one at a time, in real time into the SMS800 database, they would take literally hundreds of years of processing time to complete.  We can do that in a couple days.  And if I had known how much work it would take when I started I probably never would have even started this.

It costs us $10,000 a month just to keep the programs and lights all running, but we do this to help make it easy for you to find a good number for your business, and because it doesn’t make sense for every phone company to develop this type of resource.  So I do this, basically as the vanity number search department for every phone company.  Give it a try and let us show you how easy it is to find a great number for your business.

If you have any questions or need more help, please don’t hesitate to contact me at 1-800 MARKETER or billquimby@billquimby.net.  I really enjoy this niche and try to help as many people as possible.  Remember, your phone number is your front door to new business.  And the right number will make a significant difference to all your marketing for the life of your business and ultimately make you a lot of money.

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Why do we take calls until 10:30pm and sometimes later, even on weekends?

Because the definition of customer service is just being there for your customer or prospect when they need you. Good customer service doesn’t require great skills as much as it simply requires accessibility and a little bit of politeness. We also take calls outside of normal business hours because it’s usually easier to just take a minute and answer their question, than it is to try and keep track of it and get back to them during your primetime. I guess it doesn’t hurt that our industry is full of big companies with big company attitudes that have lost touch with that small company human approach.

We also take calls when we’re out of the office, driving, or just about anywhere except in a movie or meeting. If you reach Bill during the morning and he’s out of breath, it’s probably because he’s at the gym. And don’t be surprised if you hear children in the background, or in the car because they are never very far away, since flexibility and the ability to spend time with them is one of the reasons he’s organized this virtual organization like this. He enjoys helping customers and has kept that personal touch even as the business grew right along with his family.

I almost can’t believe how stupid some people can be. Here are the last three ‘comments’ left on the site, all by the same person and IP address pretending to be multiple people. Somebody has way too much time on their hands, and this also really goes to prove that you just can’t believe anonymous comments.
more about comment spam

Out of the 7,690,000 possible 8-0-0 numbers, there are often times at this point when there won’t be ANY true ‘800’ numbers in the SMS/800 spare pool at all. That’s right, none at all.

You might think that the lookup tool is broken or it’s just not showing them, but it’s not. It’s easy to check if the Instant 800 Lookup on our site is working by submitting a query for all *s with 8** for the area code. That will always return 10 ‘866’ numbers because that’s what it looks for first. If you don’t specify what area code it’ll start with the ones most likely to have more numbers available, 866 and 877. That makes sense from a database programming stand point, even if it doesn’t really make much sense from a marketing point of view.

There are a couple solutions to this scarcity though. You can try searching after 1am (est) because the new numbers come out after midnight. So at that point most phone companies are still asleep but you can often get something. (My lookup isn’t usable from 11:55pm until 12:20am though to get backordered numbers)

You can also use the nice numeric options in my numeric number section at http://www.TollFreeNumbers.com/numeric.shtml. Those are a little more expensive than the more readily available spare $49 numbers, ranging from $99 to 995, but at least there are a few good ones that are ultimately better than you would be able to get with the lookup tool directly.

Finally as a last resort, we can get you random ‘800’ numbers from numbers that were reserved for 15 days and are scheduled to be thrown back into the pool. These are only $39, but you can’t pick them, hence the term random. But we will do our best to help you in any direction you need to go to get a “800″ number, activated quickly and transferring them to whatever company you want. The proof of ownership alone is worth way more than the $39 one time fee, no matter how much advertising they do.

We’ve added a long overdue feature to the backorder process that allows backorders to be removed from availability after they’re backordered. We’ve struggled with the management of the backorder list for some time, because the best numbers are often backordered by multiple customers. The more we’ve grown the bigger that issue has become. And since we can only accept a backorder from the first customer to request a number we often have to cancel backorders for numbers that have already been requested.

This means that if a number gives you a link to backorder it, unless it was just taken within the past couple days since the last update, it’s really available to backorder. These databases are bigger than most people realize and since they are kept in several different systems processing changes turns into a nightmare, trying to keep everything flowing smoothly and quickly. But we’ve come up with a very important enhancement to the system so that we now suppress numbers that have already been back ordered from the 800 WATCH system. This will save a lot of unnecessary work on our part as well as a lot of frustration on the user’s part.

This also means we really need to add a new product we’ve been hoping to add for a long time now, a Premium, Earlybird 800 WATCH. The regular 800 WATCH is truly one of a kind dd goes out to 20,000 or so people now, which means that the things on your list may be sent to thousands of people interested in this phone number business. That means that goes out to a select list of premium 800 WATCH subsides. We’ll probably be announcing that advanced sign ups for that with a lot more next month.

As with everything we do, our goal is just to help you find the best possible and since things come and go all the time, this is the only real way to stay on top of all the possibilities. There is also a much higher turnover rate for this than there is for most other comparable items because it’s harder to recognize good numbers than it is to recognize good domain names, for example. And this combined with some internal improvements in the backorder process should really make a big difference for our customers.

(PRWeb) February 6, 2007 — The answer is that only four of the 68 superbowl commercials this year contained Toll Free Numbers. Bill Quimby, the founder and president of TollFreeNumbers.com, also pointed out that all of them were vanity numbers or numbers with letters that spell things instead of digits, because that makes them much more memorable and is extremely important for branding.

The four commercials that included phone numbers were E-Trade (Getting robbed by your bank) 877-E-TRADE-4, HP (Orange County Choppers) 800-525-MYHP, Flomax (kayaking) 877-4-FLOMAX and E-trade again (1 finger) 877-E-TRADE-4.

This is down from nine commercials last year because some advertisers, even ones with prominent vanity numbers didn’t include them in their commercials this year. FedEx for example didn’t include 1-800 GO-FEDEX. They also downsized the domain name too, to make it much smaller and less prominent. Even Sprint and T-Mobile, both of which are obviously phone companies, didn’t include their toll free vanity numbers.

The Superbowl is all about branding, so it’s not really that big of a surprise that the companies spending the millions of dollars to advertise on the Superbowl aren’t really looking to create a “direct response” such as sending viewers to their website or get them to call. Maybe it’s also partially because the audience is so big that getting even a small percent to call would create a spike that would be difficult to handle.

Whatever the reasons, some Superbowl advertisers seem to have opted not to include their phone numbers and downsized their domain names. At the same time, a few companies have made specialized sites or pages specifically for their campaign, such as SnackStrongProductions.com.

Mr. Quimby explained that noticing vanity numbers is an occupational hazard. He has literally helped tens of thousands of companies find great vanity numbers through his Internet service TollFreeNumbers.com. His business model is very similar to another famous Superbowl advertiser, GoDaddy’s, except that instead of domain names, he gets his customers memorable toll free numbers for a one time fee of $49. Unlike regular phone companies, he’s not trying to sell the ongoing use of the number, just helping customers get better numbers in ways the big phone companies don’t.

I’m going to try and post some interesting or funny questions and answers about things related to toll free numbers here.

I came across your website while searching for a solution to a request from our CEO. We’d like to get a listing of available toll-free numbers so we can run a tool developed in house against it to generate available vanity numbers. I know you offer the search function but my CEO wants to easily manipulate the results against a large cross section of numbers.

So, essentially we are looking for a listing of all available toll-free numbers at any given moment, understanding that the list will probably be outdated 10 seconds after it is generated because of how quickly toll-free number availability changes. Can you provide such a list and what would be the possible cost? If you are unable to provide the list do you know of a possible alternative we could pursue?

Thanking you in advance for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Eric

Dear Eric,

As of 1/6/2007 at 11:59pm eastern time, there were 8,201,245 toll free numbers available in the spare status. If you printed that out two columns per page in small print with 200 numbers per page, it would be 80 some reams of paper. Lets just say it would fill a medium sized closet almost to the ceiling. Not only would it be out of date before you could do anything, but the cost of producing it would be ridiculous.

I’ve been in the vanity number business for 12 years. I’ve spent 4 or 5 years and at least half a million dollars developing my system. It’s far better than anything any phone company or resporg has access to through the SMS administration, through 8MS (a third party API access). It costs me about $15,000 per month to produce and I give access to it away for free of the general public right over the web. Its so simple my 9 year old daughter could make it work, by just typing in a couple words and her email address.

I can understand that some people want to do things themselves. But what you’re asking for is clearly NOT AVAILABLE. You also have to realize that from my perspective it seems more than a little silly to think you can just crunch a few numbers and run a dictionary against a list and somehow come up with anything better.

.Bill Quimby.
1-800 MARKETER
TollFreeNumbers.com
billquimby@billquimby.net

I should point out that this was from someone at a very large company. It isn’t exactly a common question but I thought it was interesting to get a little better idea of the size and scope of our system and what it takes to do all this stuff.

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