Yes, I just wrote about Ebay openly auctioning off vanity 800 numbers, so maybe resporgs auctioning off numbers directly is just the next step. I don’t think this has ever been done openly before, though. Maybe it’s just a signal of where the industry is heading?

Loren Stocker of Vanity International is offering to get 855 numbers for customers, but if anyone else wants the number you requested, if he gets it, he’s going to auction it off to the requestors OR ANY THIRD PARTY! So he gets to “SELL” any toll free number that more than one customer wants. In my opinion this directly violates the phone company rule of issuing numbers on a first come first served basis, and can only be described as “Brokering” 800 numbers.

What do you think would happen if AT&T took requests for numbers and then instead of activating them for the first customer that requested it, turned around and publicly auctioned them off to the highest bidder?! First of all, AT&T would NEVER do anything like that, but if they did you can bet that the FCC would be all over that as clear number brokering, which is supposed to be against the FCC regulations ( see FCC Sec. 52.107). You could argue that this goes on behind closed doors at some vanity number resporgs, but to state publically that you’re doing this could be risky and sets a dangerous prescident to allow a phone company to openly auction off 800 numbers.

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We do more to get you the 855 numbers you want than anyone else! There are other people in the vanity number business that are willing to try to get the new 855 number requests for you but they definitely aren’t giving your request to your own phone company too. That’s because they want you to have to pay THEM to get it. Their goal is to maximize the money they can charge, not to maximize the service to the customer. We’re the only ones truly trying to maximize the customer’s odds of getting you a new 855 number reserved.

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Other vanity number resporgs are offering to get 855 numbers. They are charging between $500 and $5,000 (for the same thing we charge $8 or $49). To be fair I hear the company charging $5,000 (CustomTollFree) has lowered their price to $2,995. It’s not easy to tell though, because they obviously don’t want to put a price right up front. I don’t blame them. If I was gouging people like that I wouldn’t talk about the price very much either. I’d probably just make up lots of reasons why they were so much better at getting numbers.

I guess some people may just assume that if they’re charging that much more they must be doing a better job at it. The truth is, that they just have a very different business model. I’m sure they’re getting at least a few customer requests, but vanity number brokers aren’t worried about customer requests anyway. Vanity number resporgs don’t need customer requests to go after anything they think would be valuable. They just suck up as many numbers as fast as they can.

I run my business very differently. I don’t think it’s ever appropriate to gouge customers even if the demand is so high that they think they can get away with it. I run my business differently and simply charge a small fee based on the time and effort required for it. We’re charging a whole $8.55 to submit your request to your regular phone company and then we’re going to charge the same $49 we always charge if we can get it for you too (minus of course the $8.55 you already paid). There’s simply no justification for charging more, other than a few people may be willing to pay it. If you’re desperate, and willing to pay thousands of dollars, you can find someone to take your money. I prefer to charge an honest price even if the demand goes up and everyone else thinks its smarter to gouge! That’s why I say this is a Gouge Free Zone.

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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.

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Nice Numeric numbers can be broken down into three main types, Zeros, Repeaters and Patterns. Zeros and Repeaters are pretty straight forward and can be queried with the look up tool on the top of the page at TollFreeNumbers.com. Patterns are harder to search for, but that also means there are more possibilities too because most people can’t really search for them as readily.

Patterns can be further broken down into Keyboard Patterns, Sequential Patterns, XYXY Patterns, and ABC-ABC Patterns. These patterns require complex analysis and multiple queries so the only way to find them is to research and prepare a list for each pattern. Unfortunately lists get out of date very quickly but I’ll do our best to keep them up to date, and give you as many good options as possible.

See the full list of Good Pattern Numbers!

In 2009 when the SMS/800 released 22,000 new ‘800’ numbers that were converted from exchanges that used to be set aside for RCC numbers, one company got over 10,000 of the 22,000 numbers in just over a minute. This same or the recently took 500,000 toll free numbers from the available pool in just over a month. With 855 numbers coming out October 2nd, this raises the question, “Just because some companies CAN take 10,000 per minute should they be allowed to?”

The analogy I’ve come up with is an All You Can Eat Buffet of 855 numbers. There will be 8 million numbers put out for the first time at the buffet. The SMS/800 will give them out on a first come first served basis. But some companies have bigger plates than others. In fact some companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per month to get plates that are hundreds of times bigger than other resporgs. So some companies go to the buffet with salad plates, while other companies run to the buffet with giant turkey platters. Some companies also have as many as six resporgs. They’re filling six giant turkey platters at a time, at the 855 buffet. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that, All You Can Eat Buffets, tends to lead to over eating!

That’s why I believe the FCC has to impose a daily cap of no more than one thousand 855 numbers per day per administrator just for the first 15 to 30 days. That’s not per resporg, it’s per Administrator, because some reporg administrators have spawned multiple resporgs which are ultimately for the same organization. Nobody should be allowed to bring multiple plates up to the buffet. And 1,000 numbers is clearly enough because that’s more than even the largest phone companies do on average per day in all toll free area codes.

An Anti-Hoarding Cap clearly won’t hurt anyone except companies trying to hoard an excessive amount of the best 855 numbers. It’ll help insure that the SMS/800 doesn’t get as overloaded, and will insure that every company has a fairer more equal opportunity to get 855 numbers.

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The FCC ordered the opening of the new 855 area code to be delayed from October 1st until October 2nd at 12:00pm (noon) ET.

The FCC has suggested in letters that it may ration 855 numbers when they come out but hasn’t confirmed or specified how this will be done yet. I wanted to take a moment to explain why this isn’t just important, it’s absolutely critical to the process, and to all real customers.

I wrote a detailed post yesterday about the differences between vanity number phone companies and regular phone companies because that’s necessary to understand why rationing is so critical. When 866 numbers came out in 2000, vanity number resporgs were the exception rather than the rule. Sure there was a mad rush and the whole system bogged down. But regular phone companies weren’t competing against Vanity Number Businesses who’s whole purpose is to suck up numbers as fast as possible.

Vanity number businesses get to keep the value of the numbers they get, where as regular phone companies just give the numbers they get to customers without any real payment for the acquisition at all. Many regular companies use the volume of calls to subsidize the set up cost, so they actually spend money getting new numbers for their customers, they don’t make any.

That means that the vanity number businesses can afford way more connections and capacity to get numbers from the SMS/800 database than even the biggest phone companies could possibly justify. They also have more experience at sucking up numbers too. So without rationing, the vanity number businesses would literally suck up a humongous amount of numbers before regular customers at regular phone companies even had a chance. Rationing the numbers means that even smaller phone companies will at least get to submit some requests before the vanity number businesses suck up everything IF the rationing is done in small enough increments.

Read more about how we need strict 855 Rationing with DAILY limits.

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When Vanity Number businesses get access into the national 800 database (referred to as Resporgs) don’t have the same business model as regular phone companies. They literally play by different rules. I’ve been in this business for 15 years and I’m going to share some of the biggest secrets of the vanity number business. This will make a lot of people very angry with me, but it’s time to pull back the curtains in a few dark areas of this crazy little business.

1. Vanity Number Resporgs don’t have to wait for Customer Requests.

Regular phone companies wait for customers to request numbers and then check to see if they’re available. Vanity number resporgs not only don’t have to wait for requests, but they look at what’s coming out ahead of time and grab good numbers the same second they become available or in some cases even before they’re available through the old phone company. So over time, vanity number companies get almost all of the good numbers coming out.

2. Vanity Number Resporgs get to keep the value of any numbers they get.

If a regular phone company does get a valuable number for a customer, the customer gets the value, not the phone company. And the same customer will switch to another company to save a penny per minute. Regular phone companies literally have no incentive to get good numbers for their customers. Vanity number companies have a huge incentive to get valuable numbers because they get to keep the value of their numbers.

Read the rest of the story, with 4 more secrets of the Vanity Number business!

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People often ask for “Nice” or “Good” numbers, but unfortunately you can’t ask a computer database for “nice”. We have a section with various levels of Premium 800 numbers, but there are millions of numbers in the database but none of them are marked Good or Bad. That’s why we’ve tried to analyze the different types of niceness. There are actually at least 6 to 8 different types of “nice” numeric numbers.

In order to keep things simpler for the users we’re grouping premium numbers into 3 main groups, Zeros, Repeaters and Patterns. We’ll have more about them and their basic definitions on the website soon. We could have just grouped them all into one list, but this way hopefully we’ll be able to give customers more exactly what they’re looking for and it’ll keep the lists fresher too. Because one of the issues is that if we make a short cut to the good numbers they’ll all be taken and it won’t be a shortcut. In the mean time, if you need something specific in terms of nice numbers give us a call or check back soon because we’re going to use this new analysis process to make it easier to find so called “Good” toll free numbers.

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Yes, Paypal did their absolute best to kill our business. I suppose they probably weren’t trying to, but they honestly couldn’t have done any more damage to us if they had been trying. Right out of the box they made it almost impossible to work with them, because their system literally didn’t work the way it says it does on the website and the documentation. Their higher level techs admitted that they knew it didn’t but didn’t seem to care.

When we launched, things definitely went from bad to worse. Their system caused issues with multiple orders and didn’t track the orders properly and left us with a over a thousand orders that had to be reconciled manually. We upgraded to a different system that we could control more at the paypal reps suggestion only to find that a few days into it, some stupid accountant in their risk depart read a totally fake attack article on a scam website. It’s clearly a scam website for a government related organization about toll free service that doesn’t exist and only goes back to a fake address in the Netherlands. It’s clearly a scam site with the phone number 800-000-0000 etc and no names of any kind. Yet Rochelle didn’t look at the source at all and shut us down completely without any notice or so much as an email, which is apparently what they do in some cases to scam websites. She didn’t contact their account rep or research anything she just shut us off cold because of her own mistake.

Then a few days into it, Rochelle, a young clerk in their risk depart read a totally fake attack article on a scam website. It’s clearly a scam website for a government related organization about toll free service that doesn’t exist and only goes back to a fake address in the Netherlands. It’s clearly a scam site with the phone number 800-000-0000 etc and no names of any kind. Yet Rochelle didn’t look at the source at all and shut us down completely without any notice or so much as an email, which is apparently what they do in some cases to scam websites. She didn’t contact their account rep or research anything she just shut us off cold because of her own mistake.

Read the full article about how a single girl at paypal made a mistake and shut our business off cold and then made it even worse by lying and trying to cover it up.

The FCC has regulations against hoarding and brokering. Hoarding is defined as taking more numbers from the Available pool than you have a legitimate business need for. Brokering is taking numbers from the Available pool for the purpose of reselling them. I’ve explained why I think the danger isn’t abuse by end users but by phone companies. Plus toll free numbers are also invisible and have no physical presence so very few people ever see how many numbers each phone company has.

For various reasons, the FCC hasn’t been overly aggressive in enforcing this type of abuse, combined with the inability of anyone to see or appreciate how many numbers different companies have, is enabling some companies to take advantage of the situation. I obviously can’t do anything about the FCC, but I can make toll free numbers more visible, and expose just a little of the possible abuses of the system.

I don’t do this to condemn anyone, but with 855 numbers coming out the danger of major abuse will be exponentially increased. In the mean time I’m going to show the volume of numbers activated and controlled by some companies. For instance, the fact that one company recently took over 400,000 numbers at one time, doesn’t prove that they are hoarding or brokering numbers, but at some point it has to be at least a little suspicious. If you’re wondering why we’re running out of toll free numbers, take a look at the amount of numbers activated by CallSource.com. Over the past two years the volume of numbers available has decreased by about 3 million numbers, while at the same time CallSource alone, increased by almost 1 million numbers, (from half a million to one and a half million numbers!)

See a chart of the growth in numbers held by CallSource.com

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We monitor the 800 supply very closely and have tried to explain the shortage of toll free numbers in words, but I think this graph shows it much mroe clearly than any words could. This graph is based on the numbers below and you’ll notice that there’s literally ZERO 800 numbers and very few 866 numbers. That’s just because there haven’t been any ’800′ numbers in the spare or Available pool for a couple years.

I’m not sure why there are so few 866 numbers, except that it may be because the SMS database gives out 866 numbers first when someone doesn’t specify the area code. But whatever the reason, there haven’t been many 866 numbers available for a while now either. It’ll be interesting to see how 855 numbers are received and how quickly some of them get taken. Next I’m going to graph the toll free numbers active with a couple companies too which should be very interesting!

I’m not a big fan of government intervention or lawyers, and I love this business. But if I ever go out of business I’m gonna go work as a consultant for the FCC! They really need some help from someone that knows (and loves) the toll free business, and has crunched the amount of data that we have. I know they have good intentions and I’m also not trying to hurt anyone. But there are definitely some business that are doing things which may be in their best interests, but they are really hurting the toll free business.

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Everyone has a different take on 855 numbers. I saw someone today reserving 855 domain names. http://www.855domainnames.com/ They probably aren’t as marketable as people might assume because they will ultimately only appeal to a single party who probably will also feel like they own that name. It may be a little early to register domain names because it really won’t give you much leverage in terms of getting them when they come out. I also don’t think 855 is quite the brand name that 800 is, but it’s something to think about.

When the last new toll free area code came out in 2000 people had cell phones but their cell phone wasn’t what it is today and the cell phone was usually just for talking when they were in between their office phone and their home phone. Today the world of phones is getting more and more diverse to say the least. There are 10 new voip startup companies every time you turn around, and your ISP is offering phone service. Google is now a phone company, sort of. The lines are getting more and more blurred for everything in the telecom world every day.

So who do you request an 855 number from?

Unfortunately all phone companies aren’t equally good at all things. The way we created the list of phone companies for 855numbers.com was to analyze our log of phone companies that we’ve released toll free numbers to over the past two years or so. The logic was simply, if no customers had transferred numbers to them they wouldn’t need to be there. There are certainly a lot of “phone companies” that don’t do much with toll free numbers. Cell phone companies for instance almost never do anything at all related to toll free service. Some voip companies fall into this category as well.

Read more about what phone companies not to request an 855 number from

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Loren Stocker, one of the vanity number brokers, is already complaining to other resporgs about what we’re doing at 855numbers.com. I guess that’s to be expected. Allowing regular customers to put in requests for the numbers they want with their phone companies hurts people like Loren who has a resporg just to grab numbers for himself. You can bet that he’ll be one of the first out there trying to grab up as many of the best numbers for himself as possible, not for end users.

Another big vanity number shark, CustomTollFree.com, is offering to get people 855 numbers for a $295.00 request fee and $5,000.00 additional fee if they are able to get it for you. You could say we’re competition but they’re clearly going after a different market, so I’m not even knocking that. Now that I think about it, it would probably be alot easier to get 50 numbers for high paying customers (which I probably know too) than it would be to deal with 30,000 customer requests at $8.55, but I think helping more people like this, not to mention the phone companies s better for the industry as a whole. (Although I have to say I didn’t appreciate how many questions and issues 30,000 customers would ultimately have!)

We have had some issues and I feel like my email will never be possible to get through any more. But that’s what happens when you stretch and try to do something nobody has ever done before and rush it as much as we did. So I have to apologize that I can’t get to every email at this point, and that we had to rush so much to get this out (mostly because of the FCC moving up the time frame). But I don’t apologize for trying to help as many people as possible, get their requests to their phone company as quickly as possible. I don’t get to sleep very much right now, but I do sleep soundly and feel good about my business model and that I’m helping not only my customers but the industry as a whole, much more than any of the vanity number brokers and sharks ever could.

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The response to our mailing has been overwhelming. As a result, we had to move the 855numbers.com site to a much bigger server. There also appears to be an issue with some browsers, so I would ask that you only use Internet Explorer as well. I apologize that there are a few bumps in the road, but I really pushed everyone (including myself) to get this out as fast as possible. Phone numbers are supposed to be issued on a first come first served basis so it was important to get this up ASAP. The site will go “live” at 8:00PM (eastern) tonight! I sincerely apologize for the delay and we’ll all look forward to helping you!

~Bill Quimby

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A quick word of advice on what 855 numbers to request. Go for the good second round draft picks, not just the most obvious first round picks. The vanity number sharks will get their requests in faster than regular phone companies. That’s just life and our present reality. Their business model requires them to get bigger and bigger connections to the SMS, much bigger than any regular phone company could possibly justify or use. So if you’re only requesting 855-LAWYERS and 855-DIVORCE etc, even if you’re the first at a specific phone company to request one of those the chances of getting it are lottery ticket small.

That’s why I think the smart money is going after what I’m calling the good second round draft picks. Those are numbers that aren’t in the top 1000 most valuable numbers. They are much more likely to be successful and are still very valuable. I’m not saying don’t go for the long shots, just make sure you have some backup options. You can always drop them if you get your long shots.

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I wrote a little bit about why we set up 855numbers.com in the 855 ebook, but someone asked that again and I think this was a better explanation. In order to simplify the rationing, just imagine that every phone company gets to take 100 855 numbers on the first day. We would only be able to help 100 people get numbers, just like every other phone company. But by building a system and essentially opening it up to every phone company and then giving them the list of their customers requests, we can help customers get in the top 100 numbers on 100 different phone companies. So in a sense the rationing is what made this necessary.

Rationing also means that no matter how much I promote 855 numbers to people, I would only be able to get 100 numbers in the above example. So why would any individual phone company spend much time or effort promoting 855? But this way not only do I have an incentive to promote it, but I’m almost the only one that does.

I’m also the only one in the toll free business not trying to sell toll free service. So I can do this in a way that doesn’t push any one company, just to help customers get their request on the list with their existing company and help the whole industry. So we’ll definitely be doing some significant PR to get the word out about 855 numbers. But back to the first point above, I didn’t want to do much promotion outside of my existing customers because I wanted to give them a head start first. So I guess I am pushing one business, my existing customer’s business!

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The most common 855 question we’re seeing about the new 855 numbers is, “Can we get this number or numbers for me.” Some customers are asking this because they have a list of numbers and want to know if they put their request in before the opening, or to ask if we can let them request a large list of numbers. Some people are asking this because they want to know if we can put the request in for them and some want to know if we can activate it right here to start.

For all four variations of this question the answer is, No. We can’t process a list of numbers at a time because with hundreds of people submitting at a time, doing a single number at a time is hard enough. Having all of those people submitting lists of numbers at a time would probably make the computers little processors fry!

Read more about why we can’t put 855 requests through ourselves, for the customer!

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Last Friday June 25th at 4:30pm, the FCC quietly announced that they had moved up the release of the first new toll free area code in a decade. 855 Numbers will go into operation October 1st. They had previous suggested that they would open 855 sometime between October and March of 2011. They also announced that there would be rationing of new 855 numbers although they didn’t specify the method yet.

We have been working quite hard lately to develop a site that customers can use to request any number they want with any phone company they want it with. The Pre-Release Request process begins on Tuesday July 6th at 3:00pm EST at www.855numbers.com. Customers will be able to request any 855 Numbers from the phone company of their choice for just $8.55.

I haven’t written much on the website recently because although I’ve been writing a lot, I didn’t want to put it on the website until I had something really complete. I’ve prepared a brand new 15 page ebook about the 855 Window of Opportunity, that explains the process and everything you need to know to take advantage of this great opportunity. I’ll start putting about this on the website over the next couple days but you should definitely start with this ebook right away.

This is clearly the biggest opportunity in the vanity number business in years and it costs almost nothing to get started. You just have to be at the right place at the right time and that’s Tuesday July 6th at 855numbers.com at 3pm. Mark your calendar and get your list ready for the 855 Landrush.

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As of 6/1 there were 3,392,802 toll free numbers in the Available pool. But how many of them are really “good”? Unfortunately there’s no good definition of good that a computer can use to filter or sort 3 million numbers. We can however determine how many of them are bad in terms of vanity numbers. There are no letters on the 0 or 1 key. And the 9 key is almost as bad, since it’s only got a WXYZ, so numbers with 1, 0 or 9 are certainly not going to be much help as far as vanity numbers.

Out of 3.4 million numbers there are only 100,073 numbers or about 2.9%, that don’t have a 1, 0, or 9, which could be potential vanity numbers. That shows not just how few numbers there are but how picked over they are. There are more options if you consider partial vanity numbers. You may have to put a couple astrixes in front of the word you want to find a combination of numbers and the word. This works best with short words. Even this doesn’t work for popular words though. We’re just reaching the bottom of the barrel, and literally running out.

Stay tuned for 855 numbers which will be coming in a couple months. And the good news with them is that the pent up demand and unavailability to get anything else, will probably work to benefit the usage and acceptance of 855 numbers.

I actually wrote this article while our website was held hostage a couple months ago and went to link to it from the previous story and realized I had never posted it. The previous article about 400,000 number being sucked up by one phone company in one month is a perfect example of what I was talking about. I don’t know why they took them or any of the story behind that, so this article isn’t written about that, but it certainly relates.

Someone asked a question that I thought was smart because it brought out a very interesting point. Yes, there are regulations against hoarding and brokering toll free numbers. And this is often used as a way to scare customers and make them think that they’re not allowed to sell their number. That isn’t what the language of the regulation says because it’s not targeted toward customers. I believe the regulation about hoarding and brokering was originally written with phone companies in mind, not customers.

Think about it. How much damage would it do if the phone companies took all of the good numbers before end users had any chance to get them, and were selling or brokering them to the highest bidder? Then think about how damaging it would be if customers were allowed to buy and sell their numbers openly? There’s absolutely no comparison. Phone companies hoarding and brokering is clearly the real threat.

Read more about how phone companies violating the regulations threatens the 855 numbers.

On May 1st there were 1,700,136 888 numbers in the available pool, and 31 days later, on June 1st, there were only 1,426,276 888 numbers left in the available pool. That means there are 273,860 fewer 888 numbers available in June than there was in May, or about 20% in just one month! When we first noticed the numbers we thought our database had been corrupted but we double checked it, and even looked a little deeper to try and figure out where the numbers are going.

When you analyze them by individual phone company it gets even more alarming. The vast majority of the numbers taken last month were from just ONE source. In fact out of 273,000 numbers taken 250,000 of them came from that one company. That means this one company was responsible for 92% of the decrease in 888 numbers available. They also activated over 150,000 new 877 numbers in the same time, which is about 50% of the month’s 877 activations as well, and all together their volume of numbers jumped by over 40% in just one month!

The SOURCE of the Problem

I’m not going to reveal the name of the company that’s the Source of the problem yet. But I can tell you that when the 22,000 RCC 800 numbers were released they got almost HALF of them! But I will give you a clue, that they’re not in the phone sex or misdial marketing business, which was the first guess of most people that I’ve talked to. I’m also not accusing them or anyone of 800 Number Hoarding, because the numbers alone don’t prove that. But I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to say that they sure as hell suggests it pretty loudly.

See also:
Shared Use by a resporg = HOARDING
Congratulations to CallSource.com

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If your car breaks down, you can use another even if you have to borrow or rent one or find another way to get there, you’re not stuck at home. If your computer blows up you’ll certainly pull your hair out and hope you’re backed up, but you can get another computer pretty quickly. If the phone number that’s in all your advertising and all your customers are calling you on gets shut off, you can’t usually put a different phone number in all your advertising or reprogram all your customers to call your new number.

That’s why its absolutely critical to own whatever number you advertise, because once its in all that advertising, printed on your labels, in your commercials, and your customers get used to it and program it not only into their phones but into their heads (if it’s a memorable vanity number) you do NOT want it to be shut off or find out that the fine print of the terms from the company you got it through says it’s their number and you’re stuck with them or even worse that they can change it at any time.

If a car salesman said in order to buy this GM car you had to sign an agreement never to buy anything but a GM car again you’d probably think the salesman should have his head examined. Would you ever agree to get at least of your gas from just one specific station no matter what? You might like a car or a gas station right now, but no one company is always the best deal. And your ability to use another gas station is ultimately what makes them stay competitive and provide good service.

When companies hide tricky legal jargon in their fine print that says they own your number or that they control whether you can transfer it to another service, they know exactly what they’re doing. The more you advertise the number, the more dependent you’re making yourself on them for one of the most critical aspects of your business. And when a company doesn’t have to be competitive or do a good job to keep your business, things go down hill fast no matter how good their intentions are.

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This was a quote from a customer that I liked, because I thought was an interesting summary of what we do. He’d been trying to get a vanity number through his regular phone company for a while without any luck and finally they referred him to us. He called and asked a few questions and then to sum it all up, said,
“We do the hard part of helping you find a good number, turn it on and then send it back to our the phone company we want to use it with.”

An actual customer wrote the following to me earlier today and below that is my actual response with just a photo and a couple links added. This seemed like a common request and an answer that would be helpful to other people as well.

We buy national remnant ads and a few local stations in different cities. I believe good numbers that can be remembered easily will increase the response. Unfortunately radio is saturated with xxx companies and we are trying to be the one that has the most recognized 800 numbers.

My advice would be to add as much personality to your concept as possible. The more competitive your category is, the more you have to fight to stand out. It’s tempting to think that the word GOLD will make you stand out if you’re in the Gold Business. But in fact that’s the WORST word to use in many ways. There’s nobody that hears your commercial and doesn’t know that you buy gold. Repeating that isnt going to make you stand out. You may think it will when you write it down on a blank piece of paper. See The Gold Trap

That’s like the hasidic jew that gets all dressed up and walks out of his house to stand in a row of people all dressed the same. When he looked in the mirror he thought he was memorable, but when you put it in context, competing with competitors that all use the term GOLD in their number, you all blend in. The same thing could be said for a punk rock or grunge teenager that hangs out at the punk rock club. They stood out on paper but in context they blend right in.

Read the rest of this actual advice on standing out from the crowd!

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An advertising executive today brought up an objection because he couldn’t dial a vanity number from his blackberry (because it has Qwerty keys not regular phone keys). Ironically the Blackberry actually makes it very easy to dial vanity numbers. People tend to think that the whole world thinks and does things the same way they do. People who use blackberrys always think it’s big problem because they all assume that everyone does or will use a blackberry soon. That’s certainly not true, but we all see the world through our own perspective.

Fortunately this objection is mostly a theoretical one, and not anywhere near as much of an issue as blackberry users assume it’ll be. I always ask the blackberry user if they were able to reach me. They usually say, Yes, but I had to use my desk phone, or yes but it was harder. OK, but they got through. Then they typically say that they’re doing radio advertising so most of their prospects will be in their cars. To which I say, yes, and that’s why it’s even more important that their number be a vanity number and more memorable. Their prospects aren’t looking at the number when they’re dialing and often can’t dial it right away when they hear it.

Qwerty Keys and Blackberrys still get through

The new June 800 number data is going online today (Friday June 4th) and the 800 Watch reports will go out starting on Monday, rather than sending them over the weekend. So if you’re checking the website, you’ll get a little bit of a head start if you do new searches right now. So let the searching begin!