There’s no secret list, or better tool.
I think sometimes people are a little disappointed when they hear myself or Rita just using the website just like they’ve been doing when they ask us to help them find a number with a specific word in it. I think many people expect us to have a secret list or better tool for finding things than they’ve been using on the website. We really don’t though.
We have done an awful lot of work and spent years of constantly developing our look up tools to build the very best possible 800 number search process to find good numbers. There’s nobody and no website out there that’s even second best. It’s a good system and it’s very easy to use, but it is still limited by the availability and can’t make something good available.
Sending queries via email
We love to hear from you and answer mountains of emails every day. But we really can’t do queries via email effectively for several reasons. We’re slow, it takes more than just one query, our search engine returns more information than anyone wants to personally deal with and you really don’t need us trying to filter your data.
1. We’re slow (at least compared to a website search). OK, we are responsive via email but it can still take a couple hours to answer emails, and sometimes even longer. Where as, if you just entered a term into the Toll Free Search Engine on the top of the page it gives you the results in a couple seconds. The Keyword Lookup sends the results via email and that takes slightly longer but is usually emailed in about a minute. And no matter how responsive we are we can’t touch that.
2. It usually takes several queries. If you only had to put in a single query and your first choice was available I guess taking a couple hours or a day wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But unfortunately your first choice is almost never available. That’s just a fact of life and why we’ve built such a sophisticated 800 Number Search program to search for thousands of related terms too. But it still usually takes dozens of searches to find something good or at least to be sure the one you found is really the best option. And going back and forth with dozens of emails or queries with the Keyword Lookup would probably take at least a week instead, which probably isn’t effective for either of us, especially when you could have done it in 15 minutes worth of searching.
3. Our toll free search tools return a lot of information. Our look up tools definitely return more than just a yes or no answer that most people are expecting via email. We go way beyond that and often return a hundred or more options for each query. So that’s obviously more than you would really want to email back and forth.
It’s kind of like emailing a Google employee and asking them to run a query for you and send you the results. It’s much easier to just enter it yourself and see the results than it would be to wait for them to do it and expect them to tell you what it says. That might be the way phone companies worked in the 80s and maybe even the 90s, but today we give you even more powerful tools than even the phone company operators ever had in the 90s.
We’ve built a great system to empower you so you can do dozens or even hundreds of queries in less time than it takes to email and get a response from us and we really don’t have any better list or secret look up tool than you do right on the web.
We’re here to help you, not to do it for you.
We’re here to help you and point you in the right direction if you have a question and give you some advice. And we understand that everyone has different levels of comfort and experience with computers. But our goal is to give you the tools and information to teach you to fish, not to make you sit there watching us try to fish for you. Many people find the process is fun and not as hard as they thought. So give it a try and know that if you have a problem or question you can reach a live person on the phone or email that knows what they’re doing. And you won’t have to wait on hold for 45 minutes either because we’re not trying to do the fishing for everyone.
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Bill Quimby (678 comments.) says:
October 28, 2008 at 12:43 pm
The only thing more crazy than trying to do this process via email is trying to do it over the phone. That doesn’t happen as often, but believe it or not, it does happen.
I know that sounds crazy but on the day I posted this I got a call from someone that insisted we should do this over the phone. Yes, it’s like calling up a Google employee and asking them to do a search for you over the phone, or it’s kind of like expecting to incorporate your small business over the phone.
I want to help people but we help more people by providing the tools so dozens or even hundreds of people at a time can find numbers. Doing it one at a time over the phone is so 80s and just not possible for $49. Sorry!
Bill
Miguel Martinez says:
February 20, 2009 at 2:33 pm
I see that you give a sample of random 800 numbers and premium toll free numbers. Is there a way to get a complete list to choose from?
Miguel
Bill Quimby (678 comments.) says:
February 20, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Miguel,
No, we don’t provide a full list for two reasons. First any list becomes out of date almost immediately and it’s unmanageable. Second that sounds like it would be good for you, but doing that means that the very best numbers get taken and leaving worse and worse numbers. I guess that in and of itself doesn’t bother the customer, but would you really want to look at a list that lots of other people had already looked at? Would it really be any good? There’s actually a third reason, but that has more to do with proprietary information and so forth.
Here’s a page that explains the best way to find really good premium (or random) 800 numbers. http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/blogs/search/vanities-with-repeating-digits.html The short answer is to include your company initials or some unique short three or four digit term with three or four astrixes (like ***- GMNY or XYZ-****). That allows you to find a good numeric number that has something related to your business instead of random digits. That actually solves the main problem with nice numeric numbers in that they don’t have any connection to your business. So they may seem easy to dial, but they’re NOT easy to remember.
I hope that helps you to understand why it’s a database not list and how to find the best premium numeric number that also relates to your organization.
Bill