When another phone company tries to steal your number…
It really grates on me every time I see vanity number brokers or “squatters” pretending to be regular phone companies with lookup tools on the web to essentially find out what numbers their unsuspecting visitors want so they can grab them for themselves. Visitors think they can look up 800 numbers and get numbers from them like any other phone company.
Not only did DIAL800.com reserve the number this woman wanted, but they reserved every visible alternative too, just to make sure that they had no other choices but to rent the number that was available for two years until the customer asked for it. I guess I’d have to trick and trap customers too if I was trying to rent numbers for $89 per month per area code and charging 3 times as much per minute.
Shared Use has it’s place because it just doesn’t make sense for a really huge number like 1-800 CATERING to be used by just one local caterer and wasted in the rest of the country. That makes sense and is putting a limited resource to it’s best use when it’s set up with caterers all over the country. But unfortunately there is a temptation for shared use companies to stop sharing numbers and start hoarding them, and to use shared use as an excuse to abuse the customer.
I usually tell people that Dial800.com is usually one of the better shared use companies. They got a lot of really great numbers back in the early 90s and have been around for a very long time. I’ve talked to them once in a while over the years. They seem like decent people, but it is clearly WRONG to cross the line from Shared Use number “owner” then go out and grab the number a customer requested out of the spare pool like a phone company, that and then keep it for yourself to rent to the customer.
If you think this may have happened to you, please give us a call. If you complain to the people that took the number they’ll probably just activate it and make sure it doesn’t go back into the pool. But if you contact us, (and post something here?), we’ll look it up and calculate the date the reservation will expire. Unfortunately that takes a little patience but we’ll help you get the number when the reservation expires.
See Also: Can you Keep a Secret?
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Nathan says:
December 5, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Bill,
I spoke with you today concerning toll numbers, thanks for your help you are a kind man.
I spoke to another company before I found your site, they put a number on hold for me however they are more expensive and they have a per minute charge. I checked the number on your site and it said it was available, then it said it was gone, I’m assuming that’s because they had it on hold. I emailed them and thanked them and told them I had found another company I would be going with and gave them permission to release the hold. My question to you is, do you think that number may be made available again soon or could they continue to hold it for other clients? Is there any way you could free up the number quicker?
Thanks again for your help,
Nathan Rose
Bill Quimby (678 comments.) says:
December 5, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Hi Nathan,
If you email me the number I can look it up to see if it’s been released. Many companies won’t release them. They reserve the number so you have to get it through them if you want it. Releasing it would be counter productive. They may also figure that if you want it, maybe someone else will. And small companies will take it more personally too.
There are also reasons NOT to release numbers like that into the Available pool, because anyone can get them there and the sharks are always faster than regular phone companies. See The quickest way to lose an 800 number and Transferring, activating and canceling reservations.
I can’t really make them give it up. I can look it up to see if they’ve activated it or just reserved it. If it’s just reserved I can calculate the date the reservation will expire if they don’t do anything. They could release it earlier or they could activate it so it won’t be released at all. I like to help people get numbers back when they drop, especially if it was taken by someone just because you used their look up tool on a website that grabs them, because that’s really not fair to the customer.
For some companies I can give you the contact information to ask them to release it, but the downside is that if you annoy them or if they’re just nasty that can cause them to activate it to make sure you won’t be able to get it. Ultimately the best solution is also to use our Keyword Search (http://www.TollFreeNumbers.com/keyword/) because that will help you often to find other numbers that are as good or even better, and numbers which you can activate right away without waiting. So give that a try, and let me know what the number is and I’ll see if there’s a chance for it by waiting.
I can’t make other people do the right thing, but I can do a good job here to help you as much as possible.
-Bill