10 Recent examples of Stolen 800 numbers
I read a tip on blogging that said to make lists. Visitors love large lists so I thought about it and figured that since I’ve been running into so many stolen number situations. Well stolen is a strong word, lets just say they’ve been taken or assumed ownership of a number or numbers without the proper permission or even against their will.
1. 1800DialWord.com appears to have taken 180 numbers most of which are 3 and 4 star numeric numbers easily totaling well over $100,000 worth of numbers from a Paetec account the day after they were disconnected for an unknown reason.
2. Loren Stocker steals 800-HOME-123 The owners had to get a US Court Order in order to get 5 vanity numbers back from Loren Stock of Vanity International who took them while they were of as part of an estate and refused to transfer them to the appropriate party.
3. 888-761-POOL Phone People Phone People took a request from the customer and got the number from the spare pool based on that request but then a year later claimed that it was their number and that
4. 888-NATIONWIDE WireStar Communications
We can’t discuss the details of this because of considered litigation but it is confirmed that the number was transferred away inappropriately.
5. Custom Toll Free – I can’t mention the name of the customer or the number of the current ones, but we get customers that use their lookup tool and suddenly even numbers that were available on other sites are suddenly only available from CustomTollFree.com. And worst of all, customer’s don’t realize that they claim ownership of all numbers that are searched for on their website and they will only ‘rent’ them back to you. It’s kind of like a domain name search site that reserves everything that it finds available and if you want it will put it in THEIR name so you have to rent it from them forever at whatever rate they want to charge. Fortunately we can usually get the numbers when they drop off of reserve. See http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/blogs/providers/custom-tollfree-steals-800-numbers.html
6. Alarm Monitoring lines… At least one major alarm company has been inappropriately taking over the numbers of many other alarm companies. They seem to be just acting as the owner to transfer them or using connections within large phone companies.
7. 800-727-1802 and 1803 were taken by someone using the victim’s information and signing a transfer form. And even with all of the documentation Terri Lee couldn’t get her number back for months.
8. 1-800 BIG-GIRLS was taken by Pilgrim. The owner used them as a service provider for many years and then Pilgrim just took it and says it’s their number now. He doesn’t have the old phone bills from several years before or the money to fight them legally so he’s basically screwed by the phone sex business.
9. 888-411-EASY were taken by the customer’s phone company. The customer transferred a couple numbers and then three months later was told that there was a billing glitch and that his numbers were given out to other customers. They claimed it was issued to a rental car office in Hawaii, but he had called the phone company so much that he recognized the voice of the representative who answered. So he tried to book a car making the phone company representative dance and trip all over himself pretending to be a rental car representative which he obviously wasn’t.
10. 888-243-1797 Onebox We have been reporting about several numbers which Onebox representatives have specifically yanked from the customer as well as over 2800 numbers in total that were taken from TollFreeMax and TollFreeExpress which Onebox inappropriately claims ownership.
These are just some of the specific situations we’ve had people approach us about over the past few months. I don’t know if things are actually getting worse, but it’s more important than ever to both have independent proof of ownership of your number and to keep it active and documented at all times.
Next I’ll have to make a list of ways you can protect yourself as a follow up!
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Vanity Number Brokers and Sharks don’t like 855numbers.com at TollFreeNumbers.com says:
July 8, 2010 at 3:48 am
[...] Stocker, one of the vanity number brokers, is already complaining to other resporgs about what we’re doing at 855numbers.com. I guess [...]
Loren Stocker at Vanity International at TollFreeNumbers.com says:
August 10, 2010 at 12:00 pm
[...] I’m being very careful in what I say for good reason, but I think it’s important to at least share a little bit of my own personal opinion in this case. He seems to have somehow taken numbers from people inappropriately, including 1-800 HOME-123 [...]
Auctioning 855 Numbers = “Brokering” at TollFreeNumbers.com says:
August 18, 2010 at 3:13 am
[...] 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. [...]
Do some phone companies steal their customer’s numbers?! at TollFreeNumbers.com(new comment) says:
October 23, 2011 at 8:01 pm
[...] call from someone that had gotten a number from us, with a problem which I included in a post about 10 examples of Stolen 800 numbers. He had transferred it to a phone company you see on the Internet. Just over two months later when [...]