This Service goes by different names depending on the telephone company -Custom Ringing by U.S. West, Smart Ring by GTE, Ring Master by Bell South, Ring Mate by NYNEX, Personalized Ringing by Southwestern Bell, Call Identification Service by Ameritech, Ident-a Ring by Bell Atlantic, etc.

These services all work in the same manner. Two, and sometimes three, different numbers can be requested from the phone company. The numbers ring through a single line coming into the business or residence and each number can be distinguished by the pattern of the ring. These ring patterns are made up of various combinations of ring bursts.

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A backoder is an order for something that isn’t available yet. We only take 1 backorder per toll free number that is in Disconnect (the aging process before a toll free number gets returned to the available pool). We will do the research to get you the exact date it comes out and if it’s not canceled, we will try to get it for the customer the moment it comes out. If we get it, it’s their number, we activate it and they are charged the backorder fee based on the area code of the number. If we aren’t able to get it, there is no additional cost.

There is a lot more information and articles about backorders in the Backorder Section

An abbreviation for “Responsible Organization” which is the term for an organization or entity which has access to the SMS 800 database. There are around 300 resporgs. They would be “registrars” in the domain name terminology. Many phone companies are Resporgs but not all phone companies are Resporgs and not all reporgs are phone companies.

We have a whole section of our site for information on and related to Resporg. See http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/resporg/

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Digging Deeper is what we often call the process of going beyond the database search results that says a number is In Use or not available. We have a whole section of our site, The Consulting Section (TollFreeNumbers.com/consulting/).

The first step in ‘Digging Deeper’ is to find out the phone company responsible for the number. Then you would call and try to get enough customer information from the Resporg to be able to track down the old customer. Then you get the customer to sign off on a number, releasing it to you. There’s a lot more to it than that and it’s not easy.

A name coined by Bill for an organization with multiple RESPORGS (PIT, HLK, MYR, JWS) which grabs as many 8xx numbers as possible within seconds of their becoming available. We refer to them as THE BLACK HOLE because they suck up everything in the world and nothing ever comes back out. They don’t sell or release numbers to anyone at virtually any price. They have literally millions of the best toll free numbers which they use for Mass Misdial Marketing.

See also What to do if the number you want is in The Black Hole. Unfortunately the bottom line is obviously that you’re not going to get it, but this post goes into it a little more.

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Someone in the vanity number business who watches for good numbers coming into the available pool and tries to grab them up, either hoping to sell or rent them to an end user in the future or hoping to make money with them from the wrong numbers. The term comes from the domain name business where domain name squatter or speculators do this for a business. I used to call them brokers but they don’t like that because there are regulations against hoarding and brokering. Squatter is also more appropriate because some organizations really don’t try to resell the numbers, they just grab and hold them.

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This is just a list of terms I’d like to add entries in the Glossary for.
more terms to add

Some people refer to vanity numbers as mnemonic numbers because a mnemonic is a special word used to help a person remember something. So mnemonic numbers are numbers that use a word to make them more memorable. (more…)