When a number gets disconnected it goes into an aging process.  One of the main purposes of that period is of that the customer has a chance to notice that it was disconnected before someone else gets it.  Most of the time, by the time it gets disconnected, the customer doesn’t know, doesn’t care or doesn’t even exist any more.  (The exception is Sprint which puts numbers into disconnect very time the customer is late with their payments and creates what we call yo-yo numbers.)

The bottom line is that the customer has the right to get the number back before it comes out of the disconnect period, and they can sign it right over to you.  You can then reactivate it and transfer it away before the number comes out of the aging process and any else has a chance to get it.  That’s what we call “Cutting In Line” because you’re not waiting for it to come out and taking a chance of losing it.The simplest way to summarize the way to approach the end user is to make a friend and make it no big deal.  The key to this approach is to position the number as already disconnected, often long time ago and they aren’t really giving it up, they’re just waiving the disconnect period.  It’s just because phone companies are so disorganized that the number is still suck in the system.  It’s easy to blame it on phone companies being bureaucratic and disorganized, because almost everyone has seen that first hand.  Telco’s have the lowest overall satisfaction rate of  industry for a reason.

The other critical point is to be friendly and make it no big deal.  If you make the other party think it’s a big deal it will be, but if you make it no big deal, it won’t be to them and it’ll be easier to get their approval.  Basically without a price tag it’s only as big of a deal to them as you make it.  That’s why you have to prepare all of the paperwork and make it super easy for them. Include a nice gift certificate so they feel like you appreciated them, and if they like you and it’s not a big deal to them, they’ll probably be happy to help you out.

Cutting in Line is a good thing to do (or at least try) when you can’t wait for it to come out of disconnect and/or it’s to important to your business to take a chance of missing the number.  If you get it by Cutting In Line you do NOT have to pay our backorder fee, since we didn’t get it for you coming out of disconnect.  You would only have to pay the Cutting In Line fee ($1195) if you want us to process it for you.

The bad part about this process is that its not easy, and as I mentioned, we can’t do the legwork and negotiation for you. We can explain the process here and give you paperwork which we guarantee to be able to get the number with, as long as you give us the correct paperwork in time.  We basically explain the process and do the part that you can’t do yourself.  You can get the customer information, track down the customer, and get them to sign off on the number.  If you’ve gotten this far you probably already saw those sections of this document and the related articles.  If you have any questions please click on the post for questions about that section so we can answer your questions for everyone else as well.

See also:
Cutting In Line forms

Technically you could try to get the paperwork to do this yourself through a regular phone company but this is not the normal stuff and they will often give you very different answers about this when you talk to multiple people because they really don’t do this type of thing.  The person you talk to is also not the person processing things so it doesn’t matter what the person you talk to promises, they really have no accountability.  We charge a fee of $1195 (just a few hundred more than the backorder fee but you’re paying for our accountability and reliability in addition to our knowledge and experience.

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