Bill Quimby (510 comments.) says:
January 12, 2008 at 10:37 am

How dare they refuse to give their number to you!? LOL.

Why would a phone company want to “lock” a number, signifying a higher security for a number that can’t be released? I think it’s a more valid question to ask why any resporg wouldn’t lock all their numbers. But that would require extra work and would dilute the signal and meaning, I think.

Getting mad at it seems a little futile though, don’t you think? Another better question is probably why don’t other companies show this information and why isn’t it an option at most companies?

I should also point out that “Resporg Locked� is my own term. It is not a term connected to or used by the SMS800. I coined it to describe toll free numbers that are essentially held at a higher level of security. It represents both numbers that are in a 99 resporg code AND numbers with some other phone companies which I believe are essentially impossible to get. I show it as a way to signify which numbers are NOT worth pursuing. Oh, I do understand your frustration, but getting mad at the messenger won’t help very much either.

Bill

Bill Quimby (510 comments.) says:
January 22, 2008 at 1:41 pm

That’s a very good teleco explanation. These are numbers that people are taking extra steps to protect. And actually I took the term from the domain name industry that uses the term “registrar locked”.

Bill Quimby (510 comments.) says:
February 15, 2008 at 2:33 am

Claude,

I haven’t ever hear of a 00 status. 01 is the default for most resporgs. And 99 is the industry default for high security. It doesn’t mean it can’t be changed but it does mean that the resporg administrator gets a phone call if it’s changed for instance instead of just an email that can get lost.

Bill Quimby.

Bill Quimby (510 comments.) says:
April 1, 2008 at 2:38 am

No it’s really not necessary with us. We know that every customer thought that number was valuable and although we need to release numbers for our customers quickly, we also treat their number and their information with high importance. We ultimately treat every number as if it was in 99 code already, especialy when compared to a reguar phone company. But that is because this isn’t the main focus of their business the way it is ours.

Bill Quimby.

Bill Quimby (510 comments.) says:
May 7, 2008 at 11:59 pm

Dennis,

This is an interesting comment. The most obvious answer is that our system really didn’t change or maybe I should say that the only major change we did recently was to add the premium numbers and random 800 numbers. But adding those to the search results really didn’t put any less into the results. The clear issue is that it has gotten harder to get good numbers than it probably was the last time you were trying. Sometimes that can be because you were looking for a number in a less competitive category before, but I do agree that the competition has definitely stepped up quite a bit.

The best answer to what you’re trying to do, which we’re actually working on right now, is to do a more thorough search on every query. We’re doing this by adding an ‘800 Watch’ query the bottom of every Instant 800 Lookup Search Result page. We’re going to start by just adding it in a large third box below the other two. We may change the presentation once we get it up, but we really think this is too huge of an improvement not to add this asap.

You can get the more thorough results now by using the Keyword Lookup or the Advanced Keyword Lookup at http://www.TollFreeNumbers.com/keyword/. That will send you the results via email within a minute. We’re trying to get that process down to 10 seconds so it works better on a webpage.

By the way, that company that never releases anything is Primetel. They have millions of toll free numbers and I list them all as Locked because they never release anything. That’s why I describe them that way to get the idea across that they don’t release anything. They are an issue, but I really don’t want to say anything else about them because it won’t help anything or change anything.

Bill

Bill Quimby (510 comments.) says:
November 5, 2008 at 9:14 am

Mark,

The FCC oversee’s the toll free number database. see: http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/blogs/how-does-the-fcc-control-toll-free-numbers.html

Company’s go out of business sometimes. The numbers are held for four months for the old customer to claim them and then released if nobody claims them. Then anyone can get them and somebody often does.

If the one you’re looking at says Resporg Locked that’s a bad sign and means someone else not only has it they may have locked it because it’s important to them. If you email me the number I can tell you a little more from the resporg history.

Bill

Bill Quimby (510 comments.) says:
January 22, 2009 at 10:59 am

No, a password isn’t the same thing. A password is just an internal thing with your carrier. Resprog Locked is a status in SMS database.

Bill