The process of transferring a toll free number is pretty simple. Some companies make it more difficult than it needs to be. It’s actually pretty similar to the process of changing any service such as your long distance phone service, a domain name, or any gas or utility. You sign up with the new provider and they notify the old one for you.

You can transfer your toll free number fairly easily to any phone company you want. We have collected the forms necessary for a couple companies to make it easier for you. You can fill out some of the forms right online and some are even attached to this document and are automatically filled out for you so you can just print, sign, and fax them in. We really try to make it as easy as possible. If you want to transfer to a company that we don’t have the form for, just ask the company you’re switching to for the form they use to transfer a toll free number. You fill it out and give it back to the new company, along with your Toll Free Birth Certificate™. Then print and fax them in and you’re done. This really is YOUR number and you can transfer it to any phone company you want. We only provide the forms as a courtesy for customers that want some input or help. If you were sent to our site by another phone company, you should definitely contact them right away to get their forms and go back to them.

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One of the biggest advantages of using our independent service is that you can use any phone company you want for the ongoing service. I provide a few options to make it as easy as possible for customers, but the most important thing to remember is that this is your number and you can transfer it to any toll free provider your want.

All you need to do is to get the form they use to transfer toll free numbers. It’s usually called a Responsible Organization (sometimes abbreviated as Resporg) Change Form or an L.O.A. I’m collecting the forms of many companies, but you’ll need to fill their form out and return it to them. They will enter it into their system and then forward the request to the releasing carrier when they’re ready for it.

Resporg forms vary but they aren’t that hard. You should know the customer information since that’s you. One question you might not know is the previous phone company name, “Resporg.com.� Our resporg ID is QZA01, and if there’s room you can add our fax # (800-FAX-0095). Some Canadian forms ask our address which is on the third page. The only other question that some companies have on their resporg form is whether the services is Switched or Dedicated. Unless you’re a very large account the standard answer is Switched.

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There are a couple reasons why your number may not be working. I’ll outline some of the things you can do to correct or at least narrow down the cause. t’s also important to realize that since most of the issues relate to the free temporary service and it’s limitations, all of these issues will be eliminated as soon as you transfer your service to another carrier.

Regional issues

The regional routing can cause problems with both cell phones and voip phone services like Vonage because of their non-regional nature. Many cell phones are used outside their local area and like voip phones which are non-geographic by nature and are often routed differently than land lines. They aren’t always a problem so rather than preclude them I usually just suggest that customers try them and if there is a problem we can just change the ring to number to another number to confirm whether that was the problem or not.

Another even simpler cause is that you’re simply not calling from the same regional area as the ring to number is in. That may be because you were pointing the calls to an answering service or an office in another area than where you’re calling from or simply because you’re traveling. The simple solution to any aspect of this issue is just to get someone to call from the local calling area of the ring to number.

Human error

We all make mistakes. We don’t claim to be perfect and don’t require you to be either. If you made a mistake and entered an incorrect number or if you think we did, we will be happy to check and correct the situation immediately. Either of us could have translated the number incorrectly, or entered the wrong toll free or ring to number. The ironic part is that there’s actually a higher likelihood of finding a number available, when you enter the wrong number. We will simply do whatever it takes to correct the situation for you including changing the toll free number to any other number that is available if there was any error.

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Another issue with some cell phones is that many don’t like phone numbers longer than 7 digits plus the area code. This isn’t all cell phones, and it depends on the hardware, not the cellular network. I don’t think this is really as much of an issue as you might think at first because if you think about human nature, the first reaction if a call doesn’t go through is always to look at the screen which then shows that the digits don’t space out and look correct. Cell phones also have a back button and simply hitting the back button a couple times works fine. The call doesn’t go to anyone else and works fine when the caller takes a minute to think about it.

Some advertisers act it’s bad to make callers think about their phone number. I think that’s absolutely wrong. The whole purpose of your advertising is to get viewers to think about it. If you think about it, this extra effort only helps to insure that these visitors remember your vanity number. There aren’t any statistics because this just isn’t a major issue.

Here’s a real life example, 1-800 GO BUDGET

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Canadian customers won’t be able to get through on our temporary service at all since it’s not available in Canada. The only solution for Canadian customers is to transfer the service to their Canadian carrier as quickly as possible.

There are also some cases where the local phone company (usually the smaller ones) simply refuse our complimentary routing requests. This isn’t very common, but all of these problems are also why don’t charge for or sell the regional service. We can change the ring to number but the only answer to this is sometimes just to transfer the number to a regular carrier. See also our Canadian Section.

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Unfortunately it’s often necessary to follow up with most companies to make sure your number(s) are transferred properly. I generally give them a week and then I refax the original request with a note asking about the status. That way they have all the information in case it got held up for any reason and it’s generally faster and easier than trying to get through on the phone.

TIP: If you put a different ring to number down on the transfer form, you’ll be able to tell when it’s transferred much easier.

We generally process all transfer requests the same day we receive them, or within 24 hours, but that is definitely not the industry norm. Most companies take several days just to process release requests. That’s why it generally takes at least a week or up to several weeks for most carriers to transfer numbers. It usually takes most carriers an average of a week just to enter the order and send the resporg to the releasing carrier. We’ve been logging the length of time they usually take and will have some statistics available on t average processing time soon at Resp-org.com.

There are a couple ways that you can check to see if the transfer has gone through. If the number was on our temporary regional service, you’ll know that the number has been transferred if callers are able to get through from outside your area. Sometimes people will point the number to a different number so they can tell when the number is transferred too. And when you get a phone bill from the new carrier that will also tell you whether the number was transferred. The most definitive way to know whether a number has been released is to use the Ameritech hotline, 800-337-4194. After you enter your number, if it says that the company is not recognized and gives a code of QZA, and our phone number, then it is still under our control. If it says someone else, then we’ve released the number.

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One of the things that gets to me sometimes is phone companies that seem to automatically blame the other carrier and say that a transfer request was rejected even if they never put the request through. They tend to do this because the other carrier is usually as bureaucratic and hard to reach as they are and because they don’t want to admit that they’ve had the request for a week or two and haven’t even sent it to the releasing carrier yet. Fortunately we’re not bureaucratic or hard to reach. So if any phone company ever tells you that the number was rejected, you should call us with them on the phone. If you call us with them on the line, we can often clear it up. But if you call us after hanging up with them, you wind up being in the middle and it’s harder to sort it out than it is if you bring the two ends together.

Most phone companies look for any reason to reject an order and end up rejecting a high percent of requests. That’s why resporg forms always tell you to fill it out exactly the same as it appears on your phone bill and often request that you include a copy of your phone bill. We do things differently though. We’re not trying to hold onto our customers. We’re the only phone company that is trying to give away our customers and help them transfer to other companies as quickly as possible. So rather than looking for any excuse to reject a transfer request we look for any excuse to release a number. We can’t release a number if nothing matches up, but as long as something matches, whether it’s the company name, the address or the signor we know our customers want to transfer the number. That’s why it’s almost always false if a phone company tells you that it was rejected.

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Phone companies tend to be pretty big organizations so it’s hard to give much feedback or comments to anyone that can appreciate them. As you’ve probably realized TollFreeNumbers.com competes in some ways with Fortune 500 companies but is the opposite and is essentially a one man operation. My name is Bill Quimby and I founded and together with Rita, we run all of the daily operations directly, with a very hands on customer oriented approach that is the opposite of most phone companies today. Customer feedback is one of the most important things to me. I try hard to use any feedback to improve the service for everyone.

I also really appreciate testimonials, probably more than a large company does because I built most of this myself. I post them on our website and include them in rotation in the search results and many of the pages. Many people do hundreds of searches at a time so that keeps it a little more interesting, especially if I can include an image or logo. Our site ranks extremely well and a link on it, to your website is probably worth most of the cost of number we got you. I don’t promote that as a reason to buy from us, but it’s definitely a valuable and worthwhile perk. We get several thousand searches per day so that get’s a fair amount of exposure, not to mention benefitting your link popularity too. So if you had a good experience, please drop me an email so we can put it with a link to your website.

One of the most valuable things we offer is our ongoing monitoring system. It will check and send you the status of specific numbers once a month so for instance, if you got a number but would like to keep an eye on the 800 version we can monitor it for you. Maybe you didn’t get your first choice in terms of a vanity name. Well 26% of all toll free numbers change status or carrier every year. So there’s a very good chance one the numbers you really wanted will be possible to get in the next couple months. You’re busy running and building your business and don’t have time to go and check the status consistently, just let us check it for you and email the results to you each month.

The 800 WATCH can also find good numbers for almost any core word too. It’ll put together a thorough list (usually with several dozen numbers) of the possible numbers for any phrase. This is great for anyone that didn’t get their dream number. If you have to settle for a less than perfect number for your business, this will make it easy to keep track of and keep checking for better numbers.