Was available but was taken recently
10/21/2008
Was available but was taken recently means that it was available as of the first of the month but it’s not coming back as available now. There are a couple reasons for that.
1. It may have been activated by another phone company for someone else just like the message suggests. Several thousand numbers per day come and go from the national SMS/800 database. Our look up tools also used a cached database concept like a search engine does, to search hundreds of numbers at a time, much faster than they could connect to the national database.
2. If you look up a number twice within two minutes it’ll still be on hold for the first query so it’ll come back as unavailable on the second query. This is a function of the national database, not a reason to freak out and think anyone is out to get you.
3. If you looked up that number on another website, most websites will automatically reserve any number you find available so you have to get it from them. In the domain name business this is called Front Running. This is called business as usual on most other toll free services on the internet. The only other site that is safe to search on is AT&T’s. Don’t use any other 800 number search tools on the net to check for numbers or the numbers you find will suddenly be unavailable.
4. The SMS database slows down at times, especially at peak day time hours and if it doesn’t come back in time our look up tool will give you a negative result thinking it must have been taken recently. If you see this on several or all of the numbers you’re checking, especially early in the month, email us a list of numbers you’re interested in and we will try to check them live for you.
We obviously can’t do this constantly but we will try to do it for a couple numbers for you. We want do that as a backup if you’re running into this a lot before you get too frustrated. We can’t ultimately do anything about the availability or turn back the clock to 1993, but we will do whatever we can to help you get a good number.
