Calling your Cell Phone is a mistake

01/05/2009

Many people make the mistake of calling their cell phone company and asking them about toll free service. The cell phone representative usually looks at them like they have three heads because they don’t have a clue about toll free service and they usually say it just can’t be done.

The truth is of course they can, but it costs them a little bit more and their goal is to sell more phone lines. They also want to make you think you have to stay with them for everything. Plus the entry level representative you talk to at most local phone companies really doesn’t know that much about toll free service and doesn’t want you to look bad. So they usually just say it can’t be done instead of they don’t know how or that their company won’t do it.

You don't have to wake them up, you can just use someone else!

New info on Prices, Cell Phones, and Voicemail

01/05/2009

We’ve changed a couple of the navigation buttons and added a bunch of new content and some new “Guides” for 800 Numbers going to Cell Phones and Enhanced Voicemail Services. Just click on the number 1 button or the $ button on the top left keypad navigation. I’ll include some of the new material in some upcoming posts in our blog as well.

We hope these new 800 Number Guides help to get customers the right information for their specific needs. This allows us to address a particular need better and tailor the message toward the customer needs.

Disconnected 800 Number List

01/04/2009

Someone asked if we could provide a list of the upcoming Disconnected 800 numbers that can be backordered each month?

Absolutely! We provide hundreds of lists of disconnected numbers every day to people who use the Keyword 800 Lookup or the Toll Free Search Engine. Both 800 number look-ups at TollFreeNumbers.com give you lists of disconnected 800 numbers and Available toll free numbers with every query. We don’t give out a master list of ALL 216,748 numbers in disconnect (as of December 29th 2008) though because that’s too big to be of any real use and it’s obviously proprietary.
More about the list of Disconnected 800 Numbers.

Pattern 800 numbers

01/03/2009

Have you ever dialed a number and thought as you were dialing it, that it had a nice pattern. Maybe it was all in one column, or row, for example. The only advertising I’ve ever personally seen that mentioned the pattern was AT&T’s dial down the center promotion for 800-CALL-AT&T.

Read more about Pattern 800 numbers

Can I make money just leasing out my number?

01/02/2009

Yes, you technically can, but most people don’t make that much. Shared Use (meaning breaking down and renting out numbers by the area code or some geographical territory) can be made to look like a get rich scheme by just running the numbers. However, if that was true and it really worked the way you’re imagining it when you run the numbers, shared use companies and their owners would all be rich.

People often think they’re the first ones to think of the shared 800 business concept. But it’s been around for about 20 years and 20 years later, some are successful and make money, but none make the money you would expect and many more than you would expect, never get off the launch pad or break even. That can’t be all because they don’t know what they’re doing.

Read more about Shared Use including some Advice to anyone thinking about getting into it.

Local Vanity Number section rewritten

12/31/2008

We can’t do local vanity numbers but there are more and more people interested in local vanity numbers, so I rewrote the local vanity number section. We can’t help people get local numbers yet but I do try to explain local numbers better, and to give people a little advice and suggestions about looking for local numbers too.

Digging Deeper Simplified

12/30/2008

We have pages and pages of information on how to dig deeper when an 800 number you really want, isn’t available. I’ve tried to simplify it down into just six sentences here, to make it easier for you.

1. There’s no easy way to get an 800 number that’s not available because there’s no whois lookup, so make sure you have a backup, and don’t ask us to do this for you.

2. If you can’t find the customer by dialing the Number or Googling the 800 number then you’ll need to looking up the phone company responsible for it.

3. Getting the customer name and address from the phone company isn’t easy either but we do have a private investigator that can get the customer information for you if necessary.

4. Once you’ve got the customer information you’ll have to research them and find the best way to approach them and sometimes even to track them down a little further if they’ve moved or gone out of business.

5. If you do talk to them and get someone with the old customer to sign off on it, we can get the number for you usually within 24 hours or you can use your own phone company if you feel comfortable they can do it.

6. There’s a lot more in the consulting section including lost numbers, negotiating, dealing with shared use numbers, what numbers not to pursue, cutting in line, and rescuing 800 numbers too.

World Class provider of hype!

12/27/2008

TollFreeNumber.org states on their website and in their blog that they are “a world class provider of toll free number services to small and home based businesses in North America.” What would you think that means? (hint: Most of the claims TollFreeNumber.org makes don’t mean anything at all!)

TollFreeNumber.org is clearly an over hyped Fake Phone Company

Who owns your toll free number?

12/26/2008

It’s easy to over look this simple question when you’re looking at all of the websites screaming about their great plans and features, but it’s one of the most important questions you better not forget to ask. In many cases it’s the most important question of all! And even if they say you do, what proof do they give you, really?

Most regular phone companies don’t intentionally cheat you, but regular phone companies aren’t the ones you find on the top of search engines. Unfortunately what I call, “fake phone companies” that don’t have any presence other than a nice website and don’t have a brand name, can get away with things regular phone companies couldn’t or wouldn’t.

That means they make the most money and tend to be the ones that can afford to pay the most per click and buy their way to the top search rankings with cheap marketing tricks. The important thing is that you really have to be careful especially with smaller inernet based services that don’t have anything to lose. Many of the nicest looking websites get away with a lot of crap and really do hold you hostage or worse.

Click for some specific examples and 800 services to avoid!

Merry Christmas from TollFreeNumbers.com

12/24/2008

Merry Christmas from Christopher, Rachel, and Alexis Quimby and everyone at TollFreeNumbers.com!