Renting 800 numbers?

Someone asked me today, if I can help them deal with someone that wanted to rent them a number. I explained that I can't do that for several reasons. First of all most people in the "shared use" business hate me because I get people good numbers, generally for a one time fee that's a small fraction of their monthly fee. I also give customers a much easier alternative and expose their practices, among other things. I've probably said most of that in places on my website, but at the end of the conversation I said something that I thought summed up the situation with anyone wanting to rent you a "shared number".

Don't rent a number or a part of a number from anyone that you wouldn't trust with your entire business. Because that is exactly what you're doing when you put their number in all of your advertising. Some of the people in shared use are decent, good people trying to make a living marketing a good number. But this industry isn't very well lit if you know what I mean. And there are definitely a significant number of people that know this gives them tremendous power over you and your business and no matter how good they sound at the beginning will eventually use this power over you and your business.

So the bottom line for shared numbers is always "Buyer be ware". And that's why, even though I have found some good numbers that other people use in shared use, and I have a few numbers that with probably be useful too, I don't market them or that type of service. I could probably make a lot of money in that, especially given the amount of traffic we receive. But there's a lot of temptation in that segment to wind up hoarding numbers which is against the FCC regulations and to take advantage of customers once they are unable to change their number.