We love Testimonial Links

If you’ve looked at almost anything on our website, TollFreeNumbers.com you’ve probably already seen some of our thousand plus customer testimonials. We really appreciate them more than we probably would in a big company, because they are from our work, not someone else in the company. Anyway, because of recent announcement and policy changes at Google we were recently told that we really had to change the links in our testimonials.

Our goal in everything we do is to maximize the benefit to the customer and that was part of our thinking with the testimonials too. But Google has made several announcements regarding paid links and link farms etc. Some experts also told us that although we’ve had the best intentions, these testimonials will appear to the Google bots like a link farm or at least will cause some decrease in our credibility if we’re linking to customer websites that aren’t related to ours at all and/or are of a low quality or in a bad neighborhood. Linking to anyone who pays you for a link without any disclosure is frowned on by the Search Engine gods and possibly even the FCC in some circumstances.

The solution was to add NO FOLLOW tags to the links. The link is still visible and still provides many of the benefits, for many of the search engines. See Joe Whyte’s article about No Follow tags and their effect on search engines: http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/blog/2007/05/do-nofollow-tags-really-pass-link-love.html

Heres what Joe Whyte at Search Marketing Standard says in summarizing nofollow tags:

1. They are good for getting a site crawled
2. They are good for helping a overall inbound links
3. They assist in search saturation
4. They can help pass relevancy
5. They are stupid and I hate them
6. They give people a sense of security which really is not there
7. Not many people use these correctly
8. I think if it would be up to us to help determine link value, someone should start a conference about it
9. I don’t think you can rank for competitive terms with just nofollow links
10. I think search engines pay attention to nofollows, to what degree is unsure

We never promoted the testimonial links as anything other than what they are and are supposed to be. We don’t want anyone to write a testimonial just because of the link. We don’t write them or tell them what to say at all. We only want people to write what they honestly feel and would say to someone else about us. It’s still beneficial to our customer’s sites, but the No Follow tags protect us from looking like some type of link farm and keeps the system honest and safer for us to do.

New Disconnected 800 numbers list

When a phone company goes under what happens to their numbers?

They are taken over by the people who manage the database and can be transferred away to another carrier. After a little while they go into disconect. If you want a number review the list. If you see a number that you think was one of yours at any point contact us and we'll help you get it.

Here's the list. It has about 8,100 numbers, most of which are '800!'
http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/800list-5-30-07.pdf
You can't just activate these as regular activations, but we can help you get these if you really want one and think it was one of your numbers at one time.

Fake it till you make it

When you start a new business you always have to “fake it, till you make it.” In other words you need to look like a successful ongoing business, even if you don’t have any real customers yet. But most startups are more than a little short on cash too which makes it hard to look like a successful ongoing business.

Getting a good toll free number is one of the first and best things you can do in starting a new business, but it’s not one of the last things you do when you’re starting something new, it’s one of the first things you should think about. That’s because having a good toll free number is one of the easiest ways to look (and sound) successful for next to nothing.

With a toll free number you’re basically just paying the cost of the incoming calls each month. Most services have a tiny monthly fee, of just a couple bucks a month plus you’ll pay a few cents per minute for a couple phone calls which cost you almost nothing. Don’t you wish your rent was based on how much business you did that month?! It’s not, it’s a large fixed monthly fee so you don’t want to get that way ahead of time. Your toll free number will cost you almost nothing to have and will make you sound more like a business than anything else.

One more tip is that you can set up a toll free number going to your existing local number. You don’t need to get a separate local number right away, because you don’t have many incoming call. When you use a toll free number you have much more control over the ring to number so you can start with it pointing to your current local number and when you are ready to launch more and start to get more calls then you can change the ring to number to a separate business line. Not having to get a separate business line for a few months will probably save you more than the cost of the toll free number, so having a toll free number will not only give you more control and make you look more professional but it will actually SAVE you money too. How’s that for a deal!!

We’re here to help but also to empower YOU

If you email use asking if a number is available, we may answer you, but we’ll usually just refer you back to the lookup tools on our site. We're not doing that because we're lazy or trying to be short with you, but simply because once you realize how amazingly simple it is to use, you’ll be able to do dozens of queries in less time than it takes us to do one for you with the same tools you have available right over the web. We do this because we really do want to be helpful. We’re not trying to brush you off, we’re really just trying to help you not only get the answer to that question but your next questions too.

We also have to work efficiently, often long hours, just to keep up with the volume of inquiries we get. We are here to help you, but it’s really not helping anyone to make you dependent on us. We’ve made the very best tools available to you right over the net, to empower you. That’s what the web is supposed to be about, putting the power at your finger tips 24 hours a day. So try the tools yourself. If you have a question about what something means or need something you can’t find on the web, we’ll be happy to answer you. That’s because unlike other web services, there are real people here that know this business, available to help you. But please respect our time enough not to ask us to do something you can do quicker and easier yourself.

Some companies steal your numbers...

Why is it important to get your number from an independent company like ours? Quite frankly, it’s scary what some small companies think they can get away with. Here’s a quote from a representative at Telecenter Voicemail, an enhanced voicemail service.

COA Network owns of all of it's numbers. We do not let numbers go and any number that is transferred to be on our service becomes the property of COA Network and will remain so even after the subscriber cancels.

If that’s not stealing, I don’t know what is. That was their policy about a year ago. When questioned about it, they refused to budge. Now a year later, they say they’ve changed their policy. Then the president said that wasn’t their policy.

I asked him if he was a democratic politician because they’re the only ones I know that can defend a policy one day and then a year later, say that was never their position.

I could go on about how horrendous this is, but I think it stands pretty much on it’s own and is obvious. This is why you should always get your number from an independent source and then transfer your number over to the service you want it with. That way you’ll be guaranteed to be able to transfer it away, no matter what their policy changes to next year. And if anyone ever has a problem with the ownership of any number I’ve gotten them, I will personally defend my customers. You still have an obligation to pay for the service you’ve received, but outside of that nobody will be able to steal any number we get for you away like this.

No Whois Lookup for 800 #s

People often come to our site trying to track down the owner of a number, but unfortunately there isn’t any whois lookup to see the owner a toll free number. We have the phone company information for most numbers but they are the only ones that have the customer information.

You can subscribe to our advanced lookup and get the phone company information. That doesn’t guarantee you’re going to be able to get the customer information from the phone company. In fact there’s a very good chance you WON’T be able to get the customer information from the phone company, especially if you ask them for it.

That doesn’t mean you can’t get the phone company to slip and reveal some of that information. It’s not easy to do, but I generally find that the best way is to act like it’s your number. Call them up and ask why its not working. See if they will give you a little information in order to confirm it’s your account. Say yes and look up the city here they’re located and see if you can get that too. It may take several calls, and you need to write down the names of the people you talk to, but you can sometimes get the customer name and the city they’re in, which is usually all you need to track them down.

We only charge a one time fee of $8.95 to subscribe to our phone company lookup. After you order the secure 800 Lookup online you’ll get a receipt. It’ll give you an order ID. Go to the secure version by adding an S after http. Enter your order ID in the Username and leave the Password blank. That doesn’t give you the end user information but it does get you one step closer.

Don’t marry the first girl you meet

So many people fall into this trap in terms of phone numbers. They fall in love with the first number they think of and think that’s the best possible number for them or even the only possible number for their business.

Worse yet, they let themselves fall in love with that number without even checking to see if it’s available or possible to get. This is a formula for failure. I often ask callers if they decided what house they wanted to buy before checking to see if it was for sale. Another even stronger way to say it, might be to ask if they decided what woman they were going to marry before they ever talked to her. It’s not entirely impossible for that to work out, but it is extremely unlikely to say the least. And it’s not impossible for you to get the first number you think of but it is extremely unlikely to say the least as well.

While you’re in love with your first girlfriend it’s easy to think that this girl is the only one that can make you this happy and nobody else will seem as good. If that girl isn’t available, it’ll probably be painful, but eventually you’ll get over her, and you’ll find out that there are a lot more attractive girls (and options) than you realized while you were pursuing your first love.

If you’ve got an important decision, it’s always much easier to make if you have all of the options researched in front of you. Whether you’re buying a house, picking a job or even a mate, it’s much easier if you know what all of your options are. That’s why I usually recommend that you use our Keyword Lookup to help you come up with all of the options related to your concept. It’ll do hours and hours worth of research for you in a couple minutes. And even if you still think the first one you wanted is the best, it’s still smart to have some backup plans and know what other options there are for you.

It’s OK to start with your first choice. Just don’t get fixated on that to the point of ignoring all of the other possibilities.

Channel Partners was a huge success.

We just got back from the Channel Partners show in Las Vegas. It was a great show for us this year. We had a great time and met a lot of excellent contacts in different phone companies and sales agencies.

The biggest hit was the preprocessed 800 watch lists. We put the company names along with a couple terms into the Keyword Lookup and made a report for each exhibitor. We handed out our phone button magnets and my new metal business cards. We had new embroidered shirts and everyone felt very professional and we looked like real team.

The titanium business cards were definitely a huge hit too. They were an investment, but I figured that since so many people get sooo many business cards at these shows, that this was a good way to really stand out. Every single person we gave it to was totally impressed, to the person. I can’t wait to go back to the next time and hear the continued reaction and how many people remember it from this time.

The shirts also made us look like a real team and a real business. That and our experience all made for a great function. I’ll add some pictures too

Phone Companies make mistakes

If you automatically believe the things a phone company representative that you don’t know tells you about a toll free number you’re definitely going to wind up operating under the wrong assumptions and heading in the wrong direction. It’s strange how people will believe things a someone they don’t even know the name of or what their background or experience is, who doesn’t really know very much about toll free numbers, and is just repeating something she thinks she heard someone else say, over me. They will even believe things you don’t even make any common sense at all and come back and essentially ask why I told them the wrong thing, or even worse why is my lookup tool wrong. I just don’t get it.

Several times per day I have to say no, they were just wrong. It may be that they misunderstood what you were asking for and therefore gave you the wrong answer. It may be that you asked the question wrong or for the wrong thing. They could just be repeating something they heard someone else say. They could even be saying something just to get you off the phone or to pass you on to someone else.

You also have to realize that most phone company representatives wind up with Cubiclitis. (Cubice-itis) It’s a mental disease that comes from sitting in front of a computer in cubicle too long. It appears most in customer service representatives of large companies. The three most recognizable signs are a person’s belief that the computer is never wrong, that if they don’t know how to do something it is impossible to do, and that if something is against their policy that nobody in their entire organization can do it. It can be passed on by word of mouth, even over the phone, but only to very gullible callers.

So the bottom line is that you should never believe anything a phone company representative says (especially if it doesn’t make sense) without verifying it with one or more additional calls.

How much help can we give

I always try to be helpful to visitors to our business or website, especially when people call with difficult issues for a toll free number. However that doesn’t mean that I can necessarily solve your problem or even tell you how to do it.

If it’s a number that we got you, I certainly feel we have more of an obligation. But callers need to realize that as much as I do want to help I really don’t get paid for solving most problems. And offering to pay me for my time is nice but there’s ultimately no mechanism for that, nor should there be. We really try to help customers because I believe what goes around comes around.

We’re always happy to help callers but some callers really need to understand that there’s a difference between being helpful and expecting me to guide you the whole way through their situation. I often find that after I give someone some advice I wind up with call after call, where they tell me everything that they did and were told so I can tell them what to do next, every step of the way. Like I said I want to help everyone as much as possible, and I like to hear the outcome of a difficult situation too. But you also have to respect our time at times too.

Some people seem to operate entirely under the assumption that what they are trying to do absolutely has to be possible. Unfortunately everything is clearly NOT possible and as difficult as that may be to face, it is ultimately easier to face that than to pursue something endlessly. Sometimes persistence means backing off on it right now and trying it again in three months. That often allows you to gain some perspective and proves to other people that you are persistent without being obnoxious or belligerent.

You might also get a way to follow up with an agent by just sending a thank you card and then a Christmas Card. You’d be surprised how few customer service representatives ever get Christmas Cards and how much more that will make them want to help you. You don’t have to send anything expensive but sending a birthday card will help you cross the line from customer to friend.
There’s another type of question too that we see and we are happy to get these. These are the questions that people call up with just to find out if we’re real. We have to answer their questions but the purpose is really just to make sure we are competent and willing to help them if they need it in the future. It takes a little getting used to, to recognize them but once you do they are very easy to work with. They are easily recognized because they are always the most obvious questions that are clearly answered on the website. It’s often a little frustrating when people ask questions that are clearly answered on our website, but this is a clear exception.

Transferring, activating & canceling reservations

Sometimes people ask if they can transfer a reservation or they go to their carrier and try to transfer a number they reserved on our site. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. You really can’t transfer a reservation. You can’t even yank (NASC) a number that’s reserved the way you can an active number.

If a representative tells you the number you reserved isn’t available that is usually because they are looking in the spare pool of numbers that are available, and when you reserve a number it’s taken out of the spare pool. Otherwise anyone else would be able to get it, and that wouldn't be a very good reservation.

If a representative tells you that you need to cancel the reservation so they can get it for you, don’t believe them. Canceling a reservation means that anyone can get it and there are definitely a LOT of sharks that are very smart and very fast. They figure if someone reserved it, it must be valuable to someone. So many of them will reserve it first and analyze it second. If it’s important you NEVER want to unreserved it, even for a second. This is especially important if you’re transferring the number to a smaller company because most small companies aren't resporgs so they have to go through another organization which they don’t control so there’s no way for them to get it done quickly.

Some phone sex companies have high speed programs that constantly suck up numbers blindingly fast all day long. You can take a random 8-0-0 number that has 1s and 0s and doesn’t spell anything and drop it into the pool into the spare pool and run a query in another window at the same time and it’ll be taken by the phone sex company before you can even click. They’ll get ANY number in less than a split second. I really don’t want to have to say I told you so.

Our whole system is designed to help you get the best number and then transfer it to whatever company you want it with. But you have to follow the system. We help thousands of customers get and transfer their numbers all the time and we know how to do it. The only safe way to transfer a number is to activate it and use the standard resporg change process. Here’s a link to the page that explains the process and links you to the secure order form to activate your number. Http://www.TollFreeNumbers.com/activation.shtml

After you activate the number you’ll get our toll free manual which explains the transfer process and includes your Toll Free Birth Certificate™ which is your proof of ownership so you can transfer the number. You send that in with the resporg change form that you get from the company you want to transfer it to. It doesn’t usually cost anything to transfer your number and it usually takes a few days. (see http://www.TollFreeNumbers.com/speed.shtml for the average speed)

If you were just canceling your reservation because you don’t need it, changed your mind or just reserved more than you needed, don’t worry about it. We really don’t cancel reservations. We keep them for more than 15 days in case customers change their mind, ask for time or just run a few days late. We don’t have a way to cancel reservations for two reasons: First, because after 30 days sometimes we reuse them for other customers or add them to our own pool. Secondly because it’s just not necessary. Unlike other carriers if you wanted to use it with another service than ours, that’s great. That’s really the whole point of our service anyway. So if you don’t need the reservation don’t worry about it, and if you do need it, just activate it and we’ll help you transfer it anywhere you want it safely and efficiently.

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Phone Companies make mistakes

If you automatically believe the things a phone company representative that you don’t know tells you about a toll free number you’re definitely going to wind up operating under the wrong assumptions and heading in the wrong direction. It’s strange how people will believe things a someone they don’t even know the name of or what their background or experience is, who doesn’t really know very much about toll free numbers, and is just repeating something she thinks she heard someone else say, over me. They will even believe things you don’t even make any common sense at all and come back and essentially ask why I told them the wrong thing, or even worse why is my lookup tool wrong. I just don’t get it.

Several times per day I have to say no, they were just wrong. It may be that they misunderstood what you were asking for and therefore gave you the wrong answer. It may be that you asked the question wrong or for the wrong thing. They could just be repeating something they heard someone else say. They could even be saying something just to get you off the phone or to pass you on to someone else.

You also have to realize that most phone company representatives wind up with Cubiclitis. (Cubice-itis) It’s a mental disease that comes from sitting in front of a computer in cubicle too long. It appears most in customer service representatives of large companies. The three most recognizable signs are a person’s belief that the computer is never wrong, that if they don’t know how to do something it is impossible to do, and that if something is against their policy that nobody in their entire organization can do it. It can be passed on by word of mouth, even over the phone, but only to very gullible callers.

So the bottom line is that you should never believe anything a phone company representative says (especially if it doesn’t make sense) without verifying it with one or more additional calls.

Why there aren't any '800' numbers available

I have tried very hard not to say anything about Primetel for a while. And I'm not going to say anything about them except to point out what they're doing a little. Whether it's good or fair is up to you.

Unfortunately there aren't usually any "800" numbers in the pool right now. I did an experiment though and took some reservations for '800' numbers that were over 30 days old and which were going to expire soon any way. They were just totally random 800 numbers with zeros and ones and they didn't spell anything. I changed them from reserved to spare and then tried to re-reserve them. They were already reserved in less than a second. I tried this at several times throughout the day just to make sure it wasn't just a coincidence.

It was too fast and consistent to be a human initiated search and it was always taken by the same people. It wasn't like AT&T or MCI was getting some of them too. They are using an automated system to constantly request ANY '800' number. I will continue to test this on other days just for the heck of it and I'll post the history of the numbers here to show the timing too.

The ability and process necessary to do that is impressive, as well as their willingness to do that so blatantly. Much to their surprise I'm really not against them in general. I look at them as the DeBeers organization of the toll free business. In some ways they make customers need me and my service more. And I'm also afraid that whatever actions are taken against them will also hurt the entire industry. So I'm not pushing for or encouraging anything. I'm just posting this here so that people can understand a little what is happening.

Don't trash them here. I will remove any over the top comments. That's not the purpose of this and it won't help you or anyone really.

InPhonics is still killing Sprint

No matter how many times you verify the information to the Indians working for InPhonics, they still can NOT seem to process an order. I stood in the Radio Shack where I placed the order, with the store manager and half a dozen Sprint accounts spread out on the counter verifying information till they promised me they had everything done. They offered to transfer me to a supervisor to review the acount and confirm that it was really done.

Yet, no matter how much they promise that they have the information and that they are putting it in to be processed, the next day you call back they still need to verify that information again. There is clearly a problem with the InPhonics order process, which is exacerbated tremendously by the people who work for them. I told the girl today, that she even gives telemarketer in 3rd world countries a bad name. I don't mind dealing with someone on the other side of the world to get something changed or fixed over the phone, but the organization and the people that InPhonics is using not only give Sprint a bad name but they even give Indian call centers a bad name too.

They are definitely giving Sprint a bad name most of all because act and seem to the customer like they work for Sprint and it takes a lot of pressing to get them to admit that they actually work for InPhonics. And from the consumer's perspective they ARE Sprint and they are clearly the problem in the system. I am writing this from the consumer's perspective but I also understand business and marketing as well being a small business owner in the marketing and telecom industry. Sprint needs to addres this with InPhonics very quickly because it'll do more harm to them and their name than millions of dollars in advertising can fix.

Your carrier says we rejected your request?

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.

(The paragraphs above are actually from our Toll Free Manual, but we run into this a lot so I figured it was worth posting here, since it's easier to refer people to.)

It's also important to point out that that the representatives you talk to are never the ones that actually send the form to the other carrier. Many phone companies aren't resporgs so they have to send the paperwork to another organization that will put it into their system and then forward that information to us. It usually takes anywhere from several days to a couple weeks for them to get the request to us. (see http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/speed.shtml) We process the requests the same day we receive them but it's usually not a good idea to release a number to the new carrier before they are ready for it.

The bottom line is that you shouldn't assume that when the rep says they've sent it in, that they've sent it to us, because it goes through several hands and stages on their side first. And if they tell you we rejected it, ask them f they'd like to talk to the people at the other carrier that do the releasing and give us a call with them on the line. That way we can talk directly to them and you won't feel caught in the middle. We release a lot of numbers and do this better and faster than anyone else and will be happy to clear up any misconceptions or confusion.
If your carrier says that we've rejected it

Fax detection problems

If you use an enhanced voicemail service or any system for all your calls that also detects fax tones, but you don't need the fax detection you should consider turning that feature off, if possible. Background noise or things can sometimes make the fax dection system think a regular voice call is a fax call. It is pain to the caller the first time, but if they hang up and call bck again, and the same background voice triggers the fax tones again, they're probably going to give up and may never call you.

If you need the fax detection, that's fine. But many people have seperate fax lines so they really don't need the detection system which could malfunction. This is just a very small tip, but it might be helpful!

Customers can be great therapy

That probably sounds kind of weird and is a little hard to explain sometimes, but we all have things happen and pressure in our lives. Maybe it's a flat tire, or having to deal with your health insurance company for something. When something gets me really annoyed I kind of like getting lots of customer calls. I think it's because this is my thing, and I can answer most calls without really thinking very hard. It's sort of relaxing and has become my routine or my comfort zone.

I don't know if it's good to admit this or not, but last summer I enjoyed being able to lay out on the deck and found that I can answer the phone and jump from call to call laying in the sun without even opening my eyes. Some things require changing things in the computer so I might have to get up and go back to the computer for some things.

I think it's also because half of the callers, especially the new potential sales are calling to ask a question or two, but really just want to find out if you're real, or if this sounds safe and someone or an organization they want to work with. That's one of the reasons why I don't think voicemail is good for sales, because customers don't want to just give you their information. They usually want to ask a question or two to make sure they're comfortable.

Just keep that in mind, especially when you end the call. Your sales may go way up, by just adding a little more happiness in your voice at the end of the call, and that will also wind up making YOU feel better too. You can't help but feel good, if you really feel like you're helping people and they really appreciate your service.

InPhonics is killing Sprint

I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating this is. It's like Sprint is intentionally screwing this up to see how much I'm willing to say about them. It's eight days later and three or four seperate contacts and they say they need more information again?! Words just can't explain the exasperation I feel about them.

I've kept Radio Shack's name out of this because I had thought they had done reasonably well in starting it all. It seems like it's mainly Sprint or whoever they're using to fullfill the orders that is screwing things up. But at this point I don't know who screwed it up or how they could have possibly screwed this up so badly and so long. It's like they don't actually know how to process an order or the fullfillment dept has spys for AT&T, trying to ruin Sprint quietly on the inside.

I'm going to bring this experience to Las Vegas next week at the Channel Partners convention. Sprint Wireless has a booth there and I'm sure there will be some higher level people involve in chanel sales and they'll definitely hear about this. I'm going to bring this to Radio Shack and give them a chance to resolve it and then I'm going to an actual Sprint Store. That may have been the problem from the beginning. I don't know, but from a consumer's stand point this is the most stupidest thing I think I've ever seen a large company do in a long time.

UPDATE:
I went to the Radio Shack and again they were very patient. I think I understand where the real problem is now. I changed the name of this post because InPhonics is the problem and that's what in this case is clearly killing Sprint, from a customer point of view. After another hour on the phone, this time from Radio Shack, I think I finally reached someone at the InPhonics call center in New Deli, India, who at least sounded like he knew what he was doing.

He needed my Nextel account number. Now the people at Radio shack got this with my SSN and Nextel phone number when we ordered it, so you would think that the people processing the order would still have it or have access to at least as much as someone in a Radio Shack store does. But they assured me that that was all they needed, and that it would be shipped overnight.

I also went to the Sprint Store in the mall and found that they DO have them instock and they had never heard of InPhonic. So if the phone isn't shipped and here tomorrow, I'm canceling it and picking it up at Sprint.

Misdials mean free sales!

Wrong numbers are usually considered a nuisance and in large numbers can be a royal pain in the neck. But what if you could get wrong numbers that were looking to purchase something from your competitor? I think that might change your attitude toward wrong numbers a little.

I’m going to show you a really cool hidden feature of our Keyword Lookup system that will help you find phone numbers that can send you a continuous stream of leads. All you need to do is enter your competitor’s phone numbers and we’ll show you all of the numbers that are one digit away from their number.

Write down one of their numbers and reverse the last two digits and dial it. If anyone answers it ask if this is the competitor who’s number it’s similar to and when they say no, ask if they get many calls for them. If they say yes, you know the other misdials will probably get wrong numbers too. If you can make a friend with them you can probably even give them your number and stay in touch with them. A Christmas card and birthday card each year might even guarantee that they give those callers YOUR number instead.

Go to our Advanced Keyword Lookup at http://www.TollFreeNumbers.com/more_info.shtml and in the keyword section enter the 7 digits of your competitor’s advertised toll free number followed by a space and then “(Z?)” where the ? is the third digit of the area code (ie 0, 8, 7 or 6). So if your competitor advertises 800-123-4567, in the Keyword box you enter 123-456 (Z0). You can put as much as you want in, one per line. You’ll get a list in about three minutes of all of the numbers available or that are going to be available. We’ll even redo the research for you every month.

Warning: Once you try this even once, it’s very easy to get addicted. You’ll start to notice the competition’s phone numbers everywhere and you may wind up with more leads than you know what to do with. Don’t go too crazy though, stick to your direct competitors and try to make the numbers go to different lines so that you can measure their effectiveness, because some numbers will wk much better than others.

This works best for gorilla marketers who compete with large advertisers in industries that have a high value per sale or lead. The more they advertise their number, the more leads you’re going to get. And the best part about it is that they will probably never even know you’re doing it. I’ve even talked to sales representatives who do this with the main company number. And if they do find out, there’s nothing they can really do even if they wanted to. You didn’t mislead anyone or make them use and advertise their number. And it’s probably not worth the expense to change all of their advertising.

A friend has a number one digit away from a large mortgage company and he gets about 100 leads per month from it. All he does is take down the customer information and gets paid $20 per lead. That’s not a bad little side line business, with no advertising or expense at all except answering a few calls. Oh, and you might want to put in your own advertised numbers too. You’d hate to find that your competition is doing this to you!

How to minimize wrong numbers

There’s no real way to tell ahead of time how many wrong numbers a toll free number is going to get. In general toll free numbers get more wrong numbers than local numbers because there are many times as many calls to them as there are to local numbers.

There are several types of wrong numbers. That is probably a good topic for another post, but I’ll touch on them quickly. You may get some callers looking for the previous customer. There are also about 150 neighboring numbers for any phone number when you get creative and figure out all of the possible different ways to dial it wrong. There are people simply assuming that if they dial a large company name they’ll probably get the company. Some people will read or hear 866 or 877 and remember the name and that it’s toll free and they’ll dial the 800 version. I call that roll up, because the wrong numbers roll up to the 800 version, they don’t usually roll down to the 866. This is also why "800" numbers also tend to get more wrong numbers than 866 or 877 numbers do.

Getting a few wrong numbers is to be expected. But getting too many of them definitely becomes a problem, especially for smaller businesses. There are several things you can do to deal with wrong numbers to minimize their impact on you and your business. The simplest is to look at the geography of the callers. If you do business in one state or a part of the country and most of the wrong numbers are coming from a different part of the country, then it’s very easy to block the service for that area.

If you need to receive calls nationwide or if the wrong numbers are coming in from the area you need to get calls from the best way to minimize their impact is to put an automated greeting on the line. Most wrong number callers will hear that message and realize that they probably dialed the wrong number before they get to a live person that way. This can make you sound professional as well as reducing the wrong numbers before they get to a live person.

One of the reasons we always recommend transferring your new number to your regular carrier before you need it is to make sure you don’t get too many wrong numbers early on when you still have an option to change something. You don’t want to find out you’re getting a lot of wrong numbers after you’ve printed it on all of your marketing materials and commercials.

Oh, and there’s one more easy solution to wrong numbers. Just change the number. If it’s new and hasn’t been advertised it’s certainly possible to get a different number. If it was a standard number that we got you from the spare or available pool, or a numeric (star) number, we’ll be happy to give you another equivalent number at no cost. You should also consider if those calls might be valuable to anyone. Numbers that get wrong numbers are often very valuable. Some numbers generate calls that can be turned into a significant income just from answering the phone, because those calls are often leads for someone.

If you have any interesting wrong number stories, please add them below!

Misdials or problems with Q, Z, zeros or Os

0 = none
1 = none
2 = ABC
3 = DEF
4 = GHI
5 = JKL
6 = MNO
7 = P(Q)RS
8 = TUV
9 = WXY(Z)

When I first started this business in 1995, we had to stay away from any words with Q or Any, because some older phones didn’t have a Q or Z on the keypad or a few even had it on the ZERO button. The buttons we use now were standardized in the late 80s. Today there are VERY few phones left that don’t have the Q or Z or have them in a different place. So that really isn’t much of a concern any more.

Some people have also had issues with people confusing the ZERO button with the O (which is on the SIX button with M N O). That isn't usually much of a factor except in very high volume, easily monitized commercial situations. In other words unless you get a huge number of calls for something that people can easily make money from, it really doesn't matter much. The best example is probably 1-800-FLOWERS. It's easy for any florist that uses FTD to take calls that go to them by mistake and 1-800-FLOWERS is a high volume application.There are of course numerous factors to weight in picking your number, but I wouldn't avoid terms with Os. It may be worth checking, but I would only try to get the misdial zero option if it was a high volume monitizable situation.

Matching domain names & 800 #s.

A memorable domain name like PCFunding.com is obviously a valuable name. And of course a memorable vanity number like 1-800 BEST LOAN is obviously valuable too. They're both excellent marketing tools and using both together obviously generates more response in advertising.

When you combine a vanity number like 1-800 BEST-LOAN and the matching domain name 1800BESTLOAN.com, the whole becomes greater than the parts and the response is multiplied. Your message becomes sharper, more focused, less cluttered and clearly more memorable.

Good domain names are obviously very difficult to get. And so are good 800 vanity numbers. So you might assume that it's practically impossible to get that golden combination of a matching domain name and vanity numbers. But if you start with the phone number first, that's not necessarily the case because if you get a really good '1-800' number means the matching domain name is usually available.

Unfortunately many people start with the domain name and then limit the number of 800 number options available. But the best advice is to start with the phone number first. Then if you find a good number, you can usually get the matching 1800domain.com by putting the area code in front. 888, 877 and 866 numbers don't don’t give you quite as much of a brand name as the ‘800’ does but they can still work well for smaller businesses. Some squatters have registered domain names to match valuable generic terms or vanity numbers that are advertised. There are over (20,000) 800 number domain names registered but there are still tons of good 800 number domain names available, especially if you’re more creative.

Being more creative is also important to getting a matching toll free and domain name combination. Don’t limit yourself to the first thing you think of, because that’s usually the first thing other people have thought of too. Most people tend to think the first number they set their heart on is the only or best number, just like most people do when they fall in love for the first time. They can’t imagine there will ever be anyone else as perfect as that first love. Unfortunately most people don’t marry their first love. But after they realize their first thought isn’t going to work out, they usually realize that there are a lot more options than they realized at first.

It’s also hard to make an intelligent decision when you haven't really investigated all of the options. This is true in marriage, it's true in a job search or moving to a different part of the country or almost anything the requires an important decision including your toll free number. This is definitely a whole topic by itself, but being creative is even more important when you’re trying to get the matching domain because the most generic domains have often been registered already.

1shoppingcart’s system is down again!

All the commerce at TollFreeNumbers.com goes through 1shoppingcart.com. Actually we rely on them for even more than just the commerce. Their system does most of the follow up emailing for orders and reservations and is the basis for the affiliate program too.

A high percentage of the customers we get are starting their own business so I often get questions about who we use for the commerce on our website, among other things. I used to rave about 1shoppingcart. We’ve used them for years and have been very happy with them. They’ve been responsive and helped fix things and even made changes in their system for us at one point. If there was any one vendor that I would want to lose the least in my business, it is probably them. We rely on them quite a lot and it would honestly be a nightmare to change things at this point. That’s why my comments here are very reserved but also why I think it’s important to say something too, because I wouldn’t want anyone else to wind up being so dependent on them at this point.

I think the problems honestly started when 1shoppingcart was sold by the original founder to a larger company several months ago. There weren’t any changes at first but there have been more and more problems lately that are definitely hurting. And the worst part is that they seem unable to explain them and simply try to brush them off as “upgrades”.

Their “upgrades,” to the order notification, consisted of removing much of the information necessary to complete the order (including the shipping address, the affiliate information and the comments). They took all of the information out of the subject and did this all with no notice or warning at all. When asked about it, they simply said this was an upgrade that had been planned for some time and was in response to user requests. Even when asked politely over the phone they simply refused to explain anything or give even a plausibly honest answer.

I didn’t really say anything about this at the time. They put most of these things back over the next week. Rita and I figured that the best explanation was either a hacker “broke” the code or merging the system into the parent company’s system broke it somehow. Oh, I forgot to mention that the system had been getting slow and even blacking out momentarily before the email notification changes. Unfortunately that wasn’t the end of it.

We recently noticed another issue with the affiliate program. The bottom line is that they simply shut it down. They say it’s part of an upcoming upgrade, but it’s been down for at least this whole week allegedly for an upgrade that hasn’t even gone into effect yet. I definitely hope their “upgrades” to the affiliate program are worth shutting it down like this for.

I’m not attacking or bad mouthing 1shoppingcart here. I’m merely trying to share what I’ve observed personally. I’ve been a customer of theirs for years and I rely on them quite a bit. I have nothing to gain and no axe to grind beyond the truth. I believe the benefit they have provided to my business over the years I’ve used them outweighs the recent problems. But I can tell you that I have a lot more concern about them at this point than I ever did before and I don’t recommend them to customers like I used to.

Update: 2/28/07 It's still deader than a door knob.
I also did some research and 1shoppingcart is having a LOT of other technical problems, especially with email delivery. They had to change their whole email system because it got blacklisted. They've got a LOT of problems lately. One other possiblity we came up with is that after the merger some of the key technical people may have left or been let go? That's just how it feels, anyway.

Sprint disaster...

I got off the phone with yet another phone rep for Sprint in India and the only way to summarize the Sprint signup process is EXTORTION followed by INCOMPETENCE. The bottom line is that the rep couldn't for the life of him, begin to explain why they held up my order just to ask me my name and email address.

If there's one thing that you would think they should know it's my name. I was transferring an existing Nextel account to Sprint and as I already mentioned we have multiple Sprint accounts already. And my name was on the original order, and they said they emailed me the notice earlier this week (although it was probably blocked). There is just no way to describe this order experience as anything but pure incompetence all the way around.

We'll see if it does actually get here on Tuesday like they said it would. I'm not getting my hopes up since nobody I talked to could seem to get anything else right, why would I think that's any different. I can't tell you how bad I wish someone else had the free incoming plan because almost all of my calls are incoming so that makes it so hard to use anything else for my type of business.

Sprint screws up Treo 700p orders PART 2

No matter how screwed up you think Sprint is, they seem to keep finding more ways to screw this up. You would think after hours on the phone and taking my money, that they would know what my name is. It's printed on the computer receipt I received. It's on the 4 other Sprint bills that I get at the same address. There's no way they didn't have my name or could have just forgotten. Yet, that's what they held it up for yet again.

I ordered it Monday and they said they were shipping it overnight and that it would be there Tuesday. Now on Friday when it was again promised to be shipped by the idiot in India they decided not to ship it because they needed to confirm my NAME. You would think a big company that's in the business or providing cell phone service would actually be able to take an order and ship it.

Sprint really seems determined to piss off their customers...

Sprint screws up Treo 700p orders

I recently ordered a new Treo 700p from Sprint and it’s amazing how screwed up big companies sometimes get. They took the order and $434 later they gave me my receipt. I upgraded from my blackberry and although it’s not cheap, I was excited. We had gone over absolutely everything for almost an hour and I walked out of the store with my receipt and they said they would have to fedex me the phone. I understood as they change so fast that it’s hard to keep them in stock in a small store that sells a lot of different phones. They’re also expensive and relatively light so it makes sense to just overnight them.

Unfortunately the next day when I checked the status after not receiving it, I got a message saying that my credit wasn’t good enough or they needed more information. Now, maybe my credit isn’t perfect but I’ve had a phone with Nextel for years and years, since they came out with the unlimited incoming calls. I’ve upgraded a couple times, and I actually have 4 accounts with Sprint or Nextel all together including all of the cell phones and air cards that I pay for. So it seemed strange that they would have a problem with me. And besides I was in the store and gave them all of the information they needed.

I tried calling the number but got lost in a maze of voicemail options so I figured it’s easier to just go back to the store. Unfortunately they didn’t even have access to the message I got and just called the same number. Eventually we wind up talking to an operator in India, and believe me it was obvious we were calling the other side of the world. The call sounded like she was on the moon more than India and the operators poor English didn’t help things.

Anyway, after I had already paid $434 for the phone and was agreeing to upgrade to about $225 per month for just about everything unlimited, they decided to charge me an additional “service fee”. Actually they had added two additional fees that the store had no clue of and couldn’t explain. The operator couldn’t really explain it either, but said that they were upgrade fees.

I can understand having to pay a significant amount for a good phone. I can also understand needing to have reasonable credit. But I don’t understand why Sprint couldn't tell me the real price up front; why they stopped the order holding it up for almost four days all together because of these mystery fees; and why they couldn’t even explain what they were for. The bottom line is that once you order something it seems like extortion to tack on additional hidden fees. Otherwise you’ve already paid for the phone but they're not going to activate it for you. Actually I had already paid for it, but they weren’t going to even send it to me. And when they did send it, they sent it four days late.

Come on Sprint, ordering a new wireless phone shouldn't be such an ordeal. You spend millions of dollars on advertising and then make your new customer hate you before they even get the phone. It’s not the additional $48 and $15 they wanted to charge, it’s the way they did it that just makes you feel like you’ve been taken advantage of. This isn’t exactly toll free oriented but it’s phone related so I figured it was worth venting a little. I’ll write a review of the actual phone later too.

What are you really buying?

When you buy a number from us, what are you really buying? You're actually not buying the number, you're paying us a consulting fee for our time to help you get the number set up. That isn't just technically true, but that's ultimately what you're buying and why it's more than worthwhile.

You are paying us for the assistance that we provide in searching for numbers, you're paying us for the time and resources it takes to activate the number for you. By the way, our fixed costs to run the resporg and the website overall, are over $20,000 before we even activate a single number. So from that perspective $49 isn't just inexpensive, it's downright cheap.

You're also paying for someone that knows what they're doing to help you if you need it. Whether it's making helpful recommendations about the different types of service, different voicemail services or just releasing the number right away instead of dragging their feet and being unaccountable. Try and call up the resporg department in any other phone company and you'll be amazed that you can't even get the phone number for the resporg department in any other phone company, not to mention talk to the person who does the releasing or get them to do something right away when you need it.

That going the extra mile is what has earned us more testimonials than you can even count, let alone read. We are competing against some of the largest companies in the country. You might think that is hard, but it's actually amazingly easy to do a better job than most companies by simply answering your phone and doing what you say you will do quickly and readily. It's being willing and able to pick up the phone and calling another carrier's resporg department to let them know a number has been released or is ready to be released. It's having a reputation for being the fastest in the industry so that other carriers know a number is going to be released quickly and set up the programming right away, instead of waiting three or more days to even check the status of it. All of this is what you're really paying a few dollars for.

Sure, technically you can get a toll free number for free from many phone companies. And yes, technically they may be able to get numbers from the same pool or they can work through someone who can get numbers. But the layers of bureaucracy in large companies, the extra time they take, their lack of documentation or knowledge about this can wind up making the "free" service cost you much more in the end. That isn't even taking into account the higher prices your large local phone companies usually charge. We're very efficient at this and know what we're doing more than anyone else. There is no second alternative or anyone else doing this the way we do.

There will always be people trying to save a buck and get something cheaper no matter how good of a service you provide and how cheaply you offer it. You could say the bottom line is that you more than get what you pay for, but we really try to give you more than what you pay for and that's how we've built our business without any advertising at all. Every customer not only gets a number from us, but they get real service and help from the best experts and leading innovators in the industry. I often tell people that they have a friend here if they ever need it and I mean that.

Locating local vanity numbers

We really can't do much for local vanity numbers. The Keyword Lookup (aka the 800 WATCH) actually evolved from the work that we did for the Local Number Locator. But unfortunately the local number program we used to have really isn’t working any more and there are too many major projects under way for the Keyword Lookup that we aren’t going to have any time to fix the local number program for some time.
I’ve left the section for local vanity numbers on the website though because we’re going to add local vanity numbers to our database and search system a little later this year. It’s not searching the way people usually expect though. We’re going to add some pools of numbers to our system from voip companies. It may find a local (non-toll free) number with your word or phrase in it, but it’s not going to be in your local area. Voip services can be accessed from anywhere though so you don’t need to have one from your local area code. That will be nice in some situations but it’s really not the solution for your current needs. It’s still going to take a lot of programming not to mention networking before we’re quite ready to go with that.

So the best resource that I usually wind up telling people to use to help track down a specific number (which they are usually looking to do when they ask me about finding a local number for them) is http://www.fonefinder.net. That will at least get you to the phone company responsible for that local number. Whether they’ll help you at all is the next hurdle and often the dead end. But be persistent and don’t take no for an answer, at least from most representatives that really don’t know what they’re doing.

Unfortunately unlike toll free numbers that are held in one central pool that can be searched and dealt with effectively, local numbers are very decentralized and each little phone company manages and dictates what will be given to whom. They make up their own rules and procedures and they really don’t care all that much if you want a number that is buried within their system somewhere. They make the rules and although you may get different answers from different people, you really can’t go around that local company and get someone else to do a better job and help you. Local numbers are a royal pain in the neck most of the time and you need more luck to get a full vanity number locally. Nice numeric numbers are easier though locally. That’s because they’re more visible and there are a lot more of them locally than there is in nationwide toll free numbers. I hope this is helpful for anyone looking for or thinking about a local number.

No '800' numbers available?

Out of the 7,690,000 possible 8-0-0 numbers, there are often times at this point when there won't be ANY true ‘800’ numbers in the SMS/800 spare pool at all. That’s right, none at all.

You might think that the lookup tool is broken or it’s just not showing them, but it’s not. It’s easy to check if the Instant 800 Lookup on our site is working by submitting a query for all *s with 8** for the area code. That will always return 10 ‘866’ numbers because that’s what it looks for first. If you don't specify what area code it'll start with the ones most likely to have more numbers available, 866 and 877. That makes sense from a database programming stand point, even if it doesn't really make much sense from a marketing point of view.

There are a couple solutions to this scarcity though. You can try searching after 1am (est) because the new numbers come out after midnight. So at that point most phone companies are still asleep but you can often get something. (My lookup isn't usable from 11:55pm until 12:20am though to get backordered numbers)

You can also use the nice numeric options in my numeric number section at http://www.TollFreeNumbers.com/6.shtml. Those are a little more expensive than the more readily available spare $49 numbers, ranging from $99 to 995, but at least there are a few good ones that are ultimately better than you would be able to get with the lookup tool directly.

Finally as a last resort, we can try to get you one random ‘800’ number from numbers that were reserved for 15 days and are scheduled to be thrown back into the pool. These are only $49, but you can't pick them, hence the term random. But we will do our best to help you in any direction you need to go to get a good number, activated quickly and transferring them to whatever company you want. The proof of ownership alone is worth way more than the $49 one time fee, no matter how much advertising they do.

Changing the ring to number

Yes, one of the important benefits of a toll free number is that you can change the ring to number. That's why our signup form says INITIAL local ring to number. You can certainly change the ring to number. There is also no charge for changing the ring to number at any phone company that I've seen either. By the way a toll free number can't ring to another 800 number (see http://800s.blogspot.com/2007/01/800-to-800_30.html)

To change the ring to number at a regular phone company, you usually have to call customer service. It's not an instant process but it goes into effect within a couple hours depending on their system and how fast it updates. It's not something that you would want to do to change the ring to number to your cell phone every time you go out the door. If you want to do that or make very short term changes with a regular carrier you would really want to use call forwarding on the local number.

One great tip that I used for years is to use Forward No Answer and Forward Busy (a type of call forwarding) on the local number so that if I didn't answer the local home office line after a couple rings or if I was on the phone and another call came in, it would forward to my cell phone. That way I could walk out the door and it would automatically "follow me" to my cell phone. That is great for a lone eagle type of home based business but it doesn't work as well though if other people answer the first number when you're not there.

The other type of toll free service, I usually refer to as Enhanced Voicemail Service or sometimes as "Milkshake" toll free service in my Milk and Milkshake analogy, makes it a little easier to change the ring to number. Those services usually have an internet control panel of some kind that you can log in to, to change the ring to number. Many will also allow you to try multiple different numbers or schedule the calls to go to different places at different times, or even rotate the calls. These cost a little more per minute because you're also paying for the voicemail platform but can give you a lot of nice features and make you sound very professional too, and if you need to change the ring to number a lot can definitely be a good option. We give you a list of some of these Enhanced Voicemail service in the Toll Free Manual that you get after you activate a toll free number.

Sale on Backorders

We haven't really ever had a sale on backorders. We've given away a regular activation with backorders but we've never just lowered the price before on backorders. But that's what we're doing right now for a very limited time.

Any backorder requested between today, February 10th and midnight on February 15th will be discounted $50. This only applies to requests placed between the 10th and 15th regardless of the actual time they come out of the aging process. We have a new database updated today and are sending out 20,000 email search results. So don't delay because any good number in a popular category it's probably on at least hundreds or even thousands of other emails.

We're doing this to promote our new backorder system because on the 15th we're going to update the system and any backorders placed before then will be taken out of availability for the rest of the month. If this goes well, we might keep this sale going to give people an incentive to respond quickly to the 800 WATCH emails.

Better Backordering

We've added a long overdue feature to the backorder process that allows backorders to be removed from availability after they're backordered. We've struggled with the management of the backorder list for some time, because the best numbers are often backordered by multiple customers. The more we've grown the bigger that issue has become. And since we can only accept a backorder from the first customer to request a number we often have to cancel backorders for numbers that have already been requested.

This means that if a number gives you a link to backorder it, unless it was just taken within the past couple days since the last update, it's really available to backorder. These databases are bigger than most people realize and since they are kept in several different systems processing changes turns into a nightmare, trying to keep everything flowing smoothly and quickly. But we've come up with a very important enhancement to the system so that we now suppress numbers that have already been back ordered from the 800 WATCH system. This will save a lot of unnecessary work on our part as well as a lot of frustration on the user's part.

This also means we really need to add a new product we've been hoping to add for a long time now, a Premium, Earlybird 800 WATCH. The regular 800 WATCH is truly one of a kind dd goes out to 20,000 or so people now, which means that the things on your list may be sent to thousands of people interested in this phone number business. That means that goes out to a select list of premium 800 WATCH subsides. We'll probably be announcing that advanced sign ups for that with a lot more next month.

As with everything we do, our goal is just to help you find the best possible and since things come and go all the time, this is the only real way to stay on top of all the possibilities. There is also a much higher turnover rate for this than there is for most other comparable items because it's harder to recognize good numbers than it is to recognize good domain names, for example. And this combined with some internal improvements in the backorder process should really make a big difference for our customers.

Webmaster Radio is definitely a mistake

Success is a trial and error process, and the one who is successful is ultimately the one that makes the most mistakes but learns from them what not to do. I don't do a lot of advertising with my business, but I tried something recently that definitely turned out to be a mistake. It sounds great, and is a great idea and a great match for my service. But one of the things that I've learned in trying several things is that the people behind any service make or break it. That is as true in my business as in any.

One example I found the hard way was Webmaster Radio. It makes a lot of sense and could be a great service. Unfortunately the people running it seem to be the thing holding it back. I'm sure there are probably a few people that have had a good experience. But I have to be honest and say that they not only didn't deliver what they promised but the people or at least the management turned out to be real jerks (to put it nicely). It didn't live up to it's potential and I guess a small account can get lost in the shuffle. That's the best description of what happened to me, except that it didn't work for us at all. And when I did speak up enough to get someone higher ups attention, I wished that I hadn't.

I would have to give their service two thumbs down. It probably won't really matter to them and doesn't relate to the theme of this blog in some ways. But I think that I have an obligation to be fair and when I see something that I love and works great, I'm going to tell you about it, and when I see something that really stinks I also have an obligation to tell others then too.

A renewable resource?

If we get tens of thousands of numbers for customers are we ever going to run out?

We really don’t want customers to get rid of them, but I noticed this and thought it was interesting to see how toll free numbers are ultimately a renewable resource at least to a degree. I’ve seen this before but this was a real good example that I thought was interesting…

Press Release: Superbowl Commercials

What Did Only 4 out of the 68 Superbowl Commercials Have This Year?

(PRWeb) February 6, 2007 -- The answer is that only four of the 68 superbowl commercials this year contained Toll Free Numbers. Bill Quimby, the founder and president of TollFreeNumbers.com, also pointed out that all of them were vanity numbers or numbers with letters that spell things instead of digits, because that makes them much more memorable and is extremely important for branding.

The four commercials that included phone numbers were E-Trade (Getting robbed by your bank) 877-E-TRADE-4, HP (Orange County Choppers) 800-525-MYHP, Flomax (kayaking) 877-4-FLOMAX and E-trade again (1 finger) 877-E-TRADE-4.

This is down from nine commercials last year because some advertisers, even ones with prominent vanity numbers didn't include them in their commercials this year. FedEx for example didn't include 1-800 GO-FEDEX. They also downsized the domain name too, to make it much smaller and less prominent. Even Sprint and T-Mobile, both of which are obviously phone companies, didn't include their toll free vanity numbers.

The Superbowl is all about branding, so it's not really that big of a surprise that the companies spending the millions of dollars to advertise on the Superbowl aren't really looking to create a "direct response" such as sending viewers to their website or get them to call. Maybe it's also partially because the audience is so big that getting even a small percent to call would create a spike that would be difficult to handle.

Whatever the reasons, some Superbowl advertisers seem to have opted not to include their phone numbers and downsized their domain names. At the same time, a few companies have made specialized sites or pages specifically for their campaign, such as SnackStrongProductions.com.

Mr. Quimby explained that noticing vanity numbers is an occupational hazard. He has literally helped tens of thousands of companies find great vanity numbers through his Internet service TollFreeNumbers.com. His business model is very similar to another famous Superbowl advertiser, GoDaddy's, except that instead of domain names, he gets his customers memorable toll free numbers for a one time fee of $49. Unlike regular phone companies, he's not trying to sell the ongoing use of the number, just helping customers get better numbers in ways the big phone companies don't.

Superbowl commercials and vanity #s

Almost two out of three superbowl commercials (44 out of 68) included domain names but only four included phone numbers all of which were full or at least partial vanity numbers. They were all toll free of course too, but I don't think there's been a non toll free numbe in a superbowl commercial in decades.

The four commercials that included phone numbers were E-Trade (Getting robbed by your bank) 877-E-TRADE-4, HP (Orange County Choppers) 800-525-MYHP, Flomax (kyacking) 877-4-FLOMAX and E-trade again (1 finger) 877-E-TRADE-4.

This is down from 9 commercials last year because some advertisers, even ones with prominent vanity numbers didn't include them in their commercials this year. FedEx for example didn't include 1-800 GO-FEDEX. They also downsized the domain name too, to make it much smaller and less prominent.

I didn't count the number of commercals last year that included domain names, but it seems like the companies willing to spend millions of dollars for superbowl commercials aren't doing it to get calls or clicks, but to build a brand. They are carving their place and position and

The superbowl isn't about direct response, it's all branding and creating that name which consumers connect with the service, not just a specific domain name or phone number. So in many ways it's the wrong place to measure the use of vanity numbers, but it's not only the highlight of the football and maybe US Sports in general, but it's also the biggest night of the year for TV commercials too. We watch for them and talk about them. And since I live the vanity number business I couldn't help but see and count them.

Matching your local number

Some people go to our site and put in their local number, trying to match their local number. That is fine if it's available, but I always point out that, matching your local number is only memorable to the one group of people that you don't need to make your phone number memorable to, the people who already know your phone number.

Having a local number and toll free number matching does look cool on your business card and does have a cool professionalism to it, but if your local number is random it's throwing good money after bad and you should really look to see what better options you can find that will increase the response rate to all your advertising, not keep it the same as it is now.

And for anyone with a nice numeric number that ends in 00 or 000, don't get your hopes up for getting the matching '800' version. 00 or 000 numbers in 800 are literally a hundred more times harder to get than they are in most local area codes. That's because there are almost 200 local area codes nationwide so there are 200 times as many people competing for them in toll free area codes. And nice numeric numbers are visible to the phone companies so they don't give them up but take them and recycle them internally giving them to their biggest advertisers.

We'll be glad to get a toll free number that matches your local area code if it's available and that's what you really want, but my advice would also be to use our tools and see if you can find a number that is more connected to your advertising. Maybe you should consider both and use one in your advertising for new customers and the matching combination on all your operational materials. That way you can tell how many calls you're getting from new customers versus existing ones. That alone can be extremely valuable information. And it really doesn't cost you any more since you would be receiving the same number of minutes, just splitting them between two different numbers.

Free #s for Blogger

We are giving away free vanity numbers to anyone with a blog during the month of February. We'd like you to get a number for yourself (or any service you'd like it for) and write a review of our unique service and mention that other bloggers can get a free number too just for writing a review too.

Use the lookup tools on our website to find a good # that's currently available, and then use this link on this page to activate it for free: http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/bloggers.shtml We'll give you better proof of ownership, free temporary service and help transfer it to any phone company you want for the ongoing service. We are basically the GoDaddy of toll free numbers.

So we'd like you to get a number for yourself and write a review of the process and tell other bloggers that they can get a number for free too. My only request is that you use both the Instant 800 Lookup and the Keyword Lookup that emails you the possible numbers and get a number for yourself (for free), and that you link to both the home page and the bloggers page in your review.

Worldwide toll free service?

Our toll free numbers are accessible nationwide by default. You can add Canada or a few territories mostly in the Caribbean too if you want, although they cost a little more. The simple way to explain it is that you can’t call a toll free number in the North American Numbering Plan from anywhere that you have to dial a country code to reach the US. Unfortunately there is no great solution for worldwide toll free numbers. On the other hand since there’s no common world wide toll free system

There are UIFN numbers but they have to be set up country by country. You can also set up separate toll free numbers in many countries or work with a service that has different local access numbers already set up in each different country. But none of that is as easy as regular toll free numbers are here. Most people who do business outside of the US, list a local number and their email address. You could also use a service like skype to get a US number which would allow you to get through on a US toll free number. You could also use one of the click to talk services like GizmoCall.com which would allow someone to download a small program to access the US numbering system through the Internet.

When I got my HP laptop, it came with a whole booklet of contact numbers. I laughed because that really illustrated that there is definitely no simple solution to receive calls worldwide. But you can forward calls from within the North America to almost anywhere in the world. This is very helpful for companies outside of the US looking to expand within the US. See http://www.telcan.net/, (also under http://www.callture.com/) http://www.uwtcallback.com/ or http://www.get1800.com/. Al of these companies can forward toll free service basically anywhere in the world and control it with a portal.

Nationwide coverage?

Vanity number squatters usually want to rent out numbers by area codes because they make a lot more money that way and maintain control. But when you don't own the number, the more you advertise the number, the more you wind up at their mercy. Your ability to change carriers is also your ultimate guarantee that you'll always have decent service and a competitive rate too. It's much more important than most new customers realize.

That's why every number we get for anyone is always nationwide. Actually you can also add Canada and a few territories too if you want. You can block calls outside your area if you want or need to. But I usually don't recommend that unless you're getting a lot of wrong numbers from other areas. You don't want someone local that uses a cell phone, skype or a voip service with a number outside your area code to be blocked. The ability to be sure where someone is calling from by their number is fading with new services and local number portability.

Toll free service to a cell phone

Many phone companies don’t like to provide toll free service to a cell phone for three reasons. It costs them a little more to terminate the calls to a cell phone, they don’t get the outbound long distance which they always want to sell too, and they're usually smaller accounts too. So most companies just say they can’t or won’t do it. It's really not that they can't but they just don't want to or quite often don't know how.

Most cell phone companies and voip companies are usually pretty ignorant about toll free service and how to process transfers, not to mention how to help you get a good number. To be fair though, I don't know how to even use half the features on my own cell phone so I couldn't begin to do their job. But I really focus on finding valuable vanity numbers and have gotten good numbers for tens of thousands of s over the past 12 years so I’ll be happy to help you. And the bottom line is that you can certainly point any toll free number you find with our site to any cell phone company you want.

Look in the toll free manual that we email you after you activate a number for an explanation of the process of "Picking Your Provider" and some forms. You can of course take your number to any company you want but we also try to make it as easy for you as possible to get not only the best number but the best service for your needs too.

But I kind of like it warm...

This isn't really toll free or telecom related but I thought it was worth pointing out that it's been a very warm and mild winter this year in the Northeast where we're located, here in New York and New Jersey. The global warming zealots will probably say this proves "Global Warming" but I think it's really because I got a new snow blower, so of course it's February and we haven't had an inch of snow yet.

I also really enjoy asking people if they like the warmer winter or not? I suppose that some people who ski a lot are missing that a little, but almost everyone I've talked to has really liked the milder winter. So if this is caused by driving SUV's or anything we're doing, we should go and do as much more of this as we can. Lets all buy Hummers!

In all seriousness, we clearly don't need to change our cars that way any more than we all need to ride bicycles. But my point is that we're not all dying and the world isn't coming to an end when the average temperature is much more than 10 degrees above average. So if we're raised the temperature 1.3 degrees over the past 100 years, at this rate it will probably be even nicer here at least, in another 1000 years.

There are cycles and the earth may be warming, but that clearly doesn't mean the world is going to end. Chicken Little is cute in the cartoon movie, but I'm sorry, it's just not a catastrophe in reality.

7+ digits on a cell phone

Every couple months I hear someone say they couldn't get through on our number. That usually means theyre calling from a cell phone. Anything after the first 7 digits is usually ignored. The last R is basically only there to make it easier to remember and it doesn't matter if you dial it or not. But some cell phones think you must have hit the small buttons wrong and don’t put it through. It’s not network specific, it’s related to the hardware.

Some of the newer phones are even smarter and will put toll free numbers with extra digits through but they’ll block local numbers with additional digits. In any case, most people look at the screen and then drop the last digit. You lose far fewer calls for that than you would for people that don’t remember your phone number, although the people who don’t remember your phone number usually don’t contact you.

Some people don’t want a number that stands out. I usually point out to them that your goal isn’t really to make the most important part of your advertising, the call to action, blend in. Your goal is to really get them to notice it and think about it long enough to get it to stick with them. Some people do really funky things to make their commercials stand out. You don’t have to go crazy but you shouldn't worry so much about trying to make it blend in or take less thought, if that makes sense. Part of the job of your advertising is to get the visitor to notice you or think about you.

Unlimited toll free service?

People sometime to go looking for unlimited toll free plans because they like that for their outbound phone service. Ironically it's the people that need it the least that tend to want this, which is probably why a couple companies you've never heard of, pretend to give something called an Unlimited service. It NEVER really is unlimited but they can sell some people on it as long as they hide the limitations deep down in the fine print.

If you think about it, it's pretty obvious that almost any big business could blow out any really unlimited toll free plan. Companies like 1-800 FLOWERS would LOVE it if they could get an unlimited toll free service. They can generate thousands of dollars per hour in toll free charges so they'd blow any real unlimited service out of the water. No big company uses anything like that because, point blank, it just doesn't exist. There are ALWAYS catches and limits to it. There has to be. And further, there is NO REPUTABLE COMPANY that sells any unlimited service.

I personally own several domain names related to flat rate 800 service and have even worked and tried to promote a couple services like that, but the only way that they can exist and make money is if the customer uses less than what they're paying for. I have thousands of small business customers and the average bill for them is much lower than you would think, probably about $12 to $15 per month. That's because toll free service is cheaper than most people realize.

Most new businesses tend to picture a huge volume of calls and think that $49 a month will be a bargain, and if you know that you consistently use just a little more than what they are charging, it might be. But in reality, most customers will wind up paying for more than they use, and the ones that use more than what they are paying for will usually have a spike of calls at some point and then the company will cut them off, often imposing huge penalties or at best, charging a higher per minute rate or simply asking them transfer away. Either way, you are at their mercy because you can't afford to have your toll free service shut off when you need it the most.

So the bottom line is that you should never use a flat rate plan unless you have a track record of using more than the monthly fee is on another service and also know that you won't have any spikes that push you too high above what you're paying for. Think of it as a gambling game and them as the house. You may think you can beat them and may do it for a little while but they wrote the rules (and often rewrite them as necessary) and once you have the number advertised you are at their mercy and the system is set up to insure that the house always wins.

I know a couple people in the industry won't like someone exposing this but I think it's also important to point out that I'm probably the only major person in the toll free business that's not trying to sell you their service. So I really have no axe to grind at all, except to be a valuable resource to my visitors.

800# to an 800#?

Can I have one 800 number ring to another 800 number?

No you can't point a toll free number to another toll free number. It's kind of like dividing by zero. You can point it to the same local number the other toll free number points to, or you can transfer it to the same service that the other number is with and they can point it to the same place (even if they don't give you a local number). This sometimes comes up in connection to toll free voicemail services, or a call center type service that only issued you a toll free number without a local number.

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.

Who are our competitors?

Rita and I were having this discussion recently about who are competitors are. A customer had told us how someone he called a competitor of ours was putting us down. The customer was great and of course the comments only made the guy making the comments look bad to the customer. I appreciated his I told the customer that it really didn't bother us, because he's really not a competitor any more at this point.

I used to say that I was a Telenumeric Consultant, and I guess I still am to some degree. But my role has switched from being a consultant to being a vanity number service. I built my business as a consultant and still have that attitude to some degree. I still have the free consultation button on the page and take phone calls personally as much as possible. But I've only done one or two consulting type jobs in the past six months. I also get more toll free numbers for my clients per month than any of the other "consultants" do all year. It's not eve close.

There are still a couple people that think of me as a consultant and I guess it's natural to try to compare themselves to me or to put me down in order to make themselves look bigger. The more successful you are the more people try to compare themselves to you and the more they try to tear you down. But like I said to the person that thought someone else was a competitor, he's not a competitor for me any more than a domain name squatter is a competitor to GoDaddy.com.

We're really only competing with ourselves. What we do is really different than what the regular phone companies do and from any other vanity number broker/squatter. We're not trying to take business from anyone else, but to fill a need that neither of them are really addressing and to build this niche into a much more widely recognized and understandable market. That's why we have to provide more information and education and why we have to make it so simple that anyone can easily find and activate a good number for their business.

The # of 800 #s available

Here are the number of toll free numbers in use as of Saturday 1/27/07 at 11:59pm

Important 800 Lessons

Some people think it's helpful to put the local number in your advertsing as well as the toll free number. One down side of this is that you may not realize if your toll free number isn't working. And that can cause an even bigger problem. Whatever you do, do NOT let your toll free number be disconnected for months.

A customer recently called because they just realized that their number was disconnected. Unfortunately they didn't realize that it was disconnected for four months and one week. And like clockwork, the number came out of the disconnect aging process after four months and 7 minutes later it was taken by a phone sex company.

This is a HARD lesson to learn. But it's important to repeat and try to help others to avoid this, so here are the lessons we need to learn from this.

1. Always dial your toll free number BEFORE you put it into new advertising.
2. Dial your toll free number periodically just to make sure your toll free number is NOT disconnected for an extended period of time.
3. Use our free monitoring service to make sure your own number is never disconnected and it'll also show you if any of the other area code versions are disconnected too.
4. If you have any problems with your toll free number, call me right away. Don't wait months because if someone else takes it after it goes through the aging process there's very little anyone can do.