Accepting Financial Responsibility for Wrong Numbers

A toll-free number is not a miraculous filter that instinctively blocks incoming calls you would prefer not to take. Unfortunately, you have to pay for all incoming calls within the geographical region you specified when you set up the toll-free number, including the calls from people who mistakenly dial your toll-free number. Just as old homes bring unwanted mail, every toll-free number has a history that can affect how many mistaken calls you get. The longer a toll-free number has been active for another company, the more people will still have the number listed on the five-year-old letterhead or the ten-year-old business cards.

You can also get calls that are simply misdialed. The caller may have entered 800 rather than 888, or transposed some digits. Generally, these calls are only a handful per month and amount to a few pennies, hardly worth doing anything about them. However, the calls appear on your invoice and you are expected to pay for them.

 Remember  Because the true 800 numbers have been around the longest, they have the most baggage in terms of potential carry-over calls from previous owners. If you order a toll-free number that begins with 800, you can expect calls from people trying to get life insurance quotes, make payments on their cars, or ask for technical help on the turbo engine they just bought for their new scooter. If you really have a problem with these calls, you should request an 877 or 866 number for your toll-free service. They are newer and generally have less baggage.

This isn’t your daddy’s 800 number

A long time ago (you know, back in your daddy’s day), all toll-free numbers started with 800. Now times have changed. With cheap long-distance calling, as well as a huge population of fax machines and cellphones, everyone (including your daddy) can have his own 800 number. And it seems like everyone decided to get one. When the supply of 800 numbers ran out, a new 888 exchange was released for toll-free calls. People loved the 888 numbers so much that in a few years the 888 inventory was running thin as well. So 877 and 866 were released as the new toll-free numbers, with plans to open 855 in the future. These new number exchanges mess up the old nickname for toll-free numbers. You can’t really call them 800 numbers because toll-free numbers may have any number of configurations. To avoid confusion and avert disaster in the world of telecom, the generally accepted practice is to refer to the whole bunch of numbers — 800, 888, 877, 866, and even the yet-to-be-released 855 — as 8XX numbers, or as I do in this book, just toll-free numbers.

 Warning!  If a business accidentally lists your toll-free number, or one that people easily confuse for your number, in their latest marketing blitz, you could end up receiving thousands of misdialed calls per day. Every one of these calls takes time to answer and resolve, even if all your employees say is, “Sorry, wrong number.” A month later, when you receive your invoice you will also remember that you have to pay for them. If you see the handwriting on the wall that the wrong-number calls are going to eat up your time or your budget, you have two choices:

• Block your toll-free number from the geographic area the calls originate. If your business is in Seattle, Washington, and all your calls are coming from people trying to win a sweepstakes from a local radio station in Cincinnati, Ohio, just block access to your toll-free number from Ohio. As long as you don’t have any existing or potential customers in the area you are blocking, you have nothing to fear. And you can always reinstate access from Ohio callers when the buzz dies down.

• Cancel the toll-free number and get a new one. I know it sounds brutal, but you may have no choice. You can’t easily filter the wanted from the unwanted calls. In the end, you will have to make a business decision whether to keep the toll-free number and live with the added time and expense, or make a clean break and get a new number.