Step 3: Validating your dedicated RespOrg

There are two key elements involved in routing calls to a toll-free number: the RespOrg and the carrier receiving the traffic. Unless you have direct access to the national SMS database, you can't confirm any of this information by yourself. Your carrier has access to this information. You must find out who controls the RespOrg status of your dedicated toll-free number.

Tip If your toll-free number has not finished the provisioning process, you will be kicked back to the person who enters orders. Luckily, if you already left a message for your provisioner before you called (see "Step 1: Identifying a provisioning issue," earlier in this tutorial) the carrier is already working on your issue by the time you call to follow up.

Tip If your provisioner has already confirmed that the order is complete, don't let the customer service person off the phone! Request a conference call with the customer service agent and your provisioner so that the issue can be resolved immediately. It can take hours to get the service side and the provisioning side of a company to view the status of an order from matching perspectives. If your provisioner is unavailable and the problem is an emergency, ask the customer service rep to conference in the manager of provisioning. Don't be afraid to escalate the issue. As long as your issue is an emergency, nobody should fault you for pushing up the chain of command.

If your number was working fine yesterday, it might have been migrated or NASCed away. In either case, the RespOrg of your number may be some other carrier with which you don't have service. If the RespOrg of your number belongs to your carrier, proceed to "Step 4: Validating the DNIS configuration." If the customer service rep at your carrier doesn't recognize the company in RespOrg control of your toll-free number, you need to begin steps to reclaim your number. Your customer service representative should be able to tell you the following information about the company that has your toll-free number:

• The company's RespOrg ID code
• The company's contact phone number for reporting trouble

This is all you need to begin your work. Your carrier can't or won't do much in this instance without your direction. You need to call the other carrier and require it to identify why and how it received the RespOrg for your toll-free number. When you have that information, you can either leverage your position against the carrier if it NASCed or migrated the number in error, or plead for compassion if your carrier somehow released the number.

Remember If your carrier released the number to the other carrier directly, or released it into the pool of nationally available toll-free numbers, you are between a rock and a hard place. Legally, the number belongs to the new carrier. The source of your problem is with your old carrier, which released the number. Taking legal action against your old carrier might make you feel good, but it does nothing to get your toll-free number back. You'll have better luck pleading your case to the new carrier. Let the new carrier know about all the wrong-number calls it is going to receive for the next six months because your customers will continue to call. And don't be too proud to beg.