Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's us and we're here to talk to
Speaker 1: you about get this our book. We have a Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know book coming out this November and you're
Speaker 1: going to love it and you can preorder it now.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's called Stuff you Should Know, Collen, an
Speaker 1: incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things, and it's been a
Speaker 1: lot of fun to work on and we're really, i
Speaker 1: mean genuinely excited about how this thing has come together.
Speaker 1: It's twenties six chunky Harry chapters that are just going
Speaker 1: to knock your socks clean off. And yes, Chuck, we
Speaker 1: are indeed proud of this book. It is truly, indubitably
Speaker 1: the first Stuff you Should note book and it's coming
Speaker 1: out this November and you can order it now, pre
Speaker 1: order everywhere you get books, So do that, and we
Speaker 1: thank you in advice. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck probably there's Jerry over there, and this is Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. Thank you for calling my eight hundred podcasts.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, Collar, Oh, that would be great, Chuck, right
Speaker 1: to get that. We need to get that before we
Speaker 1: released this episode, because some somebody, somebody, maybe a rest
Speaker 1: boorg person is going to snag that and we'll have
Speaker 1: to pay through the nose for it. I thought there
Speaker 1: were so many very interesting things about this very seemingly
Speaker 1: mundane topic. And uh, I just think it's interesting that
Speaker 1: eight hundred numbers seem like something that would have gone
Speaker 1: the way of nine hundred numbers, but they're still around
Speaker 1: in the days where the Internet is thriving and the
Speaker 1: Yellow Pages or I don't even did they still have
Speaker 1: Yellow Pages? I think, yeah, I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: I think I remember this one comedian years ago, I
Speaker 1: was talking about the phone books when people are still
Speaker 1: getting phone books, and he was like, the joke was
Speaker 1: something about dropping out. Let me drop off four pound,
Speaker 1: very small portion of the Internet on your front board.
Speaker 1: But then they just stopped doing that altogether. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know that they were doing it as recently as a
Speaker 1: few years back, because they say would get dropped off
Speaker 1: once in a while at the mailboxes that are condo
Speaker 1: and um so I mean within the last ten years
Speaker 1: for sure, five years maybe, I think is the last
Speaker 1: time I saw one. So maybe they stopped because I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it in a little while, but yes, so
Speaker 1: toll free numbers, eight hundred numbers, they persist, they do,
Speaker 1: and they really do. So this this how stuff works article.
Speaker 1: I think the last the last number they had was
Speaker 1: from two thousand eight, and it said that there were
Speaker 1: twenty four million working toll free phone numbers in North America.
Speaker 1: And if you don't know what we're talking about, we're
Speaker 1: talking about free phone numbers. Apparently in the United States
Speaker 1: we call it toll free numbers. Everywhere else in the
Speaker 1: world is called or the English speaking roll. At least
Speaker 1: it's free phone numbers. So, um, there were twenty four
Speaker 1: million in two thousand and eight. But get this, since
Speaker 1: the advent of eight hundred numbers, they've released one, two, three, four, five, six,
Speaker 1: seven different prefixes of toll free numbers, everything from eight hundred, eight, seven,
Speaker 1: seven all the way down to eight three three is
Speaker 1: where we're at now. And I did it, did a
Speaker 1: little math. I'm kind of proud of myself for this one.
Speaker 1: Chuck Sell. If you bear with me for a second,
Speaker 1: for a seven digit number, you have nine million total
Speaker 1: possible combinations because it starts technically with one million and
Speaker 1: goes up to nine million, nine ninety nine, So you
Speaker 1: have nine million total combinations in there. So each of
Speaker 1: those prefixes allows for nine million combinations. So there's at
Speaker 1: least there's seven prefixes. That means that there's at least
Speaker 1: fifty four million plus a toll free number is in
Speaker 1: use in America to day. To justify that many prefixes,
Speaker 1: you know what, I can't wait for what that mass
Speaker 1: person to write in and correct you do it? No, no, no, Josh,
Speaker 1: that's you forgot about blank. I will argue with you
Speaker 1: all day long. I got this right. I got it
Speaker 1: right for once. Uh, lots of toll free numbers, and
Speaker 1: like you said, they go down to eight three three
Speaker 1: Now I think eventually they're going to get eight to
Speaker 1: two eight eight oh eight eight seven at eight eight
Speaker 1: nine involved never eight one one or eight nine nine.
Speaker 1: Apparently yeah, supposedly. Uh, someone found an ancient text in
Speaker 1: Aramaic that predicted that if eight one one were ever instituted,
Speaker 1: that's when the universe ends. Can't do it so when
Speaker 1: you dial a number. What this is all about, and
Speaker 1: actually two things. What it used to be about was
Speaker 1: largely for when calls costs money to make long distance
Speaker 1: it was a way to route that charge back to
Speaker 1: the person you're calling. Yeah, it was automatic collect calls.
Speaker 1: That's right. So if you were you know, they advertise
Speaker 1: it as toll free. You don't have to pay a
Speaker 1: toll on it. We're gonna eat that cost and you'll
Speaker 1: know it because it's an eight hundred number. Then, over
Speaker 1: the years it became more and more of a sort
Speaker 1: of just if you want to be a legitimate business,
Speaker 1: and especially a regional business or national or international business,
Speaker 1: then you kind of had to have an eight hundred number.
Speaker 1: Even once tolls, uh, phone charges and things and long
Speaker 1: distance kind of became a thing of the past, it
Speaker 1: just became sort of a i mean, sort of a
Speaker 1: calling card, for lack of a better word, as Hey,
Speaker 1: we're a legit, big company. We've got an eight hundred number.
Speaker 1: We're the third largest maker of bonking trundle beds. Here's
Speaker 1: our eight hundred number. And in the old days, I
Speaker 1: mentioned the yellow pages where you would advertise it's so
Speaker 1: quaint to think about now is where you would advertise
Speaker 1: in this big yellow book about your business and let
Speaker 1: your fingers do the walk in. But back then it
Speaker 1: was also eight hundred numbers were away that you could
Speaker 1: save money by not having to advertise in the yellow
Speaker 1: pages because you've got you know, one eight hundred you
Speaker 1: know house painter right. Or this article, this how stuff
Speaker 1: Works article cites a construction company called Asphalt Sources, Inc.
Speaker 1: Which got I guess that catchy eight hundred number and
Speaker 1: downsized their Yellow Pages add and saved more than twenty
Speaker 1: seven thousand dollars by doing so. And to be honest,
Speaker 1: it probably didn't hurt that they were also cited in
Speaker 1: a house stuff Works article about toll free numbers. Yeah
Speaker 1: that was that was clunky, but definitely an example of
Speaker 1: how things used to be. Yeah, but but that's the
Speaker 1: point of eight hundred numbers. And that's also from what
Speaker 1: I can tell. The reason that they still persist today
Speaker 1: is that if you have a catch eight hundred number,
Speaker 1: like you said, it makes you seem like a player
Speaker 1: as far as business goes. But also, um, it's a
Speaker 1: way to advertise, like I haven't seen the Empire today
Speaker 1: add in three to five years, but I can tell
Speaker 1: you that the numbers still eight hundred five eight eight
Speaker 1: to three hundred Empire today. You remember that one cars
Speaker 1: for kids? I don't remember that one in eight seven
Speaker 1: seven cars for kids. I've never heard that one, really,
Speaker 1: but I would probably remember that one. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that a little in a little
Speaker 1: more depth. Those are called vanity numbers, UM, but yeah,
Speaker 1: and there are statistics and they are pretty um stark
Speaker 1: and how much people remember that compared to just some
Speaker 1: regular old number. Right, So there's reasons for eight hundred
Speaker 1: numbers and the fact that they're still around. There's reasons
Speaker 1: for that too. But they started all the way back
Speaker 1: in seven. And it's like you said, it was a
Speaker 1: way to UM to make it easy for people to
Speaker 1: place collect calls, which was there were two ways to
Speaker 1: to make a long distance call. Either you paid for
Speaker 1: it yourself it showed up on your phone bill, or
Speaker 1: you could call the person you were calling collect, which
Speaker 1: meant that you could you dialed the operator you said
Speaker 1: you wanted to place a collect call. The operator called
Speaker 1: that number for you and said, hey, I've got Josh
Speaker 1: and Chuck on the line. Um, will you accept the charges?
Speaker 1: Is what they asked, and the other person would inevitably
Speaker 1: say no and hang up. If it had been somebody else,
Speaker 1: they might have said yes, and then that person who
Speaker 1: was receiving the call, they would be build for that.
Speaker 1: That takes a lot of time and effort for a
Speaker 1: phone call or for a phone company's operators to do that.
Speaker 1: So the whole point of eight hundred numbers was to
Speaker 1: automate the process, to take the operator out of it.
Speaker 1: And so the person would say, I'm receiving these calls
Speaker 1: at this number, go ahead and build me for them,
Speaker 1: just without even asking. Yeah, and and I think that
Speaker 1: story illustrates why I believe my theory is correct that
Speaker 1: Gen X is the greatest generation. So great man, because
Speaker 1: we we saw those early days that now feel like
Speaker 1: we were in the nineteen twenties with stuff like this
Speaker 1: and three TV channels growing up or three major networks rather.
Speaker 1: But we're also we're young enough to where the um
Speaker 1: technological boom didn't confuse us or pass us by or
Speaker 1: pass us by, and we we've got we could dip
Speaker 1: our toe into both. You know, we could grow up
Speaker 1: on seventies music and also go to a E. D
Speaker 1: M concert right without like being weird. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you're right, Chuck. We we might be the greatest generation
Speaker 1: where the perfect generation perfect, That's right, I guess greatest
Speaker 1: generation is taken. So yeah, of course, um in sixty
Speaker 1: seven it started, like you said, in the very first
Speaker 1: business to have an eight hundred number apparently was a
Speaker 1: company that just hosted numbers for other companies, mainly like
Speaker 1: car rentals and hotels and stuff like that. I think
Speaker 1: they were like a call center. Yeah, and so they
Speaker 1: went out of business, and then all those businesses that
Speaker 1: were using them said, oh, well, we gotta get eight
Speaker 1: hundred numbers now ourselves. Right. But the thing is is
Speaker 1: a T and T was the only one with eight
Speaker 1: hundred numbers because back in the day, a T and
Speaker 1: T also known as mob Bell was like the basically
Speaker 1: had a monopoly as far as telephones were concerned in
Speaker 1: the United States. And so yeah, and so, um, if
Speaker 1: you wanted an eight hundred number, you went to a
Speaker 1: T and T. You got your eight hundred number, and
Speaker 1: then you paid through the nose for it. They would
Speaker 1: charge many, many times more than they would have charged
Speaker 1: the caller had the caller just had been build themselves
Speaker 1: for placing this long distance call, just for this toll
Speaker 1: free service. Um. And that's just the way it was
Speaker 1: until I believe it was four when truss Buster Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan saw to it that mob Bell was broken up
Speaker 1: into all the regional else Yeah. So then, of course
Speaker 1: when that happened, that opened up the world of competition
Speaker 1: and the telephone industry in the United States kind of
Speaker 1: for the first time. And then, of course what happens
Speaker 1: is the cost to get an eight hundred number goes
Speaker 1: way way down. You can get a lot more businesses
Speaker 1: getting them, and then it just sort of became the
Speaker 1: standard for any business that wanted to be even like
Speaker 1: I said, a regional business. There was also a really
Speaker 1: big innovation that gets overlooked too that was actually created
Speaker 1: by a guy named Roy Webber who was an a
Speaker 1: T and T engineer, and Roy Webber basically figured out
Speaker 1: how to use eight hundred numbers, not as phone numbers
Speaker 1: that were connected to a certain point in the telephone system,
Speaker 1: but as a basically a code that could be translated
Speaker 1: at a database into instructions. Are like, hey, here's this
Speaker 1: number they put in, what are the instructions for this?
Speaker 1: And in doing so he figured out how to make
Speaker 1: toll free numbers go from regional to truly now, because
Speaker 1: up until nineteen eighty you had to have a regional
Speaker 1: toll free number for each region, and if you were
Speaker 1: a national company like say Hurts or something like that,
Speaker 1: you had a dozen or more toll free numbers that
Speaker 1: you had to manage. Thanks to Roy Weber, who patented this,
Speaker 1: but a T and T owns the patent um, so
Speaker 1: he saw jack from it besides the salary um. This
Speaker 1: changed everything and made a truly national thing to where
Speaker 1: one one single eight hundred number could serve the entire
Speaker 1: country for a business. And it made the whole thing
Speaker 1: a lot um technically smoother too, from what I understand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was sort of one of two big things that happened. Um.
Speaker 1: The other one was in nineteen ninety four when the
Speaker 1: law was passed that said you can port your phone
Speaker 1: number between carriers. So if you're with one carrier and
Speaker 1: you're not too happy back in the old days pre
Speaker 1: ninety four, that meant you had to change your telephone number,
Speaker 1: and that was no good for a business that was
Speaker 1: trying to grow or a business that was already big, especially,
Speaker 1: And so that law ga and teed that portability, Uh,
Speaker 1: you could take your phone number with you, and that
Speaker 1: was a really big, big kind of sea change in
Speaker 1: the industry. Yeah, you could pick up your phone number
Speaker 1: and carry it across land to the next body of water.
Speaker 1: That's right. Should we take a break? Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: let's do that, okay, chuck um. So we're at when
Speaker 1: we could poured our phone numbers. Yeah, And that was
Speaker 1: kind of the last big change. That's when things started
Speaker 1: growing so much that they had to I think in
Speaker 1: ninety six they introduce eight eight. It seems like every
Speaker 1: couple of years they started introducing new um what do
Speaker 1: they call prefixes? Yeah, yeah, prefix exchanges. So we're down
Speaker 1: to eight three three, right, I think that's where we
Speaker 1: are currently. And then I've never seen that I have not,
Speaker 1: not that I've ever noticed. But now I don't I
Speaker 1: don't even pay attention. I don't call anything. I just
Speaker 1: go online if I have to call out call. But
Speaker 1: I don't like it at all, And most of the
Speaker 1: time when I do, I'm just looking it up on
Speaker 1: my phone and clicking like the call thing. I very
Speaker 1: rarely type in a number anymore. And yet, bizarrely, E
Speaker 1: numbers haven't gone anywhere, and again, apparently it's because of
Speaker 1: the the whole um marketing thing UM, which is why
Speaker 1: they're still around today. And then one other kind of
Speaker 1: like um connection to the information age, the age of
Speaker 1: the Internet and computers and all that stuff. Um that
Speaker 1: eight hundred numbers have is that there was a period
Speaker 1: from about two thousand seven, eight nine maybe up until
Speaker 1: about two fourteen where the cons sept of uh uh,
Speaker 1: say like a provider paying for your data when you
Speaker 1: went on too a certain website, say they had a
Speaker 1: website where they wanted to teach you all about their
Speaker 1: new phones or something like that. You would not be
Speaker 1: you you wouldn't be using any data while you were
Speaker 1: on that site. And they originally called it one eight
Speaker 1: data for interesting, and then they dropped that around two
Speaker 1: fift and that was that. So here's something that I
Speaker 1: found that is so boring, that I found so weirdly fascinating,
Speaker 1: and that is the notion of the responsible Organization. Uh
Speaker 1: maybe it's because it's the name. It just sounds really weird.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a scientology like subsection or something the
Speaker 1: rest org. So when you call a well, first of
Speaker 1: all, all all these all these numbers, all these eight hundred
Speaker 1: numbers are housed in a database called the eight hundred
Speaker 1: Service Management System, the SMS eight hundred, and they know
Speaker 1: every single exchange of the eight hundred variation and if
Speaker 1: it's available, if it's being used, and how to route them.
Speaker 1: And if you want one of these, you have to
Speaker 1: contact something called a responsible organization. And that's just not
Speaker 1: a descriptor like alright, I'll contact UNI SEF because they're
Speaker 1: pretty responsibles. It's called a responsible organization. It's it's basically
Speaker 1: like a domain name registrar for telephone for eight hundred numbers.
Speaker 1: And it could be a company that does this, or
Speaker 1: you could be a human being at home in your
Speaker 1: basement that has set yourself up to be a rest org. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just have to be certified by the FCC. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how. I didn't get to see how.
Speaker 1: But once you are certified, then you have access to
Speaker 1: this database and you can legally say, now this number
Speaker 1: is now taken by this person, right as nicely. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: they're watching you, and if if you help an old
Speaker 1: lady or man across the street in front of the
Speaker 1: FCC building in DC, they take notice you're responsible. Just
Speaker 1: one big test. But the the rest borg, I think
Speaker 1: what bothers me is that stupid abbreviation for yeah, rest
Speaker 1: boorg and the O is capitalized even though it's one
Speaker 1: word and as an abbreviation. But the point is it
Speaker 1: can be anybody. At first, it was just phone companies
Speaker 1: that were able to do that, and then it kind
Speaker 1: of became more democratized in the nineties. Um, and that
Speaker 1: from that point, at the moment it became democratized, it
Speaker 1: became corrupt almost immediately. Yeah, I mean corrupt in the
Speaker 1: sense that, um, it's I think some ne'er do well,
Speaker 1: some non responsible people. Hey, this would be a pretty
Speaker 1: easy way to take advantage of people, um by acting
Speaker 1: as a middleman and charging someone fifty bucks to say,
Speaker 1: I can find them a toll three number. Here you go,
Speaker 1: here's your number, right, which that in and of itself,
Speaker 1: there's no problem with that, And apparently the SEC doesn't
Speaker 1: have any problems with that. If you set yourself up
Speaker 1: as a service, if you're really doing it. Yes, so
Speaker 1: if you if you say, okay, you can come to
Speaker 1: my website and you can look up a number and
Speaker 1: I will try to find it for you, and if
Speaker 1: it's available, I will I will get it for you,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to charge you a fee for that.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with that morally, legally or otherwise. The
Speaker 1: problem comes in where some of these rest boards say yes,
Speaker 1: it's fifty bucks to search, and then oh, yeah, this
Speaker 1: this number that ends in pain p A I in
Speaker 1: that's gonna cost you an extra grand. That totally flies
Speaker 1: in the face of the FCC rules surrounding phone numbers
Speaker 1: of any kind, including toll free numbers, which is that
Speaker 1: they're they're meant to be totally neutral. You're not supposed
Speaker 1: to be able to profit off of a phone number whatsoever. Um.
Speaker 1: You can profit off of like the search and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, but a particular phone number is not. Its
Speaker 1: supposed to be doled out on a first come, first
Speaker 1: serve service basis with zero zero dollars attached to it whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And that's just not how it works. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: can't goose somebody if Dr Paine once eight d or
Speaker 1: tea pain, tea pain, tooth pain, No, just tea pain.
Speaker 1: Your dentists can't get that one because t Pain's got it. Well,
Speaker 1: they like you might get it, but they can't pay
Speaker 1: extra for it. It's first come, first served always. Um.
Speaker 1: You were only allowed to subscribe to the amount of
Speaker 1: toll free numbers that you actually intend to use, so
Speaker 1: you can't just go get a bunch, like lock up
Speaker 1: a bunch, kind of like you can do with domain names. Actually,
Speaker 1: now that they think about it, yeah, you can't do
Speaker 1: that with eight hundred numbers. Can't do it. Uh. You
Speaker 1: also to prevent this kind of hoarding, the mandate that
Speaker 1: you allocate that reserved number within eight months, So it's
Speaker 1: got I guess it's got to be in use within deadlines.
Speaker 1: They have terms for this. Actually, brokering is selling and
Speaker 1: profiting from numbers. There's hoarding, and then there's warehousing. Warehousing
Speaker 1: is where you you take numbers even though there's there's
Speaker 1: no one that you're directly getting at four. And then
Speaker 1: hoarding is getting a bunch of numbers, sitting on them
Speaker 1: and selling them. And this is a big no no.
Speaker 1: But for a very long time it seemed to UM
Speaker 1: the FCC and the people running the FEC that it
Speaker 1: was not worth enforcing until I guess it got kind
Speaker 1: of um kind of wild westy, and there was a
Speaker 1: company called I T Connections that was fine three point
Speaker 1: seven million dollars into the Oh yeah, these are all
Speaker 1: like spam kings who came up with a sideline of
Speaker 1: like selling telephone numbers, and their whole thing is no,
Speaker 1: they're just performing a service. And then when the FEC says,
Speaker 1: well then why isn't your service the same regardless of
Speaker 1: any number, they say, well, this is all just supplying demand. Well,
Speaker 1: there's not supposed to be any supplying demand. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be first come, first serve um. But that's and
Speaker 1: apparently they just look the other way until I believe
Speaker 1: two thousand seven ten, when the I T connect or
Speaker 1: Connection Company got hit with that fine. You know, those
Speaker 1: types of places discussed me more than just about anything. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the ones that like, uh, you know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, Like the people that are like looking just
Speaker 1: looking for the loopholes to exploit so they can rip
Speaker 1: someone off the Yeah, the kind of people who carry
Speaker 1: like a neck brace in their back seat at all
Speaker 1: times in cases, or like I P trolls and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we can't go down that road too much.
Speaker 1: But the podcast industry, you know, kind of went through
Speaker 1: a pretty famous situation like that a few years ago.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, man, people that just just go
Speaker 1: out and do some hard work. Yeah, you know, stop
Speaker 1: stop speculating, don't look for the angle, right, do you
Speaker 1: know to get rich? Yeah, because you're not creating anything.
Speaker 1: You're just sucking the life out of stuff. God, it's
Speaker 1: just so upsetting. Uh. Like you said, the FCC wasn't
Speaker 1: paying a lot of attention. So these things have been
Speaker 1: sold on eBay two at big fat price tags. Um.
Speaker 1: And beyond just the FCC not paying attention is apparently
Speaker 1: there's rest boards. It's it's just hard to keep track
Speaker 1: and they can be disorganized. There's no real system to
Speaker 1: get it all cleaned up, and so inadvertently this can
Speaker 1: happen to Yeah. There was one famous case though, two
Speaker 1: that that went to circuit court. I think maybe I
Speaker 1: don't remember, but there was a Mercedes dealer in in
Speaker 1: Minneapolis and St. Paul who had since the eighties eight
Speaker 1: hundred Mercedes, and it went to his gold his Yeah,
Speaker 1: when he said that, he think he he cites that
Speaker 1: as reviving um just kind of a ho hum Mercedes
Speaker 1: dealership that that phone number. So he wasn't about to
Speaker 1: give it up. When Mercedes came around and said, hey,
Speaker 1: we want that for our national customer service, he said no,
Speaker 1: and they sued him for it. They basically tried to
Speaker 1: get him on copyright and for a mint, and I
Speaker 1: guess the judge of the jury found like, no, you
Speaker 1: can't like, like a toll free number is not copyright infringement.
Speaker 1: And so Mercedes to this day you have to call
Speaker 1: eight hundred four fo R Mercedes, which does the other thing? Chuck?
Speaker 1: You know my famous um dislike of acronyms that don't
Speaker 1: include a word. Yeah, a phone number, a toll free
Speaker 1: phone number that includes letters that go beyond the number
Speaker 1: of possible numbers you can use. That really bugs me too,
Speaker 1: I think because it was it wasn't until I was
Speaker 1: in my twenties that I figured out what was going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I would type the whole thing out and be like,
Speaker 1: you know, connect and I'd be like, I'm not done
Speaker 1: dialing yet. I But it was satisfying for that judge
Speaker 1: to be able to shoot down a big corporation like
Speaker 1: that under the you know, prior settled law of you snooze,
Speaker 1: you lose, Sorry Mercedes, just because you're huge sorry finders
Speaker 1: keepers and you snooze you loose. Man. Wouldn't court be
Speaker 1: like kids Court? I didn't that a show Captain Kangaroo Court? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Come on? So um, I think it's high time, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Since we were talking about the eight hundred Mercedes case,
Speaker 1: that very famous legal case in the United States, we
Speaker 1: talked about vanity numbers because that is as vanity and
Speaker 1: number as there ever has been. The singer Vanity could
Speaker 1: have a phone number and it still wouldn't be more
Speaker 1: of a vanity number than eight hundred Mercedes. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know we we mentioned it earlier. These are pretty
Speaker 1: tremendous advertising perks for a company if you get it.
Speaker 1: If you land on a eight hundred Flowers or one
Speaker 1: eight hundred go fed x um, you've struck gold because
Speaker 1: that will stick in someone's head. They have done studies
Speaker 1: over the years. There was one where they showed an
Speaker 1: eighty four percent improvement and recall over newmeric phone numbers
Speaker 1: and from like a TV ad or a billboard, and
Speaker 1: if you're listening to the radio, it goes from SEV
Speaker 1: recall to five recall. If it's got a catchy little jingly,
Speaker 1: especially when there's a song attached to it, a toll
Speaker 1: free vanity number. Yeah, that's it. I'm a huge, huge difference,
Speaker 1: absolutely true. I can't imagine how much money F t
Speaker 1: D has gotten from that Flowers phone numbers that there's Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they even have I think their website is
Speaker 1: Flowers dot com. They got in there early. I guess
Speaker 1: all these yeah, all these generic ones, you're there. They
Speaker 1: know how to work the system and push people around
Speaker 1: better than Mercedes lawyers too. Yeah, they send in the
Speaker 1: guy with a little winged hat and loincloth, what starts
Speaker 1: shoving people around? Didn't that One't that? F tds uh
Speaker 1: oh yeah yeah, describing You're like, why do you have
Speaker 1: a video camera on me? Right? Yeah? No, it totally was.
Speaker 1: He was that herms Hermes are Mercury. I think, um
Speaker 1: so I mentioned, you know, those good generic ones. It
Speaker 1: is great if you have one eight hundred Flowers, of course,
Speaker 1: but uh they interviewed someone for this house stuff works
Speaker 1: article who knows a lot about this stuff, and they
Speaker 1: say and Quimby says, yeah, you know, these generic ones
Speaker 1: are fine, but they're all taking. What you really want
Speaker 1: these days is to get in there and actually try
Speaker 1: and say something about your company as well. So instead
Speaker 1: of one eight hundred car loans, it's one eight hundred
Speaker 1: quick loan or one eight hundred fast Closer. That to
Speaker 1: me would be a red flag to stay away from
Speaker 1: that mortgage company fast closer. Yeah, one hundred fast closer, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is and you'll note that it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be seven digits. It can be over seven digits. Obviously
Speaker 1: drives me bad. Why just because the extra number. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's just not it's not it's not it's missing
Speaker 1: the mark. Anybody can be one to three, so that
Speaker 1: would be fast cloth. Yeah, just go with that, and
Speaker 1: then and then make it part of your ad that
Speaker 1: this is silent or one eight quick loan would be
Speaker 1: one eight hundred kuai kakloa. Yes, I would remember that.
Speaker 1: I would remember that. I feel like we should get
Speaker 1: an eight hundred number. I had the same thought. Actually,
Speaker 1: did you really? Yeah? What could we do with it?
Speaker 1: Eight hundred podcast is actually perfect? But we do with it?
Speaker 1: I don't know. We could We could leave messages on
Speaker 1: it once in a while. We could do a nine
Speaker 1: hundred number. Yeah, it makes some cash and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that right after this, So chuck your right. A
Speaker 1: nine hundred number makes way more sense because we could
Speaker 1: be rolling in it if it were. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: younger listeners might not fully appreciate the fact that there
Speaker 1: was a point in time. How many years did this?
Speaker 1: This was less than ten even hey, yeah it was.
Speaker 1: The heyday was basically seven to I think about ninety.
Speaker 1: People really figured out what a rip off it was
Speaker 1: about six years. There was a time, a six year
Speaker 1: period in this country where you could set up a
Speaker 1: nine hundred number that was it could be anything, but
Speaker 1: it was basically an audio message of some kind and
Speaker 1: people would pay a ton of money to call in
Speaker 1: to speak to hear about the Kiss Army, or to
Speaker 1: hear about Iffany the Singer, or Grandpa Munster, or the
Speaker 1: Psychic hot line or the board sexy roommates like you
Speaker 1: name it. Yeah, yeah, a lot of them especially were
Speaker 1: um uh what would they call them? Phone sex That's right, No,
Speaker 1: well they so there was this, there was this idea
Speaker 1: that so early on a lot of them were, and
Speaker 1: then it spread out into more and more ideas, but
Speaker 1: it was stuck. It was kind of saddled with that
Speaker 1: idea that it was all just phone sex lines unfairly,
Speaker 1: but that was the reputation it had. But yeah, you could,
Speaker 1: you could do anything. And the whole thing started very
Speaker 1: simply and primitively, I believe, with um not it wasn't
Speaker 1: the first one. NASA wasn't the first one, but NASA
Speaker 1: had one of the first successful ones, which I just loved.
Speaker 1: It was called dial a shuttle and one nine nine NASA.
Speaker 1: You could listen to conversations between ground control and the
Speaker 1: astronauts on the S shuttle, which was a huge There
Speaker 1: was like a million people called in in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two alone, um, and every single one of those people
Speaker 1: were paying, from what I saw, a minimum of two
Speaker 1: dollars a minute when you call the nine hundred number.
Speaker 1: Two dollars was the was the base that I think,
Speaker 1: like your phone company was going to charge for the service,
Speaker 1: and then whatever extra beyond two dollars it was was
Speaker 1: what the the entrepreneur, the nine hundred number information provider
Speaker 1: was charging. So if you paid a minute for every
Speaker 1: minute of content that you sat there and listened to
Speaker 1: on your phone, you were paying that person who was
Speaker 1: just some schmo who record, had somebody record some stuff
Speaker 1: for a nine hundred number. They were getting a dollar
Speaker 1: a minute for every single person that called in. And
Speaker 1: very quickly from when this started in seven, when AT
Speaker 1: and T started a program that said you can provide
Speaker 1: your own content and get your own nine hundred number. Um,
Speaker 1: it made a lot of people very rich, like very quickly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a way to make a lot of dough fast. Um.
Speaker 1: I think there was this one meeting. Uh, I don't
Speaker 1: I was about to call it a famous meeting. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't famous at all. It was Appalachian. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: this meeting that they referenced in this article. At least
Speaker 1: where'd you get this price snomics? Priceonomics? Man, God bless them?
Speaker 1: This is by Seawan Revive. Yeah, it was a good article.
Speaker 1: It's very cool, the rise and fall of the nine number.
Speaker 1: But this was a telecom strategist named Bruce Kushnik who
Speaker 1: helped Sprint start their own nine hundred service in the
Speaker 1: late eighties, and he said that he remembers a meeting
Speaker 1: where they had twenty five or so of the first
Speaker 1: developers that did this in a room and said raise
Speaker 1: your hand if you're a millionaire, and like almost everyone
Speaker 1: raised their hand, and they were just they were They
Speaker 1: had to know that it was a short window, I think,
Speaker 1: which is probably why they they weren't just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll just do this one number. They were like, it's
Speaker 1: a gold mine out there for probably five years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you were like a celebrity like Whole Cogan
Speaker 1: or yeah really any w w F Wrestler, Glow Wrestler
Speaker 1: or New Kids on the Block or DJ Jazzy Jeff
Speaker 1: in the Fresh Prince, like some guy would come up
Speaker 1: to you and say, Hey, I've got this business idea
Speaker 1: for you, and we're gonna charge three and we're gonna
Speaker 1: split a dollar ninety five. All you have to do
Speaker 1: is read this you know, five minutes script, you know,
Speaker 1: once a week or once every two weeks or something
Speaker 1: like that, and then that's it. We're gonna split this money.
Speaker 1: And it made a bunch of money. It was really
Speaker 1: popular for for a very brief time. And the reason
Speaker 1: why it was popular was because it was um as
Speaker 1: Sean Revie puts it, it it was like a proto Internet,
Speaker 1: except rather than everything being free and then advertising driven
Speaker 1: where you get the content free, but you you know,
Speaker 1: have you're subjected to ads. Sounds vaguely familiar for some reason, Um,
Speaker 1: you paid for this free content. Yeah, and it but
Speaker 1: it had such a range, like you were talking about
Speaker 1: everything from like Dj Jazzy Jeff doing something too, uh
Speaker 1: vote for Miss America or some legitimate things like and
Speaker 1: I don't know how good or legit it was, but
Speaker 1: you can get tax helper, insurance advice or whatever, or
Speaker 1: tech support to play wheel of fortune like Interact a
Speaker 1: Wheel of Fortune, or farm commodity prices. It was just
Speaker 1: all over the map. People realized we can get information
Speaker 1: to people and charge a lot of money for it,
Speaker 1: and especially if there are children involved, you can basically
Speaker 1: trick them into running up a huge bill that their
Speaker 1: parents are gonna have to pay. Yeah, man, that's Santa.
Speaker 1: When do you remember that? I remember, man, totally. So
Speaker 1: there was this Santa line, Chuck, you gotta tell about
Speaker 1: the Santa line. Well, the Santa why because I called it? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 1: This was a Santa Claus hotline that asked kids to
Speaker 1: hold up their phone to the screen, and when they
Speaker 1: did that, there was a tone, a programmed tone that
Speaker 1: automatically dialed the number that I guess your phone would hear.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, this kid was hooked
Speaker 1: up to Santa Claus hotline where it was probably I mean,
Speaker 1: what do you think? It was probably just some Santa
Speaker 1: Claus saying that he was working very hard on everyone's
Speaker 1: gifts to be a good boy for minutes and minutes
Speaker 1: and minutes for two or more a minute, So the
Speaker 1: kid didn't even dial the number like the ad dialed
Speaker 1: it for them with the tones. Yeah, and that was
Speaker 1: one of the one of the big fraudulent things about
Speaker 1: a lot of these, And some of them are legit.
Speaker 1: They might have been dumb, but they weren't like literally
Speaker 1: ripping you off by causing these long delays. But a
Speaker 1: lot of them would do these long delays. And I
Speaker 1: don't know about the Santa one, but I could totally
Speaker 1: see like, what's your name, son, Well, let me see
Speaker 1: what I've got for you, and then for the next
Speaker 1: ten minutes like, well it's not this one. Let me
Speaker 1: look in this other room over here. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: a kid would sit there for thirty minutes waiting to
Speaker 1: see what Santa had for him. Yeah, there was, there was.
Speaker 1: It was pretty perennial. Um the headlines or articles about
Speaker 1: some family that got hit with like a ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollar phone bill or something like that. Um. There was
Speaker 1: one girl who famously called um the two Corey's hotline
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixteen times commercials on YouTube. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: actually there's a BuzzFeed article called thirty of the weirdest
Speaker 1: nine numbers from the nineties, and they mentioned one that
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard of before that I'm not convinced isn't
Speaker 1: an Internet meme, like a fake Internet meme, But it
Speaker 1: is the crying number, where this ad mentions it's like,
Speaker 1: why are all these people crying to find out call
Speaker 1: this number? And these people are having like this kind
Speaker 1: of cathartic sobbing cry on the phone, and it looks real,
Speaker 1: but it's so tantalizing lee wrong that it isn't quite nineties.
Speaker 1: It's way more of the twenty one century and like
Speaker 1: the idea of it than interesting than at So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure it's real. I couldn't find anything about it either,
Speaker 1: other than there's this ad that exists. There was nobody
Speaker 1: on the internet who's like I called this and yes,
Speaker 1: this is totally real. Yeah. Um. The Prisonomics article mentions
Speaker 1: another one whether it was and I think these were
Speaker 1: pretty common too, And this is the just the worst
Speaker 1: when you're like praying on someone that needs work, when
Speaker 1: you would call a nine hundred number for driver jobs,
Speaker 1: um at twenty dollars a call. But what they didn't
Speaker 1: tell you was there was only like two or three positions,
Speaker 1: so they get all these people calling in at twenty
Speaker 1: bucks a pop for the same three positions, right, just
Speaker 1: so mean. There was also a hotline that you could call,
Speaker 1: a nine hundred number that charged you twenty five dollars
Speaker 1: to learn how to set up your own nine hotline. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one makes sense that one might have paid off.
Speaker 1: And then the phone sex it was that was a big,
Speaker 1: big thing. And um, I never called any of those,
Speaker 1: but those uh. In the in the Robert All movie Shortcuts,
Speaker 1: you know, Jennifer Jason Lee was a phone sex operator,
Speaker 1: and some very funny scenes of her, like with a
Speaker 1: baby in one arm and a cigarette and like doing
Speaker 1: her ironing and okay, house cleaning while she was like,
Speaker 1: you know, talking dirty. I was trying to remember what
Speaker 1: what movie it was. It was Shortcuts. I was thinking
Speaker 1: it was. It isn't um Punch Drunk Love. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a sex line subplot in that one too. Who is it?
Speaker 1: Who's the love interest in that? Uh? In Punch Drunk Love,
Speaker 1: the love interest is it was Emily Watson, Okay? And
Speaker 1: she was she yeah, she was. She was the one
Speaker 1: who was doing the phone sex line and then Philip
Speaker 1: Seymour Hoffman was like the owner of it. No, I
Speaker 1: don't think she worked for him. Philip Seymour Hoffman was, Oh,
Speaker 1: he was blackmailing Adam Sandler that way. I finally saw
Speaker 1: Uncut gems Man. Jesus, Oh, yeah, did you like it
Speaker 1: or hate it? I hated it? Did you really? I
Speaker 1: hated it more than I've hated any movie in a while.
Speaker 1: And because it's possible, those brothers listen to this, and
Speaker 1: I know it must it was clearly they worked very
Speaker 1: hard on it, and like they must be very proud
Speaker 1: of it. But I hate that movie. Oh man, it
Speaker 1: was my favorite movie the year. You're crazy. I'm not crazy.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of people's favorite movie. Wow, I'm no.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, Chuck, I'm surprised that you think it
Speaker 1: was the I loved it. Well, we disagree on that one. No,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a divisive movie. I haven't met many people.
Speaker 1: We've been a lot, We've done a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: on that on movie Crush, and I haven't talked too
Speaker 1: many people that are like, I don't know, I could
Speaker 1: take your leave. It was all right. Most people are
Speaker 1: like I loved it and I loved that those guys
Speaker 1: bring that kind of intensity and stress to a film. Uh,
Speaker 1: and some people are just like, uh uh it was
Speaker 1: it was almost exclusively the ending for me, the very
Speaker 1: very end. Yeah. Oh, I loved the ending. No, you
Speaker 1: don't get to do that. That's against all the rules. Man.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I thought it was so great. Now and
Speaker 1: I liked Good Time. I thought that was a cool movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, this but now this is a good good
Speaker 1: Time followed the rules. This one didn't follow the rules,
Speaker 1: and I hate that movie for it. I loved it. Well.
Speaker 1: Since we um started talking about movies, I guess that's
Speaker 1: it for toll Free and nine hundred numbers. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't have anything else. It's uh, it's pretty think about that.
Speaker 1: They're both sort of relics. But eight hundred numbers survived
Speaker 1: and nine hundred numbers? Are there any anymore? I don't know.
Speaker 1: We're gonna find out if there are. We might set
Speaker 1: one up. Let's look into all right, okay, nine seven
Speaker 1: six evil? But ours could go to charity or something. Sure,
Speaker 1: sure half of it? So uh, I guess then, what
Speaker 1: chuck is time for listener mail? It is this is
Speaker 1: a WASP related the band. Oh if only Hey, Josh,
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry or whoever is producing. That's what it's
Speaker 1: come to see. I've been a listener for seven or
Speaker 1: eight years, ever since I got an internship that put
Speaker 1: me in a car four hours a day, five days
Speaker 1: a week. You're some story about wasps reminds me of
Speaker 1: my own childhood experience with a wasp. I was around
Speaker 1: six or seven. I was swinging at my neighbor's house
Speaker 1: when all of a sudden, my butt started to hurt,
Speaker 1: like really bad. So I did what was natural, ran home,
Speaker 1: screaming for my mom. I'm not sure where she was,
Speaker 1: but my dad was upstairs and asked what was wrong,
Speaker 1: and I just said, my butt really hurts, and he
Speaker 1: sort of laughed, but he could tell I was in
Speaker 1: serious pain. So he told me to drop my shorts
Speaker 1: and he gasped. Uh. He said it was really red
Speaker 1: and there was a wasp still in his underwear, still
Speaker 1: stinging me. I guess he killed it. I don't really
Speaker 1: remember that part, just being in the tub afterwards. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned a wasp and sting up to ten times.
Speaker 1: We counted thirteen stings on my left butt cheek. Gosh,
Speaker 1: and that is from Michael Brown in Portland, Oregon. Man, Michael,
Speaker 1: glad you made it through that one. I wonder how
Speaker 1: you feel about wasps even after our episode on it.
Speaker 1: Do you imagine being a little kid and running home
Speaker 1: with a wasp in your underwear? No, I can be
Speaker 1: I can't imagine being a wasp and some little kids
Speaker 1: underwear while they're running home either. Yeah, because you know
Speaker 1: that's not gonna come to a good end. You might
Speaker 1: as well tell all the stings and you can I
Speaker 1: feel a bath coming. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot, Michael.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with this, like
Speaker 1: Michael did to let us know some horrible traumatic thing
Speaker 1: that happened to you when you were a kid, we
Speaker 1: love that stuff. You can send it in an email
Speaker 1: to Stuff Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff
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