Toll-free vanity phone numbers are not only easy to remember, but after the end of a long advertising campaign a good vanity phone number can be remembered for years. After a law firm discontinued a two-year advertising campaign with 1-800-HURT-911, calls continued to come in for another two years.

That’s the problem with the New York State DMV hotline 1-800-DIAL-DMV. Due to budget cuts, the toll-free vanity phone number was dropped by the state 18 months ago and that’s when the problem started.

A certain telephone company, well-known to the toll-free industry, just waits for a number like this to be dropped and immediately grabs it before anyone else can get it. Even worse, they never give up the numbers and cannot be forced to even if the number was trademarked, because they don’t use the number in a way that infringes the trademark.

I received an e-mail today from Jerrold Parker, senior partner at Parker Waichman Allonso, LLP, the well-known New York personal injury law firm.  Jerry was writing to ask me to evaluate and list his new personal injury case management software called SmartAdvocate. Apparently, Jerry invested a substantial amount of money to develop custom case management software for personal injury and mass tort cases and is now licensing it to other personal injury lawyers.

I responded to Jerry’s e-mail and he called me back a few minutes later. During our telephone conversation, we began discussing my vanity phone number 1-800-HURT-911, vanity phone numbers for lawyers and Parker Waichman Alonso’s new vanity phone number 1-888-BIG-CASE.

You need a vanity phone number for advertising. But what’s the value of a vanity number? That depends upon the vanity phone number, what it’s used for and whether you are a licensee, buyer or seller (vanity telephone numbers cannot be sold, but can be transferred with money exchanged, however, this is a topic for another discussion).

1-800 vanity phone numbers and 1-888, 1-877 or 1-866 vanity numbers using other area codes are like diamonds. All diamonds are rare and come in many different qualities. A “D Flawless” diamond with perfect proportions is the rarest of all. There are thousands of vanity telephone numbers, but probably no more than 3 or 4 “D Flawless” vanity phone numbers for any particular field of business.