What Are Toll Free Phone Numbers?

Tollfree numbers are numbers you can call without paying long distance toll charges. For instance, you can walk up to any public telephone in North America and dial a toll free number -- no coins or credit cards or calling cards are required to do this. This is not to say that the phone call does not cost anything: the caller still needs to pay their telephone company to have a working telephone line and the calling party pays for any long distance charges, but at least the caller does not pay long distance charges.

Toll free numbers are used by companies or individuals that want to make it as easy as possible for somebody to call them. Usually this is because they provide some product or service that covers the expense of receiving toll free calls.

For instance, long distance calling card companies usually provide a toll free number to people who have bought into their calling plan by buying a calling card. The cost of the card covers the company's cost for receiving the toll free call and for placing the actual call to the number being called using the long distance calling plan... and hopefully leaves some profit for the company providing the service.

Toll free numbers also have another important quality: they are independent from the physical locations of the caller and of the party being called. This is important for companies that want to be reachable at the same number throughout the nation but only want to pring their product brochures once. The calls may still be routed to a local office automatically without the caller knowing what that number is.

Toll Free Vanity Numbers

If you are going through the trouble of getting a toll free number, you will probably want to get one that will be easy to remember, the whole point being that you want to make it easy for the caller to make the call.

If you are looking for a specific number in the US, especially one that is easy to remember, you can use our web site to find out what is available.