Domain Email

Author: Mike Banks Valentine © October 28, 2004
The toll free number 1-800-Get-Rich belongs to the Resorts
Casino Hotel in Atlantic City. Perfect vanity number for a
casino, right? Well apparently not. Their website shows the
actual numbers, 1-800-438-7424 for the marketing department
of Resorts Atlantic City. Those NUMBERS are nowhere near as
memorable as is the mnemonic device of letters representing
those numbers on the telephone keypad. It makes you wonder,
did the casino have bad luck (no pun intended) or receive
bad publicity for their 800-Get-Rich phone number?

Doing a Google search for 1-800-GET-RICH returns several spoof
articles using the toll free number to make light of get rich
quick schemes. Seems as well suited to a casino as to satire,
since gambling represents the ultimate get rich quick scheme.

But on the web there's a another element to toll free numbers
you must consider. 800 numbers are used as domain names which
seem to stick in our memory as a web address just as well as
a phone number. Resorts Atlantic City Hotel Casino should buy
the domain name www.1800getrich.com and assign that marketing
department toll free 800 vanity number to the Casino.

The domain name is for sale as of this writing if you visit
that web address. You can be certain that the current domain
owner knows that the toll free vanity telephone number is
owned by Resorts International Hotels www.resortsac.com which
matches the domain www.1800getrich.com. It has to be enticing
to think a large corporation may want his domain.

The casino owns the toll free number but isn't using the
mnemonic for it. Makes you wonder about the history of the
domain name, since WHOIS records show it was reserved only
this past May of 2004, AND the history of the vanity number
since it is going unused, at least on the web site. Hmmmm...

There are vanity phone number resellers online that actually
specialize in providing 800 numbers with matching domain name
for those seeking the consistent branding for their business.
Clearly this is simply a marketing ploy by savvy 800 number
vendors, as those domains may be full of hyphens and may cost
more than they should due to the perception of value-added.

An interesting aspect to toll free numbers as domain names is
that of 1-800 copyright and trademarks. Take for example, the
well known flower retailer 1-800-FLOWERS.com where they use
both the domain name and the toll free number. Both are copy-
righted and trademarked names and essential to the business.

Legal precedent allows trademark owners to confiscate domains
from "cybersquatters" who buy domain names containing trade-
marked or copyrighted words and phrases hoping to sell that
domain back to the trademark holder. But it is less clear an
issue when it comes to descriptive toll free and vanity phone
numbers. How about 1-800-PINDROP.com - which you would think
would be registered to Sprint Communications? Curiously, as
of October of 2004, this domain was available. What do they
use? www.pindrop.com (without the 800) goes to Sprint.com.

It appears there are wide inconsistencies in using toll free
800 phone numbers as domain names but they can be memorable,
which is one measure of a good domain name. They also aren't
limiting as to word length. I've always felt it's a bit odd
to type in 1800keywordphrase.com as a domain name, but only
because there is no hyphen in it. 1800 looks like eighteen
hundred and is just as strange as typing 247 for domains as
a suggestion they are always open, more often seen as 24/7,
but domain names can't have that slash mark in them.

As a matter of fact, I've always disliked numbers of any
kind in domain names - especially those using numbers in
place of the words "to" (up2me.com)& "for" (good4you.com)
But, as owner of http://website101.com I'm at odds with the
dislike for numbers in domain names. Still, it works better
than 1800website.com or 1-800-website.com, both owned by
Verio Web Hosting and both purchased in August of 1996, but
neither have web sites configured at those addresses. They
must not have been a worthwhile domains, yet they keep them.

If it offers you another option for a memorable web address,
800 number domains may be worth considering.

Mike Valentine operates WebSite101 domain name tutorial
http://WebSite101.com/Domain_Name/
Free domain lookup tool to find out who owns domain names at
http://website101.com/Domain_Name/Domain-WHOIS-database.html
This article written for 800 Numbers Toll Free
http://800numberstollfree.com/toll-free-800-number-index.htm

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