1800 Numbers – How do they Work?

Nearly everyone has dialled 1800 numbers at some point in time. Whenever you have to contact a business you usually look for 1800 numbers so that the call won’t cost you heaps. When businesses are busy they usually put you on hold and if you had to pay for the call it would really skyrocket your phone bill. However, even though we are familiar with them we often don’t realise just how 1800 numbers work.

After all, if many businesses numbers have this same prefix, how come our call goes to the business we want and not to some other random business? It is because 1800 numbers are actually virtual numbers that do not use a dedicated phone line. How then do we contact businesses with 1800 numbers? Each 1800 number is set up to be redirected to another specific phone number. This is rather like an extension number. So whenever the consumer dials 1800 numbers, the phone calls goes to the specific number it is linked to.

It can be an office number, a mobile phone number or even an overseas number that the 1800 number is linked to. One great feature of 1800 numbers is that they can be prompted by the callers’ postcode. This means that a business with offices all over the world or the country can have the caller automatically routed to the office nearest their postcode location. How good is that? It not only saves on possible higher costs for an international call, but it gives the caller a local office closest to them to deal with, so everyone wins.