Find local merchants and service providers using FastCall411

Posted on October 26, 2007 at 11:17 am

It seems there are a lot of 411 services that are popping up all over the place to hopefully get rid of those useless Yellow Pages books once and for all! Previously, I wrote about the free Google 411 service and another service called Tellme, both of which are very useful.

However, the way that 411 services work right now is that you call the service and provide information on what you’re looking for, i.e. pizza at 90210, etc. Then the service will look up this information in it’s database and spit back to you the names and number of each pizza place in that zip code. You can either do this by calling, by text messaging, or via the web. Pretty simple and has been working nicely for many years.

But wouldn’t it be cool if you needed to find a plumber in your area (any plumber) and instead of getting 10 numbers and then calling each one separately and possibly having to leave messages, etc, if you could just be connected to the plumber that actually picks up the phone?

That’s what FastCall411 is all about. Here’s how it works: you provide the information for what you’re looking for and FastCall411 will call each one of those numbers until it finds one where someone actually PICKS UP the phone! So instead of just getting a listing of names and numbers, you’ll be greeted with "Hi, how can I help you?" or something similar with a real person.

The basic idea is to connect you NOW to a merchant that you can talk to. It totally redefines the way 411 services work and is definitely very cool. Of course, there is no guarantee of the quality of the merchant you’ll be connected to, but how many Yellow Pages books have you seen with ratings in them? So it’s better than randomly calling 15 people and getting answering machines or disconnected numbers.

Also, if the merchant who does answer is not satisfactory for you, you can instruct FastCall411 to continue calling the other merchants.

The service currently uses some pretty advanced technology for this entire process that they are patenting, but from a consumer prospective, it’s just a lot easier to find what you’re looking for!

The only downside right now is that since it’s very new, it only has listings for plumbers.