1-800-FREE-411

Service

Callers dial 1-800 (or 888 or 866)-FREE411 [1-800-373-3411] from any phone in the United States to use the toll-free service. Sponsors cover part of the service cost by playing advertising messages during the call. Callers often hear an ad at the beginning of the call, and then another after they have made their request. Callers then identify the city and state for the desired information, and can then search either by name or by business type. Free directory assistance is also available from an application for the iPhone and Android mobile phones, and from their website. The service, provided entirely by computer and with no human operators, use a voice-recognition database to recognize names or places spoken by the user.

The website stopped accepting new queries in July 2013 and instead mirrored and later simply redirected to the Marchex home page. The domain was listed for sale in November 2024 and as of March 2025 is completely offline while the mobile apps have been removed from the app stores.

The phone number 1-800-FREE-411 (1-800-373-3411) appears to have been acquired by phishing scammers sometime before 2022 as there are reports of people reaching a fake DirecTV support line when calling that number as early as January 2022.

Corporate overview

The original parent corporation, Jingle Networks, was formed in 2005, and received its initial funding from First Round Capital of $400,000.{{cite news |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120312141911/http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20100203005489/en/411/Android/Blackberry |archive-date = 2012-03-12 |url-status = dead

On October 23, 2006, Jingle Networks announced that it raised $30 million in fourth round financing from Goldman Sachs and Hearst Corporation. This came after a $26 million round in April 2006, and a $5 million round in December 2005. Also on that date, Jingle Network's CEO volunteered on TechCrunch that his company was losing on average 5 cents for every call they processed. On June 25, 2008, TechCrunch repeated Jingle's press releases that they had reached per-call profitability.

Jingle Networks aims at attracting customers away from an existing fee-based market. The Wall Street Journal described it as "inspired by the business model of Google".{{cite news |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071127183059/https://www.kelseygroup.com/news/2006/wsj_060420.htm |archive-date = 2007-11-27 |url-status = dead From 2005 through the early 2010, Jingle Networks guessed they saved consumers $1 billion based on an inflated rate of $2 a call for directory assistance.

In April 2011, Marchex bought Jingle Networks for $62.5M in combination of cash and stock. Marchex said Jingle Networks would generate more than $26 million in 2011 revenue, up more than 40 percent over 2010 and that it expected call-driven revenue to make up 75 percent of the company's 2011 revenue.{{cite news

References

References

1. "List of Liberty Media assets".
2. [https://web.archive.org/web/20090330161055/http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=23838322 Jingle Networks, Inc.] Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 2011-03-13.
3. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130712085402/http://www.free411.com:80/ Archive.org] July 12, 2013 snapshot, retrieved 2025-07-10
4. [https://web.archive.org/web/20241130183417/http://www.free411.com/ Archive.org] Nov 30, 2024 snapshot, retrieved 2025-07-10
5. [https://www.tellows.com/num/18003733411 tellows.com] retrieved 2025-07-10
6. [https://old.reddit.com/r/CreditCards/comments/serk8b/citi_phone_number_on_card_went_to_a_scam_company/ Citi phone number on card went to a scam company] [[Reddit]]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20250710122455/https://old.reddit.com/r/CreditCards/comments/serk8b/citi_phone_number_on_card_went_to_a_scam_company/ Archived] from the original on 2025-07-10. Retrieved 2025-07-10.
7. "TalkCrunch » Blog Archive » Interview With Jingle CEO and Venture Capitalist".
8. [https://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/25/jingle-networks-proves-their-free-business-model-works/ Jingle Networks Proves Their Free Business Model Works]