Being from the St. Louis area, I immediately recognize the area code for the Consumer Action Center (636) when it is mentioned on air.
(FYI: The full number is 636-49-CLARK or 636-492-5275.)
For those that don’t know, the 636 area code is a Missouri area code that encompasses most of the suburbs surrounding and to the west of St. Louis in Missouri, although 314 is used in St. Louis proper.
Here is more info on the 636 area code from Wikipedia for anyone interested: Area code 636 - Wikipedia
What is the story behind this area code usage? Was the CAC originally based near St. Louis or registered there for some reason? I know most of Clark’s life was spent in the Atlanta area, so I am just trying to figure out the St. Louis connection out of curiosity.
If anyone knows anything, I’d be interested to hear! Thanks!
With VOIP service you can have a number in almost any area, because locality just doesn’t matter. I just checked now and yes there are a number of area codes where a number of available ones include CLARK. Alphabetically, the first state with a number ending in CLARK is California where there are 4 of them. So perhaps they chose 636 as it is closer to the middle of the country. Who knows.
I have set up a few neighbor farms with telephone numbers that spell things (mostly KONA for some reason
I personally have numbers in Maryland, 3 in Virginia, Georgia, San Francisco, a couple Hawaii and a couple of toll free numbers. Why? Because I can!
Toll free numbers are cheap but the cost per minute can be twice the cost (being maybe 2 cents per minute). For a lot of calls, that can add up.
Thanks for inquiring! No correlation to Missouri. Our Consumer Action Center has always been in Atlanta. We created the remote call center during the pandemic, so our volunteers didn’t have to come into the office, and wanted a number that spelled CLARK. This was the available number.
