Business Phone Line or Personal???

[ChrisAdval]

Obviously I only have the option of one due to cost savings of just having only one and personal line for now, but I really want to put out a phone number where potential clients can call anytime, and it really bothers me that I only can have a personal line so putting my personal phone number out there would risk of harassers and prankers to abuse the publicly displayed phone number... How do you guys deal with this? Right now I'm dealing with it by not displaying my phone number publicly but I know I will discourage potential clients from contacting me by other methods.

[jdepould]

Google Voice. Forwards to any number you want, and you can schedule when it'll forward to different lines, or go straight to vmail. You can send and receive calls from your computer. It gives you (hilarious) text transcripts of vmails. It's free.

[ChrisAdval]

Originally Posted by jdepould

Google Voice. Forwards to any number you want, and you can schedule when it'll forward to different lines, or go straight to vmail. You can send and receive calls from your computer. It gives you (hilarious) text transcripts of vmails. It's free.

thanks, but would I be able to change the google voice # anytime and anyone can call the google voice #?

[oldwolf]

Anyone can call the google voice number. You won't be able to change it.

Why not get one of those pre paid phones? Put a voice mail message on it then if you start to run out of minutes and can't refill it right away then you can just check voice mails and call back from your personal phone.

You can also get a google voice number and have it forward to your personal phone and return calls to clients when you're on a computer using your google voice number.

[kirbinster]

Why not get a Google Voice line? Its a free phone number that rings to your regular phone or to voice mail. You can at some point in the future either kill it or have it ring elsewhere.

Looks like I had this open a while and others posted about the same idea before me --- check it out it works.

[Biomech]

I hadn't heard of Google Voice, I'll look into that now.

What I have is my old mobile and I bought a new PAYG sim card for it (new number), that I use as the business number. I rarely get calls from people on it, most people contact me via email. As soon as it's use increases I'm planning on getting an 0800 (1-800 to you americans), right now, it wouldn't be cost effective.

In the UK we used to have a few operators who would run 2 numbers off the one sim/phone. So you could have your business number and personal number but use one phone and it told you which type of call it was. Sadly they have all stopped now so when I go out I have to take 2 phones :P

[BK553]

One more for Google Voice, it's awesome. it transcribes voicemails and email it to you, so if you are in a quiet place, you can read them instead of listening. It forwards to any number that you want, you never have to advertise your "real" cell phone number, they screen junk calls, you can choose to call from your google voice number (on android phones at least), you can text message from it....

and it's free.

[jdepould]

Originally Posted by oldwolf

Anyone can call the google voice number. You won't be able to change it.

You can change your number, it just costs $10. It's free when you first set it up, but they don't want people constantly churning through numbers.

[oldwolf]

Ahh ok. Cool. Didn't think you could. I'm wrong this time.

[NicoleScraps]

We have one phone line with two phone numbers. It costs maybe $5 extra a month. One is a regular ring, for personal. One is a double ring for business. may not be the answer that you are looking for but it works for us.