A Little Late

A Little Late was Originally Posted on November 29, 2012 by lavarock

I have a toll free telephone number for my business. Years ago this would not have been an option for me because of cost. In fact I think the toll free numbers were very expensive. Now you can get a toll free number for perhaps $2 a month if nobody calls. If someone does call, then the cost may be only a penny or two per minute.

The numbers generally work in one of two ways now. Any calls can be forwarded to a phone of your choice or you can connect to the provider account and handle call routing yourself. Depending upon how you do things, you may be able to automatically switch destinations based upon time of day, traffic or in case of failure. For example, a large company might have to switch their toll free number to a backup location, if their primary call center goes down (or is in the path of a major storm, etc). It can be quite like call forwarding of a regular telephone number and you may be able to control the transfer via internet from anywhere in the world.

So, my number is currently with a provider in Canada and allows some control over the number. generally I can send the calls to voice mail or another number, etc, but cannot take full control of the calls.

I also have regular telephone service with another company where I can take full control of my calls. I decided to transfer my toll free number to them. It takes a week or more for the transfer to take and in fact, can take 4 weeks.

So while I am waiting for the transfer to take, I am no receiving emails from the old company that they would like to advertise my business and website and phone number on their website.

That is what I mean by “too late”. I have already initiated a transfer away and expect the transfer to happen any day now.

My new provider allows me to direct inbound calls to many locations, whether it be a real phone or a phone adapter. That phone adapter may not have a telephone number associated with it and may not be able to call out anywhere. I can also do fail-over and time of day changes. You never know when I have to move my call center

So with this telephoe account I can also create sub accounts and extensions. Thus I can have phones in each room of the house and transfer these toll free calls room to room based upon time of day. Not that I would, but that I could.

This is a far cry from the old joke that went “We don’t have to care, we are the phone company”.