Ebiz Toll Free Numbers
October 9th, 2008 by KenricShaun had asked me about all my ebiz’s and their toll free numbers in a comment yesterday. So here is a post about how my ebiz phones work.
With Ebiz1, I went with a regular landline. I got the Vonage $14.95 package, added a toll free number and a dedicated fax line. With the Vonage package I got the following:
$14.95 – 500 minutes nationwide
$4.99 – toll free number (rings to the main number)
$9.99 - dedicated fax line (new number, no minute restrictions on faxes)
So for $30 a month I had a real office set up. This is how I ran ebiz1. I hardly use any minutes on this setup.
With Ebiz 2-5, I did not want to spend $20 a month (no fax lines) on each one, but more importantly I did not want to have 5 physical phones in my office. So I went with a virtual phone service called Kall8.
Kall8 is pretty much a barebones set up. For $2 setup fee and $2/month I can get a toll free number. It’s as easy as clicking on the number you want below. It’s like a shopping cart and you add to the cart and checkout. 888, 877 and 866 numbers are $2/month. Other special or better numbers run from $5 to $25 a month.
You get a full featured phone number with many options but the catch is, you get absolutely no minutes at all! You even have to pay when you call in to set up your voice mail greeting. It’s truly a barebones set up.
The way I have it set up is that when someone calls the toll free number it rings to my cell phone. There is a setting where you can change the called ID to show either the caller’s real number or your toll free number. I have it set to show the toll free number. So if Joe Blow calls from 555-555-1212 to my 888-888-8888, my cell phone shows 888-888-8888. This is great because I enter that number into my contact’s list as Ebiz2 – House of Pancakes. So when I answer my call from my cell phone I can answer it “Kenric’s House of Pancakes” for Ebiz2. Otherwise, I’d have no idea if it was a tenant, personal call, telemarketer or potential ebiz customer.
Kall8 charges 7 cents per minute on all calls. I am pretty sure that this includes calls where someone leaves you a voice message. If your voice mail picks and starts its greeting, it’s 7 cents even if they don’t leave you a message. The minutes are also prorated to the nearest 0.1 minute. So there is potential of a very high bill if you have alot of customers calling. However, I would have to use 257 minutes to equal the $20 cost of Vonage.
The most important aspect is that when my cell phone rings, I can tell which store is being called. More importantly, if I let the call go to voice mail it does not go to my cell phone voice mail. It goes it store’s voicemail which has its own custom greeting.
So far this has been working out. But I really don’t get any phone calls. I’m basically paying $2/mo to the ability to put a toll free number on my sites to help boost their legitimacy and consumer confidence.
Posted in Making Money Online | 6 Comments »
Stumble it!
Wow..Pretty slick!
By Shaun on Oct 9, 2008
I’ve been using Callture-Telcan. I looked into Kall8 but Callture’s pricing is better and they have a variety of features that I found appealing. Check them out at http://www.callture.com. Support Canadian companies!
By Ron K. on Oct 10, 2008
I’ve been using kall8 for almost a year and am very satisfied. The service is cheap and high quality. I found reviews of their service first at http://www.besttollfree800numbers.com/
By Jason on Oct 21, 2008
Can you go into detail about how you set up your phone to display your 800 number? I have wondered for some time if this was even possible – it would be a huge benefit for me to utilize an 800 number for my RE business and have the calls delivered to my cell.
Also, if your cell displays which 800 number the call is coming from, is it also possible to capture the caller’s phone number – or is it a one-or-the-other situation?
Thanks – and great site, BTW.
By K Werner on Oct 25, 2008
K Werner,
On the Kall8 admin section you can choose for the caller ID to show either the actual number of the caller or your 888 number. So if your number as 888-123-1234, any call on your cell phone will show that number. Then all I do is simply program 888-123-1234 into my contact list as ABC store, just as you would for any of your friends.
On your cell phone you will not be able to get the real caller’s phone number. But with Kall8 you can set an email notification for every single call you get. The email notification will show that caller’s phone number. So you can get it right away if you have a Blackberry or email accessible cell phone.
I will mention one issue with this setup that I found. When an 888 call rings to your cell phone, if you hit ignore on your cell, the call will go to your cell phone’s voicemail!!!
You have to let the call ring through in order for the call to roll back to Kall8′s voice mail system.
This can be a problem if you’re in a quiet place and can’t answer AND you don’t want it to go to your cell phone’s VM. The way I resolved this was that I set my Kall8 VM pickup time to 17 seconds. This gives me exactly 1.5 cell phone rings to pick up before it goes to Kall8′s VM. I figure this is enough time for me to answer anyway if I wanted to.
By Kenric on Oct 25, 2008
Being able to receive an email of the caller’s actual phone # would be awesome – sounds like a very useful and convenient service. Thanks for the info Kenric, I’ll look into it.
By K Werner on Oct 29, 2008