Family on the Phone

So, yesterday in my T-Mobile @Home is No More post, I said that today I was going to give T-Mobile  a call to see if I could save my @home services with them. And as promised, I did just that.

As usual, I got this really nice lady who was willing to help me out in any way that she could. I let her know that I was inquiring about my @home service. She did say that the service has been discontinued for new customers but that if I wanted to, I could keep my service just as it was.  This made me EXTREMELY happy.

But my happiness didn’t last long.

There was a slight problem in my plan. As we talked, I did let her know that I would be moving over to Verizon by week’s end. And that I would be porting my cell phone number over to them once I activated my phone with them. She, of course, asked me why I was leaving and I explained why – which she understood.

Now here’s the bad news

In order to maintain my T-mobile @ home services – I would have to hold an active cell phone line of at least $39.99 a month in order to keep the @home line. This defeats the whole point of me moving over to Verizon.

So, unfortunately, as much as I wanted to keep T-Mobile in my life somehow, there is no way for me to do so. I’m sad that I will be closing out my account with them after over 10 plus years of quality service from them but it must be done to save us money!

Now I am on the hunt to find another VOIP company that will suit my needs. Maybe I will go check out Hostgator’s VOIP next. Yes, that’s what I will do.

As you may have read yesterday, I am moving my follow me phone number to a VOIP service. I was so excited about the moved because I had planned to go with my currently cell phone provider – T-mobile.

A year or so ago, they began to offer an at home services called T-Mobile @home. It worked like any other VOIP service but seemed to be the cheapest around – it came in at a low $10 a month. YAY!

So you can imagine my surprise and upset when I found this article last night about the service being discounted. I think I ALMOST cried. I just could not believe it. All I could think about was who was I going to go with NOW. Yes, there’s Vonage and Hostgator but I wanted to stay with T-mobile somehow.

Ahh, but there is light at the end of the tunnel for me still.

I had forgotten that I had not yet canceled the original @Home line I had with T-Mobile. So later today, I will be calling them to find out if I can in fact continue to keep my line open and if I can port my business line over as well.

I have my fingers and toes crossed. Would you mind crossing your too? I could use all the help I can get on this one!!

For the last 3 + years, I have been using Kall8 for my business. Kall8 is a follow me phone number that forwards to any phone that you want. The service is easy to use and I have never had any problems with them whatsoever.

But today on my morning walk, I realized that my home office needs have begun to change.

I still need the flexibility of call forwarding that Kall8 provides but not the cost. Kall8 cost roughly about 6.9 cents per min. And there is a monthly rate of $5 per line. Now this is good if your call volume is low like mine was in the beginning but not now that things are increasing.

I need a service that will allow for the increase in volume and not hurt my purse.

So, I started my search today for the best option to replace Kall8. The two services that came to mind during my search were VOIP service and Skype. I have used VOIP (voice-over-internet-protocol) services in the past and loved it. The cost for most companies seems pretty reasonable.   I could also forward my calls to my cell phone if I needed to be available while out of the office. The other great thing about this service is that I could port my number over. So I would not lose my

VOIP services seem reasonable, now what about Skype?

I have so many friends that use Skype and love it. So, I had to check them out too. I have used Skype for chatting and conference calls every once and a while – but never for phone services. I have to say I was somewhat surprised when I found out how much Skype cost per month. You can get service for as low as $2.99 per month. You can also pay as you go for as low as 2.1 cent per minute.  Nice huh…

The only downside I found to Skype was porting of my number. I did not see an option for that – which is something that I need to be able to do.

So I have come to the conclusion that VOIP is a better option for my small business needs but Skype may have just made its way in to my home as a option for our home phone service.

photo credit: anne.oeldorfhirsch