Cost effective divert to mobile service?

[vee]

Hi,

Any recommendations for a cost-effective divert to mobile service please? The office is rarely unoccupied these days but when it is we'd like to divert the land-line to mobile. Sadly we're with BT who no doubt do some hideously expensive service that ideally we'd like to avoid if poss.

Thanks
Vee

[Shirker]

We just use the standard BT thing when the office is unoccupied - have done for years. Doesn't seem to work out very expensive.

[Whatever]

Hi Vee,

Vodafone offer a solution for this whereby you can have both landline and mobile ring for incoming calls.

Failing that it's to sign up to another provider who offers cheaper calls than BT (not hard!) which then won't cost so much for outgoing diverted calls. Some companies will offer bundles of minutes so diverting won't cost you much at all.

Paul

[Mr Anderson]

Hi Vee, we use http://www.press1.co.uk to provide us with a virtual switchboard. During office hours it redirects to our landline. If unanswered, and out of hours, their answer service kicks in and they email us a .wav of the message. You get notified of all callers by email, including hang-ups and other missed calls. You can set it up with an 08 number, or they can provide a geographic number (eg. ours is an 0151 number). You can also redirect to mobiles.

The basic cost is 4.99/month for an 0844 number (0870 and 0845 are available too). Landline numbers are 6.99/month extra. (Plus VAT if you're not registered).

There's no extra cost above that to redirect calls to your landline (you can set multiple numbers up for free).

If you set it to use a mobile (you can schedule this at set times, or for if a given landline number doesn't answer) then you pay an additional 3.9p/min + VAT for the call time.

Sarah's got a more indepth write up on her blog (and aff link if interested) at http://www.stuffbysarah.net/2008/11/08/virtual-switchboard-uk/

Obv. this would mean a change in number so might not be a viable option, but if it is then it could possibly be a cheaper option? They do a free trial too IIRC, so you could have a proper test first too.

[Matt]

We use press1 as well, highly recommended

Hi Vee, we use http://www.press1.co.uk to provide us with a virtual switchboard. During office hours it redirects to our landline. If unanswered, and out of hours, their answer service kicks in and they email us a .wav of the message. You get notified of all callers by email, including hang-ups and other missed calls. You can set it up with an 08 number, or they can provide a geographic number (eg. ours is an 0151 number). You can also redirect to mobiles.

The basic cost is 4.99/month for an 0844 number (0870 and 0845 are available too). Landline numbers are 6.99/month extra. (Plus VAT if you're not registered).

There's no extra cost above that to redirect calls to your landline (you can set multiple numbers up for free).

If you set it to use a mobile (you can schedule this at set times, or for if a given landline number doesn't answer) then you pay an additional 3.9p/min + VAT for the call time.

Sarah's got a more indepth write up on her blog (and aff link if interested) at http://www.stuffbysarah.net/2008/11/08/virtual-switchboard-uk/

Obv. this would mean a change in number so might not be a viable option, but if it is then it could possibly be a cheaper option? They do a free trial too IIRC, so you could have a proper test first too.

[vee]

Thanks Guys, some really useful stuff there. Our mobiles are with Vodafone so may look there first.

Cheers!
Vee

[suedenem]

If you want to keep your number, a basic second hand PBX for around £100 would probably do the trick. 

As the forwarding would be done from your office, you'd pay the cost of calling your mobile from your landline for any forwarded calls.  However, it would have other advantages such as multiple extensions with different rings, ability to add additional lines (so you can distinguish between home and work calls, divert calls to your work number to your answerphone out of hours etc), transfer calls, conference calls, custom on-hold music/message and so on.

Might be overkill (and some hosted services can do some of the above), but it can sometimes work out cheaper over a year or 2 than paying monthly.

[robwhizz]

If you want to keep your number, a basic second hand PBX for around £100 would probably do the trick. 

As the forwarding would be done from your office, you'd pay the cost of calling your mobile from your landline for any forwarded calls. 

We do this at the moment. One of the drawbacks is that the caller ID ends up as the office number. If you end up missing/losing a call you don't have a number to ring back.

[suedenem]

If you want to keep your number, a basic second hand PBX for around £100 would probably do the trick.  

As the forwarding would be done from your office, you'd pay the cost of calling your mobile from your landline for any forwarded calls.

We do this at the moment. One of the drawbacks is that the caller ID ends up as the office number. If you end up missing/losing a call you don't have a number to ring back.

That's true; we hardly ever divert calls as there's usually someone in the office, so this isn't a particular issue for us - we're either hyper-aware of diverted calls or they'd be picked up on the mobile answerphone service.

The biggest drawback of any divert service is cold sales calls roaming around with you! 

[Whatever]

Thing is Vee wants to lose the divert charges as she will pay the cost from her office/PBX and this adds up.

One customer recently moved to us and when we looked at their bills, they were spending she'd loads just on callers who hit the voicemail and hung up. They had hundreds of calls costing them a connection charge of around 22 pence per time.

If she can find a capped tariff or bundled call provider then this wouldn't be an issue.

Vee, just in case you did like the PBX route, we have some second hand ones which we could configure and send to you for not much money. Don't want to spam the thread though.