I’m setting up a PC for a small business which has only one phone line as far as I know. The owner wants the PC so he can list part of his inventory on e-bay. Of course, while he is working online he will not be able to receive calls from his regular customers. There are several options he has:
1)Only do his online work after hours. However, who wants to work in his own free time?
2)Get a second phoneline. I am leaning toward this option. The cost of the second line is only slightly higher, and when he is not online he has a second line for other uses.
3)Get a software package that either alerts him he has a call, or even allows him to take calls while online. This can, however, cause complications in the setup and stability of the PC. Besides, he is not very computer literate.
I was wondering who out there has had experience with this problem, and how they dealt with it.
Short of option #4, DSL, #2 is the most cost-effective. #3 is ok, but it’s a pain the butt, cause generally you have to reconnect after ending the call. And if his business gets a lot of calls, it will become frustratiing.
Check the local prices for modem service+phone line, vs. something like cable or DSL; I actually saved money moving to cable. Otherwise, I’d go with #2.
I have a thing called an Emmerson Switchboard. You connect your phone, computer and fax into it, and it will ring when you’re getting a call. It only rings twice, and you have to have call-waiting.
When I looked into it, it was the best option for us. The hardware was $35, and the call waiting was $2.50 a month.
How many calls a day does he expect? Does he need to be online constantly?
I just have call waiting and voice mail. When I get a call, my connection drops and the phone rings. This works fine because it’s usually more important for me to take incoming calls than to be online. If I don’t want to be interrupted I turn off call waiting and let voice mail pick it up.
I did try a device called Catch-A-Call that was supposed to let me maintain my dial-up connection while accepting incoming calls, but I actually experienced more dropped connections and missed calls with it than without it.
If he’s going to be getting lots of calls, option 2 would be better. But if it’s only a few calls, he could test option 3 for a month or so and then decide if he’d prefer to switch to option 2.