Everyone wants to save money these days and staying mobile and flexible is very important for many. Desktop phones are great and almost a necessity if you spend a lot of time on speaker phone or just make a lot of phone calls. But if you need to save money in your small business you might want to think about adding a Phone.com iPhone Extension to your Virtual Office account so you can enjoy more mobility. The Mobile VOIP app on an iPhone with an iPhone Extension is essentially your desktop phone, but it’s more mobile and works over wifi instead of having to be plugged into the ethernet.

I’ve been doing this for a while now and it’s really nice alternative. I’m now able to make true VOIP calls at Starbucks or my hotel room when I’m traveling. And If I’m outside the US these calls over wifi are not roaming. Earlier this year when I was in Spain and England for a week I was able to call home to my wife without paying the outrageous roaming fee from my carrier. It was also really great when I was on vacation over the summer and didn’t get any cell phone reception in our cabin but had wifi, so I was never really disconnected.

I’d like to talk to you today as a grateful Phone.com user and not as an employee. Yesterday was a bit harrowing for my family. My father in law has Dementia and it’s sadly progressing quickly. Yesterday afternoon we couldn’t reach him. We called the home phone and cell phone again and again and got no answer. My mother in law rushed home from my house hoping he was there but he wasn’t. He went out and left his cell phone at home (I still don’t know why). We were trying to wait patiently but it wasn’t going well. We made reservations for dinner expecting him to just show up at home and be ready to eat.

When that didn’t happen we really started to worry and my mother in law started phoning friends. She ultimately went out to talk to neighbors. But here’s where Phone.com comes in, as soon as things escalated I got on the Phone.com website and changed my in laws phone settings. They have been using Phone.com for a while now and calls typically ring through to their ATA and home phone. What I did thanks to the awesome control panel was change the call handling rules. Calls still rang at their home but I also set them to ring on my mother in laws cell phone and my wife’s cell phone. We didn’t care who answered the phone but just hoped to get a call telling us he’s ok.

Luckily we did come to find out my father in law went to a gas station to ask for directions and the cashier called the police knowing that he shouldn’t be roaming the streets. The police arrived and called the home number reaching my mother in law on her cell phone only because the call routing was changed allowing for this to happen. In the end the police officer was kind enough to drive my father in law home and make sure he got in safely. Thank you to the Anaheim Police Department and thank you Phone.com for letting me set the home phone number to ring on my mother in laws cell phone. In my mind there is no doubt this would have gone differently if no one answered that call ringing in an empty house. Phone.com was a key piece to this happy conclusion.

We’re happy to introduce our latest deal, get one month free when signing up for a Global Number. Do you have any customers outside the US? Or a family member? Have you ever considered getting a phone number in a foreign country? Well now’s the time to get 1 month for free. Phone.com will give you 1 free month just for signing up for a Global Number.

*First month’s flat monthly rate for Global phone number is free. Minutes used will be deducted from your Phone.com plan.
*User will be responsible for any additional international fees that incur during this time.
*User must enter coupon code “GLOBAL” to activate.
*Good for new and current customers
*Promo end date TBA

Plus you always get free calls (uses your minutes but no additional fee) to many countries in addition to the US so this is a great 1 2 punch. All you have to do is log in to your account to add the Global Number using the coupon code GLOBAL or call our 24/7 customer care and ask them to add a Global Number.
Additional info can be found here.

Being able to dial internationally from my cell phone really came in handy this weekend. Most people would never consider doing this due to the outrageous expense but I was able to call overseas from my cell phone as if I was sitting at my desk in my office. Let me explain my wife (this is Jeb by the way) had to have an emergency appendectomy and word in my family spreads fast. So I was getting concerned calls from all over the world from family members asking if my wife was ok and asking me to call and text them when she was out of surgery.

So as soon as I heard from the doctor that she came out of surgery and all went well, I called and texted everyone who asked me to. As I was doing this I was thinking how much it would have cost if I was using my cell phone’s carrier plan versus Phone.com on my cell phone (from my Phone.com Mobile Office app utilizing my Virtual Office account). Now for transparency sake I was using a company comped account so I didn’t pay but I would have been paying ¢44/min with Phone.com versus $1.69/min with AT&T calling a cell phone in England. That’s almost 4 times more expensive.

At the time I was making the calls and sending the texts I wasn’t all that concerned about the money but looking back, I would have been pretty upset spending an arm and a leg. I also don’t have international dialing turned on via AT&T because I always know I can count on Phone.com. It’s a comfort knowing I can call my family and close friends around the world and not stress about it.

Let this story be a lesson that emergencies happen and you need to be prepared for them. Whether it be a medical emergency or a natural disaster like hurricane Irene you always need to be prepared to communicate with family and friends. It’s makes everyone a little happier to know you’re ok. By the way my wife is recovering at home now and texting me instead of ringing a bell.

My in-laws have been Phone.com customers for almost a year now and it’s been a wonderful experience, I’ll explain in a later post how they are using it. But what I want to talk about today is how wonderful my experience has been being their Phone.com online control panel. We’ve tweaked their settings and set up address books for them. Well I’ve done all of this and I’ve have a great experience doing it. That’s one of the things I like so much. In the past they had phone service from their local telco, and then from their ISP and in both cases there were always little problems, like no dial tone or calls wouldn’t go through. I never had any control over their phone system back then, the only thing I could do was call and complain and hope someone would help, talk about frustrating. Now I have the control panel and I can access their address book to give them numbers, I can forward their calls to their cell phones if they wanted me to and I can even forward calls to my wifes cell phone if need be.

This has made my life so much easier, I’m not nearly as frustrated because I’m not getting the call that something isn’t working and if I did now I can check the status of their phone line, see if it’s connected, see if the line is degraded and even turn the volume up for them all from my computer. One of my favorite features that my wife and I use all the time is that we get emailed their transcribed voicemail so we can read it and decide if we really need to listen to it (which we can do from any phone world wide) then report back to them.

This has been a huge stress reliever for me because I was getting daily or weekly calls before they got Phone.com, not knowing how to listen to their voicemail, not knowing who called, always having call quality issues etc. Now they pay less then $10/month instead of the $30 – $40/month with the other providers. I believe it was even more then that, closer to $60 but I’m not finding that old pricing on line. They are saving upwards of $360/year and getting better service. So if you’re looking for a consumer phone service, that’s very easy for the elderly and their family to use I highly suggest Phone.com.