Troy’s Telephony Triumph

November 19th, 2007, No Comments »

Before we left for Malta, I wrote about my difficulties getting our international telephony strategy sorted out. We never really did get it 100% right. We’re using SkypeOut for outgoing calls and that works great. On the incoming side, we just have brief, expensive calls on our cell phones.

Troy, however, has got it figured out. He just spent a week in Paris, and wrote about his telephony successes. If you’re interested, read the whole post. Here’s how he finishes:

But that very small issue aside, it means that with a laptop, skype, Gatherplace (for screen sharing), Simulscribe, a good DSL connection, and a Vonage adapter – have equipment, will travel.

I hear that Puerto Vallarta has good DSL… Or maybe Costa Rica….

Simulscribe looks like a good option, and provides what I was going to use Vonage for: forwarding voicemail messages to email. The voice-to-text conversion is an added bonus. I’ve signed up for the service to see how it works. I’ll report back.

UPDATE: Dave from Simulscribe is one smart social media monitoring cookie. He contacted me and hooked me up with a Vancouver number so that my calls don’t have to be forwarded to a US one. Plus, he gave me a 30-day free trial, and offered the same to you, my dear readers. Here’s the sign-up if you want to try it out. That looks kind of like an affiliate link, but I don’t get anything but good karma.

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Vonage Didn’t Want My Money

April 17th, 2007, 5 Comments »

You know, it’s striking how quickly a company can antagonize me. I called Vonage tonight, eager to sign up for their basic package, as part of our ongoing international phoning strategy.

All I wanted was a basic package, so that I could have their voicemail-to-email service. People call our mobile numbers in Vancouver, and the call gets forwarded to our Vonage number. They leave a voice mail message, and the message gets emailed to me. Simple, right?

Unfortunately, they won’t let me sign up for any Vonage service without also giving me some hardware. Some of the hardware is free, but I don’t want any of it. Vonage confirmed that I don’t need it for my particular problem.

Perversely, I want to cut them a deal, but they won’t take it. I want less from them (that is, no hardware), but I’m willing to pay the full price for the service. I spoke to two different agents, and neither could help me. I asked to talk to a manager, they put me on hold, and I got bounced to some French language telephone blackhole.

Adieu, Vonage, I hardly knew you. Bonjour Primus. I’ll call them tomorrow morning to see if they won’t send me hardware.

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