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Need help! Bay Area phone services

January 26, 2010 by Allison

We’re making a move from Alameda to Oakland (both businesses and home) and figure almost anyone knows more about local phone services than we do!

We’re trying to port over our existing business lines (multiple lines, we’ll TRY to share one fax) to our new place three miles away so we can keep the same business phone numbers. Comcast first says they can do that, then they renege saying they need to ‘research it’. hmmm?

Can anyone advise us on this – we’ve not moved for a decade, are just too ignorant about how to make this all work so we’re ‘down on friday’ and ‘back up on Saturday’. After all, ignorance is expensive (and time consuming!) and knowledge is bliss.

What service do you use & why? What works best for home based businesses? What tricks can you teach us (and our readers) to save us time, hassle, money – something all us entrepreneurial companies need!

Thanks in advance.

This entry was posted on January 26, 2010 at January 26, 2010 and is filed under MarketingTips & Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

2 Responses to “ Need help! Bay Area phone services ”

  1. allison
    January 26, 2010 at 1:35 pm

    To be fair, we just heard back from the supe at comcast who said there is entirely different equipment feeding Alameda than Oakland. That kinda makes sense. So, now we get to spend a couple hours talking to AT&T. Can’t someone start a business to help people like us ‘negotiate’ with phone companies just to get what we want without being gouged?

  2. allison
    January 26, 2010 at 2:55 pm

    3 hours later. An update . . .
    In hopes that this helps another home based business owner, here’s what I discovered:
    1. there really is an awesome woman working at AT&T named Sherry (in the biz dept). She even gave me her email, spent over an hour on the phone to come up w/ the best package for biz, home, fax, internet, etc.- and the least expensive way to do it. I naturally approached her testy and bitchy, but she was awesome & patient.
    2. you can save lotsa cash ordering some resi vs. biz (if you don’t need a biz listing). So how many of you actually get a number out of a phone book still? Isn’t Google faster? Is it worth the extra cost to get biz vs. resi just for that – I doubt it, but would love your answers?
    3. biz people don’t talk to resi. heaven forbid. So you get to make two 2-hour phone calls to gather the info you need to make an informed decision.
    4. I’m now an expert at local/long distance phone services, so if you need advice, just ask. THIS TOOK 4 HOURS SO FAR AND WE HAVEN’T EVEN ORDERED THE INSTALLATION DATE YET. stay tuned. . .

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