Indebted to dect phones

If you like gizmos, you’ll love what you can get to go about your everyday business nowadays.  Time was when you just got to use bic biros and a pencil sharpener – and one of those plastic tube things to shuffle your paper clips around. But now you have the chance to pick and choose from a bewildering range of telephones.

I guess if you work for as company, you don’t have much say in your choice of telephone systems for business. But if, like me, you work for yourself – the world is your oyster.  You may even feel that you might want to change your BT phone.  After all – there are plenty more to choose from.

I particularly like the pone system that lets you give off the pretence that you have an office – and then divert to your mobile.  Then it is only the fact that mobiles are not supposed to be used on the golf course that may give you away.

So the first thing you should do when you  have a say in what telephones you can use – and buy is find a site where you can look wistfully and even buy digital dect cordless phones. Just imagine – never again need you be tied to your desk by a phone with a cord on it.  Isn’t progress wonderful?

In fact the only thing I do not like about business telephones is that most of the calls you get are ones you do not want to get.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply get on with doing your job?  But no, thanks to the telephone, now you can be interrupted at any time of day by some hopeful trying to sell you something.

Some days the calls just go on and on.  It’s very difficult to stay polite.  I remind myself that the nuisance caller is simply doing their job – but I suspect being rude would be better for my sanity.

Love Hate Relationship with British Telecom

My relationship with BT hit an all-time low last week when I rang customer relations in an attempt to see why my bill was so massive.  I guess it had been a bad day in the office for customer relations… but they actually deliberately cut me off rather than help.  Needless to say I was redirected to India rather than Scotland when I rang straight back and my new helper couldn’t have been more helpful – but I still don’t know why my bill is so high when I am their top broadband rate.

Maybe there is a better way of running your business and office telephone systems – but I have yet to find it.  All I have been able to pin down are the snags of switching.  It always seems cheaper to leave BT – until you see the mall print.  You have to keep paying line rental to BT even though you are no longer using them.  I suppose they have to do the repair work… so what exactly do other internet providers do for their money.

I live in an area which gets appalling broadband service anyway.  It’s slow at the best of times – but positively snail-like at peak periods.  I am beginning to think that I might be better off with a mobile broadband service – and use it at home too.

Once again I find myself wistfully looking at the eye=wateringly expensive Sky options.  If their broadband service really does work I can see that it is an attractive option.  Not only will I get telephone calls – I will see Wayne Rooney spitting in glorious HD.

But trying to sort out your telephone service on-line is only half the problem.  As with everything else in life, you soon get diverted into gadgets and gizmos that you can’t live without.  I challenge you to look up telephone service providers without getting sidetracked on to the exciting new telephones and telephone systems now available..  Panasonic digital cordless phones look particularly appealing.  I wonder if the batteries go flat and stay flat once you have forgotten to put them back in the cradle?

Me and my telephone account

I have a big decision to make this month.  Who to put my telephone and internet business with.  Apparently my contract with BT runs out at the end of the month.  Which probably means I will forget to do anything about it.  But I know I should – so I have been trawling through the internet sites to see if I can do a bit better for myself.

The problem is it is like trying to learn another language.  I have no idea what a dect phone is.  Yet apparently, I have some really interesting deals available on digital dect cordless phones. This is interesting – if only because I am not even sure if I have a digital dect cordless phone already.

This is one of the key problems with looking to buy telephones on line.  They all look the same, they all sound the same.  Hell they probably ARE all the same.  Which to my way of thinking means you can’t go far wrong.

Let’s face it, the only reason that people get so worked up about mobile phones is that they think they are impressing their friends when they get the damn things out.  Who sees your phone at home apart from you? 

The same probably applies to our providers.  Just think what you could do with free texts for life.  Form a band apparently.  But who knows or cares what you do with your broadband?  Granted there are probably some kudos to be earned from a techy friend if you have hyper-zingy broadband firing off a zillion widgets a second.  But who really cares?  Which might explain why business broadband and ADSL lease lines are rarely riveting dinner time conversation.

 But, ladies and gentlemen, I save the best until last.  What do you know about your UK ISP?  Very little, I am guessing – but now at the touch of a button you can see who is fast and who isn’t.  You can even measure yours on-line without getting arrested.  Sounds like a service worth paying a little extra for to me!

Office Politics

Where would we be without all these sophisticated office telecoms systems eh? At the weekend my credit card shaped car key stopped working, which made opening and locking the car somewhat difficult. So I rang my local garage on the telephone.

Needless to say they were not answering their telephones. No I was instantly lost deep in the bowels of a voip system giving me a range of choices I did not want. Eventually I got through to someone who could not help me and they diverted me back into the system where I was able to talk to a very helpful man who told me what I needed to do next.

Depressingly, this involved finding a utility bill, my car registration document and an official document with my photo on, then turning up at the garage with £150 so they would then order a new key. Imagine my surprise then when I turned up at the garage later in the day, clutching the afore mentioned documents to find not one but two people sitting at reception with absolutely nothing to do – because the damn VOIP phone system was answering the telephones for them – and making all their customers vow never, ever to buy one of their cars, ever again.

I quietly mentioned in passing that perhaps it is a good idea for a customer-service based business to actually talk with their customers – but I just got a good sneering at. I was tempted to ask about business sdsl availability so they could do everything on line and not have to face real people ever again.

So here I am £150 worse off, still without a key and patiently waiting for Renault to send me another one. When it comes it will let me into the car if I just touch the door handle. And it will lock the car all on its own as I walk away. Great.

What will they think of next? This is the THIRD time my high-tech key has failed. (4th if you count the time I inadvertently put it through a colour-fast cycle in my washing machine. Maybe they will come up with something simple like a key you can use again and again for years. I should be so lucky!

Getting to grips with office equipment

I’ve had yet more problems with BT.  First of all they cut my download capacity even though I am paying at the premium rate.  Then they had the temerity to cut off my broadband altogether, simply because I hadn’t paid the on-line bill which I had not seen.

So all is not well at Rob Towers.  And I have once again been thinking beyond BT home phones for my home phones and broadband service.  The only trouble is deciding who to use nowadays for a telephone system… which has always proved too much of a decision.  I am not much of a telecoms expert.  My prime criteria are that everything works… and that the set-up is easy.  And that help lines, even if they are in India are useful and work.

You’d think that is not too much to ask from a telecoms service.  But it seems that it is.  For a start, without cable, you are somewhat limited in your choice.  You also have Sky to consider.  But you know that they are primarily flogging television channels – so relying on Sky for telephone system as well as your telecoms seems a risky option.

I am sure I am not the only non-techy telecoms user in the world.  I am not ashamed to admit that I don’t know my adsl internet from my sdsl internet.  But like most people – I know somebody that does.  That nice Mr Google can usually be relied upon to come up with the cheapest option.

 So at the moment I am still with BT who are taking a huge monthly fee for servicing a telephone system that is really rather simple – and providing a broadband service that is really rather poor.

The frustrating thing is that there is nothing I can do about the latter.  My poor broadband service is dictated by my poor location (in broadband terms) which is provided b y BT.  Whoever I go too will not be able to alter that salient fact.  This is rather a pity – because it is the most important item on my telecoms agenda.

Moans on telephones

Having a telephone used to be so simple.  You got one from BT – and it was already in the house when you moved in.  That was it.   Now things are very different.  You can buy your telephone in all shapes and sizes from companies of all shapes and sizes – and even rent lines from people you have never heard of like Swiftcall.

So if like me you have moved to a house that is not even connected to a telephone line where do you start?  Well I started where I have always been – and got in contact with British Telecom. 

That may or may not have been a mistake – as it took age to get someone to call and make the connection.  Then they went next door by mistake and simply left.  They did manage to come again slightly quicker – and connected a broadband service so slow it was worse than dial up.

Which is a good lesson to check out just how bad the phone lines are where you are planning to move in.  However, then the fun really starts.  If like me you work from home you can work your way through the complete office systems that include both standard telephones and cordless phones.  Even when you have narrowed your choice to a single brand (in my case Panasonic KX phones) you still have a lot of choices to make.

Do you want call logging?  Very handy if you are trying to budget your business, make conference calls – or keep tabs on your offspring!  Then you just have to decide who to use for the actual calls.  Sticking with BT is almost boring now.  There are plenty of telecoms companies to choose between – even if you live out in the country.  And I am still thinking of using Sky – to get my free satelitte television as part of my telephone service.

 But I will say one thing for BT – their back up service is good.  So as yet I have not switched.  But my annual contract is up– so it is a decision not to be put off much longer…AND the Ashes is about to start.