i pay over 1200.00 a year for the phone, of course i have unlimited long distance....ya know all utility companys charge businesses more.

my son is a computer programmer, and turned me on to the skype phone...it's hooked up to your computer, i bought the phone on amazon for under 30 bucks...it came in the mail today, and i just hooked it up at my home.....it works great, 6 bucks a month, unlimited long distance in the united states....SIX BUCKS!...to landlines, cell phones whatever!

i'm thinking of hooking one up at the shop...keeping my old phone for a few months to give "the numbers been changed to..."on my answering machine, until everyone gets my new number.

i hate that 100.00 a month bill comming every month.....that sure would be great to quit giving "DA MAN" 1200.00 of my hard earned cash every year.

what about out of the country - I have family in the Bahamas and would love to talk to them more often - but tooo expensive

I use Vonage right now which is only $25 a month with unlimited long distance. I didn't know Skype was so cheap! Can you get multiple phone receivers or only the one?

I use Vonage too. It's awesome! And cheap. It has lots of features, too, that come with it. We've had it for about 4 years, and have never had a problem.

I get my phone will all US calls, high speed internet and basic cable with 3 boxes for 115.00 a month but I would love to call Bahamas more. But am interested in what it might cost to have the other one for 6.00 a month and find out what it would cost to be able to call Bahamas

I thought this was a cake site

I went on a 3 month trip last year and to call home I used Skype from my laptop. Bought $10.00 in credit and talked forever to Canada and England and I still have $7.00 left on it.

Here's the rate for calling the Bahama's

Destination ·
Rate/minute USD excl. VAT Bahamas $ 0.089
USD incl. VAT $ 0.102

We've also had Vonage about 3 years and LOVE it! We had a rough patch once, but they replaced our router, but that was very early on! Less than $30 a month once all taxes are added!

Gee jibbies, i thought this said CAKE BUSINESS...people in business sometimes discuss things that cost/save money.

see, if you do this for a living, you kinda would like to keep more of the money you work so hard to make.

Sorry ladies I didn't bother to check out the topic heading, my mistake

Jibbies

littlecake, are you able to keep you old # with this service? I'm wondering if it will work for me.

I use my cell for my business because I rent kitchen space and I got a "ghost" # from the phone company so it forwards to my cell and they charge me $.10 a minute for every call because my cell # has a different area code than the ghost # and it's considered long distance + the $20/month for the # itself. I figured there was no way around paying it. but heck $6 is a steal!

no. you can't keep your old number...that why (if i do this) i'll keep my old phone for several months, and hook it up to answering machine saying the phone number has been changed.

i'm looking up skype phone through google and i see they have phones but i don't see phone service. can you tell me where i should be looking?



edited to say: never mind I found it

I use verizon... for both home phone service and cell phone service... For my home bill included in the bill is my phone, DirecTv, and DSL internet... my monthly bill is just over $100.00 a month. My Verizon Wireless bill includes my phone and my husband's phone, a family plan package and it runs us a little over $100.00 per month for the two phones.

House phone has unlimited long distance to anywhere in the US and Canada, voicemail, three way calling, call waiting, caller id and call waiting id....

Cell phones are basically WAY over charged because we only use them to talk to each other when is called IN Calling and is free lmfao... We can talk for free to anyone on Verizon wireless weather contract or pre-paid services... we have 700 minutes for all other calls between the two of us (if I use 400 and he uses 300 or whatever..) txt messaging, picture messaging, etc...

A friend recently did the vonage thing and they are still having to pay extra to keep verizon as their ISP.... I feel it's easier to keep verizon home package and a bit cheaper then changing because they want to charge me an additional $20 a month to keep my DSL but not my phone, and an additional $45.00 a month to keep the DirecTv and not the phone....

Alot to think about...

On the whole thing of "I thought this was a cake site" there are different types of forums such as the off topic/general forum where we can discuss ANYTHING at all we want to weather cake related or not... I agree this is fine to be posting here because Business owners need to share different ways of saving money where the costs of ingredients are rising every few months plus the costs of gas is rising every week across the US... any little savings we can find is a great thing.. Thanks for sharing hun!!!! Also wanted to add I too use my cell phone as my "business" line... I don't want people having my home number and calling me at 2am or 11 pm... with my cell I can turn it off and let it go to voicemail

Good luck everyone and sorry I got so long winded on this one

On the whole thing of "I thought this was a cake site" there are different types of forums such as the off topic/general forum where we can discuss ANYTHING at all we want to weather cake related or not... I agree this is fine to be posting here because Business owners need to share different ways of saving money where the costs of ingredients are rising every few months plus the costs of gas is rising every week across the US... any little savings we can find is a great thing.. Thanks for sharing hun!!!! Also wanted to add I too use my cell phone as my "business" line... I don't want people having my home number and calling me at 2am or 11 pm... with my cell I can turn it off and let it go to voicemail

You must have missed my apology.

Jibbies

Oh I saw it hun I was just commenting in general cause I know you aren't going to be the only one bringing that subject up It wasn't a direct hit at you hun it was just a general comment in reply to that sorry I didn't make the clear

cocorum....you download the software right off the site, you'll need a usp phone to hook onto your computer tower.

you pick what services you want directly off the site.

my son is getting a phone in next week that doesn't require a computer, it has a lil computer built in it....i don't understand how it works....but if it works well for him, thats the one i'll be getting for the shop...i don't have internet access up there, so getting a skype phone, and then having to pay over 30.00 bucks a month for high speed internet would kind of be defeating the purpose.

i'm so excited about saving so much money, i hope it works out.

i'm guessing now jibbie might have thought i was a spammer at first, and nobody likes those....clogging up the message boards with worthless info, trying to act like they are part of the board, when really they are just trying to sell their junk.

littlecake I was just wondering how the skype phone service is working out? Is it clear? Any dropped calls?
I am looking to make a change soon.

How would you do this is you have High Speed Internet like Zoom Town from cincinnati bell?

I dont know if any of you have heard of a phone service called MagicJack. You can goto MagicJack.com and really find out more about it. But it won PC Magazines pick of the year, and we have it and i LOVE it. Its a ittle thing you plug into your USB port on your computer and then you just plug your phone into the other end of it. Its $40 to buy...and you get your first year free. After that its $19.99 a year! You can call anywhere in the US & Canada for free, and anyone in the world can call you. Plus, the great thing is when my hubby goes to Iraq he can take it with him and a small phone and whenever he gets internet service he can just call home with it, and i can call him! Which last time he was there, i coudnt ever call him.(although he never gets internet service overthere so hopefully this next time he wil!!) My friend has one in germany and she can call anywhere in the US & Canada for free and i can call her magicjack all the time for free too!! I know im prob. doing a bad job of explaining it. But go check out the website, this product has been on foxnews and other places and its great. Definitely worth a try!! You also have a free 30day trial.

i'm looking into magic jack....i had skype at home for 6 months...towards the end the sound quality was so bad it was maddening, so i just let them go.

melissa043: I saw the magicjack infommercial one night and after reading several reviews decided against it, only because someone mentioned you have to deactivate your anti-virus protection from your computer in order to use it and also, they do not have area codes for every part of the USA yet. The reviews also mentioned that they keep track of every website you visit so that they can send you advertising/offers that you might be interested in based on your browsing of the internet. Do you know if any of this statements are true? Like I said, I read the reviews other users wrote. Do you have anti-virus protection in your computer and are you able to use it with the magicjack? Do you get any ads? I have McAfee Service Protection and can not imagine going online without it. Any info. would help in reconsidering my decision. Thank you.

We actually just bought a new Dell that has windows vista on it and we havent had to uninstall any anti-virus software or deactivate it. And if they dont have the area code that you want, then you just pick another one and when your area code becomes available you can switch it for free. My hubbys in the army now and i wanted to stick with our cell phone area codes(from back home, NY), but its not available yet. So we got the local area code for around here, GA. But when we move again i dont want cell phone to be one area code, then house phone another and then everyone around us another. So when 914 becomes available i will just switch to that one and we'll have all one area code. Neither of us have ever gotten any advertising/offers at all, so i dont know what thats about. Plus, alot of reviews said that the customer service was VERY bad, which made me nervous. But we got ours in the mail in 4 days and now they have 24/7 customer service where you can talk to a rep. online at anytime. I've done it twice to ask them random questions and they've been VERY helpful. Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions. Plus its just so convenient...if we go away for a week we can just bring the laptop with us and if the hotel has internet plug the magic jack into the comp, then the hotel phone into it and we have our house phone wherever we go! Hope i was some help!

Littlecakes--We had Skype and decided to let them go also. The last few months has been horrid. We only use it for when MIL calls her family in Poland and Germany. The connection was so bad you couldn't hear what the other person was saying. It was great at first but their service took a serious nose dive.

melissa043: Thank you for your information. I think I will order it and try it for free for 30 days and see how it works out.

You're very welcome. I hope it works out for you!!