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Phone Calls
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Phone Calls
I’ve only buying buying, fixing, selling for quite a while, no customer repair work. As I’ve sold gear I only work via emails which not everyone cares for. Those people are probably the ones I do not want to give my phone number to so it works fine.
However, I’m considering doing repair work for customers again. If I know the person, not a problem, they either have or can have my number. People I don’t know, reaching out to me through my website or worse, Craigslist (from gear I’m selling) can’t have my number. Again, if they get pissy that confirms they shouldn’t have my phone number.
I know this came up on the previous forum but I would appreciate knowing how people handle this especially if your shop is at your home. The last thing I want is a customer texting or calling my on a Sunday or any other day outside of reasonable business hours.
Add to all this, it’s 2023 and I can’t stand talking on the phone so I try to do that as little as possible.
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7 Replies
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Separate phone or line is the way to go.
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I’ve thought about that. We’ll see how busy customer work gets at this point. The tire kickers on Craigslist probably wouldn’t get a second number either. Thanks!
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Yeah. If you’re going to make a number available it has to be a second phone. Many people (and many musicians) have weird boundary issues. I’ve had people call my business phone at all hours of the night and early morning. While stoned voicemails might be vaguely amusing next day, it’s nice to able to turn off the phone and wait until next day.
I’ve been pushing people through my website and my email more for years and it’s paying off. These days I don’t get a lot of calls and most of the ones I get go through to voicemail. That has a message telling people that email is the best way to get me but they can leave a message if they want. Most don’t — mainly just a few old-timers who aren’t comfortable with email.
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Recently I’ve had a few people call me for initial contact, I’m not sure how they got my number, but then I tell them to email me instead. If they cant do that, then it’s pretty much over.
There is nothing that is going to happen in a phone call that I am gong to remember at this point. I need the paper train of the email to keep track of anything. There is literally no point in telling me anything on the phone because I really don’t care anymore and I will just space out and say a bunch of random grunts until I can get off the phone.
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LOL I just removed my Google listing but when it was up I would get random calls from guitar people even though it specifically stated in the listing that I do not answer my phone and please E-mail me. I stopped picking up the phone for cold calls a couple years ago but had a phase a few months back where I would pickup the phone and chat with these people just let them down and blow off some steam. Kind of an act of vengeance from me but I stopped doing that. You can count on these people to be problematic because they took zero milliseconds to get an idea of your business or if they did then they are right off the bat trying to overstep your boundaries. I have zero tolerance for any of that any longer and my life and my work finally feels like it’s coming together after 11 years of self-employment.
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I don’t have any experience with this but there’s google voice that I think can give you a parasite phone number on your own phone.
https://voice.google.com/u/0/signup
voice.google.com
Google Voice gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail as easy as email, no charge US long distance, low rates on international calls, and many calling features like transcripts, call blocking, call screening, conference calling, SMS, and more.
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I had a Google voice number but they would periodically require me to use it or lose it. Now, it’s just gone and there aren’t any available in my area for some reason so, screw Google in general.
Thanks all. I welcome any and all perspectives on this topic. Keep ‘em coming.
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