VOIP + phone number options for working from home?

AHarvey

AHarvey

AHarvey

Soldato
Joined
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Location
Stoke area
Hi all,

Wasn't sure where to put this but the wife is starting back at work after a year off on maternity and she'll be working from home.

the company she was at was a nice friendly place, tech wasn't their strong point but they have been bought out by a much bigger company and tbh, it's all about penny pinching now and a shadow of what it was. Their new IT team is outsourced and quite frankly awful. They got hit with ransomware about 2 weeks after they took over, 15 PC's in the office, all taken offline, took 2 weeks to get everyone back up and working.

So, currently, she'll be working from home as I do. She's got to use her own laptop to remote into her system at work and work through that. they won't provide a system to use at home, and chances are it'll be some TeamViewer style system

Now a big part of the role is talking to clients, insurance companies etc but from what other staff members have said they are all having to use their own devices for incoming and outgoing calls which she doesn't want as it'll mean giving her personal mobile number out to thousands of people. They will not provide a mobile or other solution and at this moment, even covering phone bills seems like a no.

So I'm looking at VOIP style options that come with a phone number but it isn't an area I'm knowledgeable in. Incoming and outgoing calls.

Obviously there's Zoom and equivalents but they aren't the cheapest but I've just found numberpeople which looks like a cheap alternative for incoming calls and they seem to offer decent outgoing packages too.

Anyone any experience with them or can suggest any alternatives?

thanks
 
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The company not even covering the phone bills for people in the role you describe for your wife is a bloody big red flag to me. Are they just completely incompetent or doing their best to lose as many of the people as possible without coughing up for redundancy payments by imposing their own costs on their staff ? I can understand not being ready for homeworking a year ago when COVID first hit, but its 2021 now ffs ! What on earth would they expect her to do if she'd married a clueless technophobe instead of you ?

I'd hazard a guess they're American, where maternity leave appears to be an afternoon off to drop the sprog and then get back to work you lazy cow ...
 
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I don't know anything about VOIP other than to say avoid Vodafone! We had an existing mobile phone contract with them and they suggested their one net system to resolve our current phone issues

We were sold one net on the confirmation that it included wi fi calling only to find out once we signed the contract that, that part of the system doesn't exist yet :rolleyes:

We've had numerous issues and their team that handle the set up (from India) have been an absolute joke. It's been going on since Sept time.
 
peterwalkley said:
The company not even covering the phone bills for people in the role you describe for your wife is a bloody big red flag to me. Are they just completely incompetent or doing their best to lose as many of the people as possible without coughing up for redundancy payments by imposing their own costs on their staff ? I can understand not being ready for homeworking a year ago when COVID first hit, but its 2021 now ffs ! What on earth would they expect her to do if she'd married a clueless technophobe instead of you ?

I'd hazard a guess they're American, where maternity leave appears to an afternoon off to drop the sprog and then get back to work you lazy cow ...
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The bigger company are in Crewe and they are owned by a massive company in the Netherlands I think, the issue appears to be this Crewe company.

When they bought them out they said "Don't worry, we aren't going to change anything!" which they didn't for the first 2 weeks. then it was "use this insurer for all of these policies, they'll match anything". Christmas party, partners have been invited forever, I've been to the last 12 years of them, free bar etc. This time they had to go to the big company one and it was a bust. I worked at a company where everything was rented, 4 rebrands in 8 years etc, legal but ready to fold up in a moments notice, GDPR came in and they set up a call center in Indonesia. This new company reminds me of them completely.

They lost a million pounds over expected projections with the last lockdown so it's all about them saving money, they've let 2 or 3 people go.

The other staff are using their own equipment and mobiles, and they even told people they had to attend the office when the lad in the front office had been tested positive for Covid. I know one of the account managers is taking them to court.

As I said, it was a really family broker, 40+ years of local representation sold out for a quick buck. I've told her to quit, we can get by on what I earn and she can focus on other things but she won't.
 
secretspy said:
I don't know anything about VOIP other than to say avoid Vodafone! We had an existing mobile phone contract with them and they suggested their one net system to resolve our current phone issues

We were sold one net on the confirmation that it included wi fi calling only to find out once we signed the contract that, that part of the system doesn't exist yet :rolleyes:

We've had numerous issues and their team that handle the set up (from India) have been an absolute joke. It's been going on since Sept time.
Click to expand...

My brother works for Vodaphone, "I can get you a great deal", "OK, what about this phone with this package"

It's always twice as much as I can get via a third party. Wife was with them for a while but moved on. I couldn't even get a phone due to credit despite my credit scores being excellent.
 
I do this exact thing. I have a skype account, a skype phone number and a monthly subscription. You can choose which geographic location your number is in (e.g. 0203 for central London even though I live in Surrey - I could have chosen anywhere). The monthly subscription means all UK numbers and UK mobiles are included in the subscription (so free). I have skype installed on my PC with a headset and microphone and also my mobile phone, laptop and tablet. I can make or receive calls on all of those devices.

If she regularly makes calls to other countries then they area really cheap or you can buy other monthly subscriptions to cover them.

The desktop application (Windows, Linux and MacOS) is a bit clunky to use. But the Android (and I assume the ios) app is a bit better.

I have an very high quality microphone plugged into my PC and the call quality on it is very good.
 
Surely from a legal stand point they can’t not reimburse your wife for her phone bills if they aren’t providing the required hardware??
 
Bouton Aide said:
They probably shouldn't even be paying for everything unless the company is planning on paying for it.
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they shouldn’t, the company should be providing the right tools, but a tenner a month you can cancel any time is gonna be cheaper than a VOIP solution I’d have thought?
 
AHarvey said:
She's got to use her own laptop to remote into her system at work and work through that. they won't provide a system to use at home, and chances are it'll be some TeamViewer style system
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Microsoft Terminal Services and Citrix used to be common solutions in my day. No biggie, but check your ISP contract: they may disallow businewss use, in which case you may need to upgrade, and her employer should pay for that. And do you have a data cap?

AHarvey said:
They will not provide a mobile or other solution and at this moment, even covering phone bills seems like a no.
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What? The company should be providing her with the equipment she needs to do her job. In this case that means at least a company mobile, and probably a headset attachment too.

Are they trying to force her out? I think she should be documenting all these shenanigans.
 
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