hello, i want to start my reselling business but I've quite a big problem. i do not have an office and i will do all the stuff at home (i guess most of the resellers do the same).

i want/need to write a support phone number and fax (if possible) onto my site... but.. i do not want to give my real number (my home is my castle).

do you know any ways to get a phone number (really cheap or even free?), which redirects all the calls onto my mobile or home?

thanks a lot and i hope this post is not OT

Call your phone company, they can do anything you need, including setting you up for forwarding, etc.

You may want to consider something like http://www.ureach.com/ as well.

Try:

Ureach.com
myown888.com

Both are pretty good, and have great prices.

Jim

http://www.accessline.com

They do 1-800 number, local number, fax to same numbers, forwarding of phone number to anywhere...etc...great product

Your local phone company should be able to redirect calls for you. We direct calls from our office to an employee cell phone or home phone overnight and on holidays when the office is closed. You can do the same thing on a full-time basis with most phone companies--just a second number that is "virtual".

You might also consider RingMate, a service most phone companies offer--the phone will ring differently for one line than for the other.

However, you need to consider the following:

1) If you have it sent to your home, you'll always need to answer your phone in a business manner and if you have kids, you'll need to prohibit them from answering the phone--you don't want your kids answering the phone when a potential new customer calls!

2) If you have it sent to your cell phone and you're out of range or the phone is off, callers may hear "The Sprint PCS (or whatever company) customer you are calling is not answering". This doesn't convey a professional image.

Perhaps a better idea would be to get a second line installed in your home for business purposes and use that for business. That way, if you get an office later on, you can just move the phone line. When I got started this is what I did--then when I set up my office I was able to simply transfer the phone number to the new location and add lines to it for my employees' extensions. You'll also get a yellow pages listing so that if a customer calls information they'll be able to get your number.

Good luck!

--Erika Stokes

Called "Distinctive Ring" in my area (TX), distinctive ring lets you have a second (and third and fourth) phone number that rings your (home) line. A different ring pattern is heard depending on the number dialed. If you don't use your home phone much during the hours you want to do business, it might work well. It is a cheap ($5 per month) service. You can buy a little switch that detects the ring pattern (normal, short-short, long-short, etc) and routes the call to the appropriate phone/ans machine.

Distinctive ring numbers are not listed in our area, probably anywhere.

I use this on my business line to have a different fax number without the expense of another line. Works great, many fax machines can detect ring patterns out of the box.

http://www.j2.com/index.asp

Used to be free, not sure about it anymore. Free voicemail and fax and I think they forward. We used them for a while when we first started out and it worked well.

and what about for the UK ??

thanks a lot for your help, could you please try if this number works? 13202040418

yes... european numbers would be interesting, too!

For telephone numbers you can use in the UK try
http://www.yac.com

Kev

For the UK try 07050.com (http://www.07050.com)
They have free numbers.

Fred

Im in the UK got my no from 4free.co.uk and i paid £10 for it.

jfax still has a free number option, do a search on the engines

Get a toll-free number from myown888.com, and redirect it to your mobile (assuming you can customize your voicemail, as said above).