Help Needed, I have 3 phone lines and broadband and need to cut costs!

j5jts

Hi I need advice

I have 3 phone lines to my home, 1 for home, 1 for business, 1 for a fax which has broadband on it.
I would like to have a business line that I could take calls on without missing any (I currently use call waiting but it drives me up the wall as it cuts up the conversation when 2 calls come through) I dont know if i need another line, I would like to be able to put people on a hold with sound/tune.
The fax isnt used a lot but is needed.
The home isnt used a lot also.
I would need to keep the business number and fax number, and would like to keep my home number.

I pay about £150 a month for all of the above inc calls.......I am sure that there must be a cheaper way...and a more professional way..........but i dont fancy putting numbers in before calls, I will forget and I am too busy.

Any advice will be appreciated!

redux

You could cut down to one or two lines, but then of course you wouldn't still have the numbers. And you can still get cheaper calls. Some options ...

Look into VoIP providers - apart from the ones with free calls to several destinations, there are others with still pretty cheap calls at 1p a minute, and a number of potentially useful options like virtual pbx, call waiting or forwarding.

For fax, you could get a fax to email number for incoming calls, and send using Windows Fax and the dial-up modem in the computer.

You can still use a range of cheap calls providers, without having to remember to enter prefixes etc, by getting an Orchid dialler which does this automatically for you. Others here are more expert about these.

I'm not sure about arrangements for porting landlines between providers (it seems much rarer), but perhaps you could forward faxes to your new number while you educate your customers. And then the dilemma of changing either business or home number remains; better facilities if it's the business one, but more reluctance to do it ...

topherxp

You could possibly cut down to two lines and keep the extra number, by using BT Call Sign. If your business line is on a business account then speak to business about cutting you home phone and taking call sign out on business line, I deal with res so not sure about how the business side work work it. If it's a residential line then you can do it on either.

In terms of your fax, it comes down to what you use the fax for (to send or receive), you could look at using an online fax service that would go via your broadband. That way you could cut down on another line, although i'm not to sure how this would affect the fax number.