Emergency Home Phone Idea?

[Hardwrkr13]

I work shifts and my gf is a 9-5. We both have cells and no home phone. I have my phone off when I'm sleeping during the day (mostly because of telemarketers, etc).
We're thinking it would be a good idea to have a phone we could leave on at bedside that only the two of us know the number to in case we need to get ahold of each other (emergency). Adding a home phone is no good as telemarketers would soon get the number and be waking me up while I sleep.
A prepaid cell could work but the cheapest phone is $50 and the cheapest way to keep it active for the year would cost us another $100 per year.

Any ideas on a cheaper way?

[rib]

7-11 sells phones for speak out wireless. I think sim cards are 5 bucks. All of their pre paid cards last for a year.. Cheapest card is 25 bucks I think.

Get yourself an old phone that's unlocked off eBay or kijiji... I think i have a Nokia,that's brand new,from them, that I could sell you for the cost of shipping.

[rib]

Or if you have Internet and a pc, you could look at magic jack

[nobbie48]

Can you program your phone to be silent for all calls except for your GF?
I don't know much about phones but I assume an expert would need to know the make / model.

Can you program a delay into the phone. Telemarketers give up after a certain number of rings.

[ReaImDown]

If you buy a $200 phone you could


- Randy

[Hardwrkr13]

That Speak Out card would be pefect. Every other carriers I've seen have cards that only last 30days except for the $100 ones.


We both use Blackberry's. Mine's a Bold 9000 I believe. AFAIK I don't think I can silence all incoming except for her number but I'm no phone guru (hence this thread).

[Otac]

Nettalk is the thing for you bro. 3.7$ per month no telemarketers, 59+tax at best buy (device with one year of service). you just need internet, im using it for last 4 months as a home phone its a great thing

[DaveTheCanuck]

VoIP.ms

Only $0.99 to $1.99 a month depending on which area code you pick. An extra $1.50/mo if you want 911. Then it's 1.5¢/minute incoming and 0.5¢/minute outgoing (yes, that's half a cent per minute).

Then you can set it by default so that all calls go straight to voicemail (or a "number is not in service" message) and create a whitelist of all numbers you want to actually ring.

All you need is an ATA device like this, plug it into your router, plug your phone into it, put in your VoIP.ms username and password, and you're pretty much done.

[nfq]

That Speak Out card would be pefect. Every other carriers I've seen have cards that only last 30days except for the $100 ones.


We both use Blackberry's. Mine's a Bold 9000 I believe. AFAIK I don't think I can silence all incoming except for her number but I'm no phone guru (hence this thread).

you can set your phone to Silent and have a custom ringtone/alert for your gf, make sure you set it so that under the Volume setting, is has a value (1-10) and not 'Active Profile'. That way, only if she calls, will the phone ring, when in any mode, not just silent.

that's the cheapest fix

otherwise, another +1 for SpeakOut.

[Scuba Steve]

Magic jack plus work well just plug it into your router your phone wiring into the other end and go.

[bgfa]

you can set your phone to Silent and have a custom ringtone/alert for your gf, make sure you set it so that under the Volume setting, is has a value (1-10) and not 'Active Profile'. That way, only if she calls, will the phone ring, when in any mode, not just silent.

that's the cheapest fix

otherwise, another +1 for SpeakOut.

Yes, my BB Bold 9780 has that option. You should be able to set a custom ringtone for calls from her as well set the volume of calls from her to 9 or 10. The rest set to 1 if setting all calls to silent doesn't work. You can do the same for texts from her. There's a little speaker icon on your BB. Scroll up and then left to adjust. That'll never wake you up.

[PLau]

I work shifts and my gf is a 9-5. We both have cells and no home phone. I have my phone off when I'm sleeping during the day (mostly because of telemarketers, etc).
We're thinking it would be a good idea to have a phone we could leave on at bedside that only the two of us know the number to in case we need to get ahold of each other (emergency). Adding a home phone is no good as telemarketers would soon get the number and be waking me up while I sleep.
A prepaid cell could work but the cheapest phone is $50 and the cheapest way to keep it active for the year would cost us another $100 per year.

Any ideas on a cheaper way?

The prepaid cell(plan) you're talking about sounds like rogers to me. If you're with rogers, from what I remember, they had a plan for "emergency calls only" which gives you 15mins per month for something like $8 bux a month (cant remember exactly and it could have been phased out). But even so, if you call in and tell them you're thinking about opening a new line, you have bargaining powers. If you have other lines with them, use that to your advantage and maybe you can get something like $5 bux a month or something which comes out to $60 a year.

Keep in mind, even though you get a cell phone, captain dipsh** will give you a call telling you that you won a cruise.

[oilycreek]

As others have mentioned, magic jack is your best bet. $29 a yr for a Canadian number, plug a cordless phone into it. I have had mine for nearly 2 yrs with no problems.

Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2 Beta-2

[RockerGuy]

why not leave the cell on vibrate.
Have GF do a double call if she really needs to wake you.

I hate ppl who wake me in my sleep, I become delusional schizophrenic

[l84toff]

Both my wife and I work shoft work. We also do not have a home phone and only keep cell phones. I always leave my phone on airplane mode when going to sleep, so does my wife. We've talked about the what to do in emergency cases but really, how many of those times have you had in your life? Something that couldn't wait till you were up? If it was something that important then my wife would no doubt just come home and wake me up and vice versa.

In the few years we've been doing this, it has not been a problem yet.

[zeniceguy]

I have the net talk duo, its the cheapest there is.
70 a year, anywhere in canada or usa, plus you can take it away on vacation.

its better then majic jack because it plugs into the modem so you dont have to pay for your pc to run 24/7, saves about 800 a year over majic jacl.

[Scuba Steve]

I have the net talk duo, its the cheapest there is.
70 a year, anywhere in canada or usa, plus you can take it away on vacation.

its better then majic jack because it plugs into the modem so you dont have to pay for your pc to run 24/7, saves about 800 a year over majic jacl.

The newer Magic Jack + does not need a computer

[DaveOke]

Why not just use Skype?

[braveheart]

wow, your fear of telemarketers is ruling your life, causing you to not have something so simple as a home phone.

how do you stop them from knocking on your door ?

[Cat13]

We both use Blackberry's. Mine's a Bold 9000 I believe. AFAIK I don't think I can silence all incoming except for her number but I'm no phone guru (hence this thread).

You can. Dont ask me how but you can. Friend of mine had a work phone. He could adjust the ringer for all but this one number that work programmed. If that number rang, the phone had the most annoying and loud ringer since it was an emergency number. He could silence the phone but not that one number. Talk to someone at blackberry.