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MarinaVanessa 10:09 AM 06-18-2013
Originally Posted by apick:
I'm not sure why so many of you are using Google voice? Why are you so paranoid about giving someone your phone number? Just seems odd to me. I have a land line and a cell phone. I use my land line to advertise, but once a parent enrolls I give out my cell phone. I must prefer a "running late" text in the morning than a phone call. I love texting in general so it's just an easier way for most people to communicate during the day, especially if parents are at work. I've never had an issue with someone calling or texting me late at night or anything. Even if they did I sleep with my phone on silent so it would never bother me!
I use Google because I have had clients try to text me late at night (some as late as after 10:30 p.m.), early in the morning (as early as 5am), on holidays or on weekends again and again. For example on Father's day I had a drop-in DCM email, text and try to call me all day to see if I had room for yesterday. I forgot to turn Google Voice off and was very irritated. It's a holiday and I was spending it with my family. I would have appreciated her respecting this special day (and I promised DH that I would not answer business calls/texts on this day, this is what he wanted as a Father's Day gift. DCM kept texting and texting, calling and calling).

Turning my phone off or putting it on silent does not work for me because friends and family that need to get a hold of me wouldn't be able to if I turn my actual cell phone off or put it on silent. Using Google Voice allows me to not receive texts or calls from clients but still be able to get calls and texts from family and friends. I keep it on so that I can get calls in case of an emergency.

Also I had a loony DCM that always called and texted even after she was not a client anymore. She was always calling trying to "talk" or asking me to reserve drop-in spots for her but then would later not confirm the day before and wouldn't answer calls, emails or texts back and then not show up. I just got irritated and blocked her number.

Another reason that I use Google Voice is because I hand that number out when I fill out any type of information at all. My credit cards, banks etc. all have this number. This prevents my cell phone number and home number from getting unsolicited phone calls from 3rd party companies. If I do get an unsolicited call or promotional calls I can easily block these numbers. My cell phone company only allows a certain number of blocked numbers so this helps out a lot. It's one of the reasons why we use Ooma as our home phone provider instead of the typical phone providers. I like to be able to block as many phone numbers as I need to without having to call my phone company to do it for me or have a maximum number of callers that I can block.

Google Voice helped me out when my DH's ex GF (the girl before me) got a hold of my phone number and harassed me by calling and hanging up, having strange people call me to say that my DH was with them the previous night (when he was in bed with me btw) etc. She called my Google Voice number because that's the number that I hand out generally unless you are CLOSE friends or family so I easily blocked her. We had already changed our house number and she got my Google Voice number from a friend of ours by searching her phone for it (she also got my DH's Google Voice number). TRUST ME ... for me, Google Voice has been more than worth it.
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