Keeping you home phone number (landline without the landline) using CrazyTel.

A lot of people including ourselves use mobiles for all their calls so no longer need the landline, except in our case we wanted to keep the landline number. A couple of years ago I got rid of the landline and had the home phone number ported to Vodafone since we had a Vodafone mobile service. To find out more about this service search for Vodafone mobile landline. It's actually worked quite well and costs $5 a month.

More recently I've wanted to move the landline number away from Vodafone because I'm moving away from Vodafone. With a bit of searching, I found a company called CrazyTel, where you can port your landline number to them and have any calls forwarded to voicemail and then for the recording to be automatically forward to an email address. I don't want to use the landline, but I do want to catch any calls from people who may not know our mobile numbers. I don't want or need to make calls out. I don't want to set up an answering machine at home and get annoying calls day and night from scammers. So, to have all calls go to voicemail and the recording forwarded to email suits me perfectly.

The good thing about CrazyTel is it only costs $1 a month to have CrazyTel host your landline number and forward voicemail to your email. 

So how did it go?

Well to be truthful, as an IT person with considerable experience, I couldn't get it to work at first. However today when I went back to finish the set up everything worked. Go figure.

I ported the landline number from Vodafone to CrazyTel on the 18th of January 2023. I received notification from CrazyTel on the 27th of January the port had been completed.

At this point I tried to set up the voicemail for my landline number, but I couldn't complete a field. Not sure why. However today (the 1st of February) I logged back on the CrazyTel website. My landline number was there, the voicemail had been set up. All I then did was to go into my number and selected Voicemail as the Type of Forwarding my email as the Forwarding Destination.

I completed a couple of test calls. The voice quality isn't great, but it will do. The options a person hears when recording a message is confusing at first. You get a message to record your message and then options to listen to, save or redo the message. It's actually not bad once you realise if you've made a mistake in the message, you can redo the message. Once saved you get two options. You're told to end by pressing the pound key. Confusing as the # key is called the hash key, number symbol or pound symbol. Also, the sound quality isn't the best so it can be hard to make out what key is mentioned, but you can listen to the options again. Quality is average but it's good enough for my needs.

Now that everything is set up and working, at this point I'm quite happy. I have my landline number still and it only costs $1 a month. CrazyTel even give you a $2 credit when you sign up so there's no risk and you effectively get two months free. Keep in mind this is using your existing number. If you want a new number that's an extra $1 per month.

If you're comfortable with technology then you should be able to nut through the process, otherwise it could be a bit overwhelming.

Hopefully by sharing my experience it will help others in the same situation.

Kelvin

Update: 01/02/2023
Left a message from a mobile using Aldi's mobile service and the voice quality was excellent. The poor-quality call was from a Vodafone service. In other words, the call quality on the CrazyTel service may not be due to CrazyTel's service, but outside their control.