01225 707126 to 01225 344596 to 01225 899360 - Well House Fax
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-08-26 07:00:06 - Graham Ellis
Times change. Phone calls using conventional systems get fewer.
Bookings for hotel rooms are routinely made on line (to make a reservation, start by clicking on your arrival date [here]. Bookings for courses are usually instigated through an email inquiry [link], or via one of our enquiry pages [here].
So the trusty system than we purchased ten years ago gets less use. And it also gets to be less appropriate to our needs; we're no longer "single location", and we need to be reachable wherever we are, "whenever". I need to be able to take the occasional call even when walking the dog. It also gets expensive to run - costs of newer systems of connectivity are significantly lower and they offer extra flexibility, and it's time to move away from the ISDN system.
Problem is - it's proven to be surprisingly hard. We want to retain some of our numbers and transfer them to different lines - but it feels as if BT have been putting every possible hurdle in our way. This would be a very long blog article indeed if I were to describe all the phonecalls I have made, promises that have been broken, tunes I have heard while waiting in queues, option systems of menus that seem to loop on themselves. Of course, it is very much in the interest of the incumbent with the legacy system to rake as much money from us as they can, while they can.
Cutting a long (and too negative) story short ... we've revisited line arrangements, and our fax machine is now on 01225 899360. And I think it will remain there (finger crossed!). The line comes into a computer rather than a conventional fax machine - it is automatically printed, but it also gets forwarded by email. Faxes aren't common these days - but we still need the facility - and we have found that people tend to ask / look up the number if they need it, so there's no huge need to try to retain the "707126" or "344596" either.
Oh - I may rant and rave about how long some of these transfers took. Changing virtually all the pages across a number of web sites took me just ten minutes; that's the beauty and the power of templated "MVC" type systems. And if I'm starting to loose you in the Jargon, perhaps I can interest you in a PHP Course.