Markus Göbel's Tech News Comments: How Gizmo Project's free local numbers save me 230 dollars annually

Although the Gizmo Project's free local numbers are still in beta they have made me very happy yet. I have used this new feature heavily for phone calls to Peru and now I have my own incoming Peruvian number, which normally costs 230 dollars per year at Gizmo Project.

How did I do this?

I've called all my Peruvian friends on all their home, mobile and work numbers from Gizmocall's beta website. It must have been about 50 phone calls. Every time I called a small window popped up that told me that the person could call me back on a certain number. And it was always the same!

Other users didn't have that much luck, as for instance the user jfinlayson tells:

You may have to dial quickly. Those two batches of calls I made were only an hour or so apart, and were assigned different numbers.

So I was very fortunate to be probably the only one who tried this service for calls between Germany and Peru. The batch of phone calls was even easier to make when my free minutes where eaten up. I just had to dial the numbers, Gizmo told me that I was out of money and the yet the number was assigned. When my friends are now going to call this number my normal phone will ring, because it is connected trough an ATA to my account at the Gizmo Project. No need to keep Gizmo Call's website open. Since I have authorized all their phone numbers with my calls it will feel like having a real phone number.

With only one restriction.

Maybe it was stupid of me to ask the following in Gizmo Project's forum:

Posted: 01 May 2007 19:39 Post subject: Re: Now it works great!
markus_goebel wrote:
Next question: Will my free local number ever change?

Or will it always stay the same for the Peruvian friends to whom it is assigned now?
The free local number your were assigned for your friend to use to call you will not change as long as your friend uses it to call you at least once every 60 days.

There will be rare cases where the number assigned has service problems and we would have to remove it from use. If that happens, you can place another free call to your friend to get a new Free Local Number they can use to call you.
_________________
Jeff Finlay
Gizmo Project Support

Oh please! Does it really have to be like this? I notice that they have altered their answer. Until some hours ago it still said that the number would be mine for ever. I guess that it was me that caused them the idea to restrict it on 60 days. Probably not every Peruvian friend will call me in the next two months.

But the others will have a cheap local number to talk to me.

UPDATE:

Yes, they are serious about their 60 days restriction, as the forum admin states:

I sent you a private message to let you know I had posted new information in my reply. The rules didn't change and they are the same for everyone who uses the service. I just wasn't aware of the requirement before.

Now you have an excuse to have more frequent phone conversations with your friends in Peru.
_________________
Jeff Finlay
Gizmo Project Support

Funny? I don't know. Soon every Peruvian friend who doesn't call me can't use this number anymore. Everything will end up in great mess where everyone has another number to call me. When they ask each other for my number everyone will have an other.

So I will probably go on using Tpad's system with worldwide inbound numbers and an extension for me. That's much easier to explain to not so tech savvy people and I can always stay with the same numbers.

Labels: Gizmo Project, Gizmocall, Tpad, VoIP