At work we use Thinking Phones for DID extensions and pbx like functions. We pay between $16 and $18 per month for each line of unlimited service.

That’s all well and good.

But the problem with Thinking Phones is that they are in no way proactive or even that good with customers especially when it comes to toll free services. For example on the 31st of August we put in an order for 15 toll free numbers. It’s been seven business days since then and we still don’t have them. I finally got a Customer Manager on the line today and he told me for one or two they can provision right away, for bigger blocks they have to go out to third party vendors like Verizon and at&t. Ok – so we told them we were in dire need of at least one toll free number in the 844 range. Several of us reached out to them and as of COB today no luck.

I’m going to propose we do it a little differently – go on the web and lookup toll free service providers. Then purchase one and point it at a hunt or pickup group of fifteen localized DID extensions. Then set the outbound CLID on those phones to be the toll free number for all calls outside our PBX. It can be done.