Accepting French phone enquiries from UK

How to communicate with your potential renters - how to turn site visitors into enquiries, and enquiries into bookings.
Hells Bells
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Post by Hells Bells »

With my current o2 contract, if I send a text from France to a UK mobile, it takes 4 texts from my very generous allowance. I don't pay to receive them, nor are any taken off my allowance. New contracts are charged 11p a text though to send, but receiving is still free.
KAB-Dennis
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Post by KAB-Dennis »

So all in all it is not so very different from long distance calls here in the US. I was misinformed about the land line receiving a call from a mobile in Ireland

I use a calling card (very inexpensive here) to make international calls and when I call from my land line versus mobile it uses a lot more cents per minute when calling from mobile. But I think maybe that is the way the calling card vendor processes it because it is more costly for them as well.

As always thanks for all the insight I gain here !!
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LPC
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Post by LPC »

e-Rich, I really like your explanation about sms roaming charges! I just hope Kathleen is up to date on European politics to enjoy the references to politicians!

PS Your link about stats on ages for sms users is interesting. I'm 60 and use it a fair bit to keep in contact with my sons in the UK. Always young at heart?? :lol:
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ccazes
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Post by ccazes »

e-richard wrote: This, of course will not matter much unless you are under 17 years old. See here
I have a 14 year old for whom I get text bills for well upward of 4000 texts/month. But..... she didn't send even a tenth of them.
This is because in the USA you pay for sending AND receiving texts. I can just picture the cell phone company rubbing their greedy little hands with glee. They probably have a secret shrine set up to the person who thought up that rule.
So if my daughter sends a text to 3 people who then each send a text back to the three others in the group, she will be billed for 6 texts not three. Each person in the group will pay for every text sent and received in this text conversation that could go on forever.... (and generally when it concerns a group of 14yr old girls usually does).

So the day you agree to let your kid use text you have to sign up for unlimited text which can cost anything from $15-30.

On the other hand phone plans in the US have a family plan option. I can add a line to my plan for $10/month and my daughter uses my plan minutes for calling. Even with the plan with the least amount of minutes we never have overages (probably because she doesn't have the time to talk as she is too busy texting).
vacancesthezan
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Re: Accepting French phone enquiries from UK

Post by vacancesthezan »

Chambo wrote:We're moving back to the UK soon but keeping our gite running. Currently, about 65% of our bookings are from the French and we get a lot of phone calls. I'm just about to start changing our phone number on the ads and was wondering if anyone could give some advice?

Do I leave our French mobile on the ads? Enquirers would then have to dial the +33 - is that correct? Would I then pay for the call?

I could use a UK mobile but maybe this would put off French enquiries?

Perhaps this is just something I'll have to accept but do any other owners, in a different country find any problems with the phone numbers thing?
Why dont you set up a Skype account with a French landline number? This can be accessed by your computer wherever you are. You can divert it, put an answer machine on it etc and no one will ever know that you are not 'at home'. If you purchase the number whilst still resident in France then you can have a french number (as we understand)
PS it is dirt cheap in comparison to paying over inflated mobile phone costs to accept and send calls. I wouldnt phone anyone who only offered a mobile number. I would book elsewhere. Maybe I am old fashioned!
bentisdall
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Re: Accepting French phone enquiries from UK

Post by bentisdall »

[quote="vacancesthezan"][quote="Chambo"]We're moving back to the UK soon but keeping our gite running. Currently, about 65% of our bookings are from the French and we get a lot of phone calls. I'm just about to start changing our phone number on the ads and was wondering if anyone could give some advice?

Well approx 90 percent of my bookings are from French people & the vast majority of them don't phone (my UK phone numbers) but are perfectly happy to book by email. In fact the phone calls have gone down quite a lot in the last year even though the house is more booked up than ever.
I also no longer offer them a chance to send one of their beloved cheques & the vast majority will do now do a bank transfer.
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Tizfata
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Re: Accepting French phone enquiries from UK

Post by Tizfata »

vacancesthezan wrote:I wouldnt phone anyone who only offered a mobile number. I would book elsewhere. Maybe I am old fashioned!
I hope you are! :D
I only have a mobile number, I could not do in any other way!
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vacancesthezan
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Re: Accepting French phone enquiries from UK

Post by vacancesthezan »

Tizfata wrote: I only have a mobile number, I could not do in any other way!
Whilst we fully appreciate that it must be difficult if you cannot have a landline - for what ever reason. We are based in France and about half of our guests are French. They seem to look at the advert or website and then phone us rather than email us. How much of this is because there is a phone number we are not sure! They are effectively continuing to us the internet in the same way as they used their 'much loved' minitel machine that was so popular with French.
If we were booking somewhere ourselves, we would gain a degree of comfort from seeing a landline number to call. It is the age of the scam advert where anyone can get hold of mobile phone number and either steal a property or set up a entirely fictitious one.
Whether or not we actually called the number we would know that it was available and the people advertising the property had a degree of stability and traceability.
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Nemo
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Re: Accepting French phone enquiries from UK

Post by Nemo »

Tizfata wrote:I only have a mobile number, I could not do in any other way!
Me too! That way I can be reached most of the time, wherever I am. If I gave my landline, the chances of getting the message if any of the other members of the family took the call would be very hit and miss indeed!
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