BackAnswer that call
Answer that call
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Take My Call is probably the most succinctly named service we’ve come across in recent times. It does exactly what its name suggests—it takes your mobile phone calls if you’re busy. For a price.
Setting it up is simple. You call Take My Call’s customer care service at 011-47127998, and a “relationship manager", who will handle all the specifics of your account, will be sent to meet you. The service requires a one-time activation fee of Rs1,000, which is non-refundable. On activation, within an hour, you’re given what is called a DID number, a dubious abbreviation whose expanded form even the company was not sure of.
It’s a dedicated landline number for your account—every time you’re busy, or in a meeting, it requires you to divert calls from your mobile (after a few simple trawls through the “advanced settings" menu on your mobile) to this number. The Take My Call representatives answer all your phone calls, and send you an SMS with the details of each caller. The service is fairly reliable, and mostly accurate, although the use of flamboyant Tamil names resulted in some hilarious spelling mistakes.
Calls cannot be filtered at their end in any way. That means the needless reminders to pay your bill and the important call from a supplier have the same significance.
The service costs Rs499 a month, and is valid for 150 calls. Additional calls are charged at Rs2.99 per call. It’s an expensive solution for a simple problem when, by comparison, voice mail services on mobile service provider Vodafone cost Rs50 a month (valid for any number of calls) plus local call charges for checking your messages. If you believe that having a person, rather than a machine, answer your phone is a good idea, then by all means go ahead. Else, stick with the services your phone company offers.
Take My Call works only between 8am and 8pm, so relying on the service for some transatlantic call diversion is not recommended. The service is currently only available in Delhi, but will soon expand to other cities.
krish.r@livemint.com
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