I know I've mentioned having a MagicJack here at the house. Started with the lvdesigns phone number. Then last year we got the Plus for the new company. That worked so well that we got a Plus for the home phone number. And with his old company closing, we got one for that, why pay $50 a month? There were two phone numbers on the bill for the old company. The office line and the FAX line. Well, when I had the office number ported over, our phone company also shut down the FAX line. I didn't notice for a couple of weeks. When I did, it took many phone calls to rectify it. Not getting that line back in service, but getting the bill taken care of. We had a grandfathered bundle discount and they charged us for early termination, blah, blah, blah.
But the annoying thing was I couldn't contact the landline phone company from the MagicJack. Same area code, right? It seems that some exchanges MJ has to pay extra for (at least that's their story) and you need to buy prepaid minutes for that. Brian had this problem calling a small city in Alaska. He ended up using his cell phone. I did buy ten bucks of minutes for the new office line, but we haven't had to use them yet.
During one of my bored internet searches I found a work around using Google Voice.
Get yourself a Google Voice number. Have that number forwarded to your MagicJack number. Then, when you need to make a call that MJ pukes on, go into your GV account, and connect to that number via GV. Your MJ phone will ring, you answer it, it's ringing the other party. And connects.
Voila! Phone call made with no extra charges.
Cool.