I guess Skyetel doesn't want business
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@Obsolesce said in I guess Skyetel doesn't want business:
@JaredBusch said in I guess Skyetel doesn't want business:
I’m still waiting on @scottalanmiller to actually comment on the point of this topic.
He won't. But if he does, I'm sure he'll say this is some kind of exception.
A week later and he hasn't. It is pretty obvious that advertisers influence him.
FWIW, @Skyetel has never bothered to try and contact me. So yeah, I guess they really don't want the business of businesses. Just hobbies that use cell phone sms verification.
edit:
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Someone from @Skyetel contacted me by email a couple days ago, did not ask that I remove anything (so that's pretty good sign IMO), and I finally had time to reply this evening. My reply was not brief, we shall see where things go.
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@Obsolesce said in I guess Skyetel doesn't want business:
@JaredBusch said in I guess Skyetel doesn't want business:
I’m still waiting on @scottalanmiller to actually comment on the point of this topic.
He won't. But if he does, I'm sure he'll say this is some kind of exception.
It's tough to respond being with almost no Internet most of the time. It's not really an exception. Chris (the prez of Skyetel) and I have talked about it previously and knows that it is part of their process that I really dislike as we've run into the same problems as Jared. Using cell phones for personal identification isn't good, as not all people have them and cell phones aren't as static and predictable as you'd think being in the US, but using it for business is much harder as most companies (IMHO) don't even have a reliable way of doing this. I can't imagine how a Fortune 500 would deal with this, and many small businesses end up seeing it as a consumer service and either finding it awkward (most cases) or running into actual road blocks (like Jared has.)
I'm certainly no fan of it. I totally understand the underlying goals, and I appreciate that those goals are tough, but I don't like the resultant mechanism chosen, I don't think that it reflects what they want to do. I'm not sure what the right solution is, though. Seems like a credit card could do this better. Or maybe a variety of optional mechanisms with SMS being just one of them.
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@scottalanmiller Or, simply not lock the cell phone number out form ever being used again.
I would still bitch about the need, but I would at least be able to create accounts as needed.
This was one of the comments I had in my response last night.
As an example, Microsoft also requires this if you want to create an Office 365 Business account without going through a VAR or partner or WTF ever they call it. But the difference is, Microsoft uses it for the immediate verification and never saves that number. You can use that number again immediately so sign up another brand new Office 365 account.
Here I tried to use their business number but it would not because VoIP (Twilio in fact). So I used my mobile and SMS.
Immediately after account creation, I looked at the settings. My mobile used for SMS does not show anywhere.
So I popped another porn mode browser and started to sign up my daerma.com domain for an Exchange Online Plan 1, and used my mobile again to verify. It went straight through. I didn't complete the verification because I don't want to actually move the domain.
I bitched about it (see ML telegram chat), but I still got the work done. Because I knew that the number was not actually tied forever to some random client account.
But with Skyetel, my mobile is attached to the account in some way that I can never change. This is fine for this account, because it is my personal account. But what if I had done this on an account I made for our company or a client, just to check out their service? I'm screwed and my number would be forever tied to the account.
Settings screens, none have anything about the cell phone number pictured above.
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@JaredBusch said in I guess Skyetel doesn't want business:
Or, simply not lock the cell phone number out form ever being used again.
That would certainly help, a lot.
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Hey Guys,
We’re going to be reviewing this first thing on Monday. @JaredBusch had a strong argument about Microsoft in his email.
I can say that we will be removing the 1 cell phone number per account limit and allowing a certain number of new accounts per month instead (so you can create 5 or so accounts per month before our system stops you). We’re also going to be reviewing the credit card idea but that may take more time.
I’ll update you all once we have a new policy in place and it’s deployed.
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That's awesome!!
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That's great news!
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MS is even better than just allowing you to create multiple accounts under the same phone number, it allows you to use the same phone number for two factor authentication.
I have a personal O365 account, and my office based MS account - I have TFA on both... but only one cell phone - luckily it worked.
Yeah yeah yeah... I should be using the OTP app instead.
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@Dashrender said in I guess Skyetel doesn't want business:
Yeah yeah yeah... I should be using the OTP app instead.
This. At least you know it.
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Hey Guys,
Behold our new sign up page!
From the feedback here, we made the following changes:
- You can now re-use your mobile number on 5 new accounts per month (so go nuts @JaredBusch )
- The new field "Direct Contact Number" serves as the direct phone number for the customer; this is the number we call if there is a fraud event or a porting emergency. (so please make it a real phone number)
- We made it prettier
Thanks for everyone's feedback - feel free to take it out for a spin!
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@Skyetel Nice work
@JaredBusch seems like the title needs to be changed
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@Skyetel Awesome!
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@Skyetel are you kidding I need a password, bah1111
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Looks awesome. I’ll be signing up a client today.
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Same for the SMS.
Works though, once added.
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@JaredBusch put in a
1 -
Same issue on the Company info screen.
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@DustinB3403 said in I guess Skyetel doesn't want business:
@JaredBusch put in a
1The point is that it is not intuitive that the 1 is needed. Especially as Skyetel only does US numbers right now.
Also, you only need a single ` for an inline code highlight, not 3.
