Keeping in touch while living in Israel

This has been a SERIOUS issue for me. NONE of the cell phone carriers offer a US number where you can text back & forth with someone in the US.

And they initially told someone I was dealing with that they did only to find out after I arrived & started having issues that they DON'T have it. That was with Golan.

Golan also charges you for the SIM card & I ended up paying twice because it never arrived by the time I arrived & I needed a phone line right away.

So I switched to Hot & they lost my business, but like most companies here in Israel, they don't care b/c they don't know how to run a business properly. Their EGO will override even them making money.

It's been 2 years since I checked into texing, but I think you can text one way, either they can text you, or you can text them, but not back & forth as if you were in the US.

I don't need something to call US numbers because I have a VOiP line that is US, but I DID need a way to text & like I said, there's nothing.

I didn't want to use WhatApp b/c this was for work & you can't tell a client to contact you on WhatApp. They have no clue what that even is in the US nor will they want an app on their phone just to text you.

I started off with Majic Jack which was only $9.99, but their app sucked. It doesn't tell you when you have a text. It's the same ding you hear for all your OTHER notifications & if you miss it, it doesn't tell you at the top where the notificaitons are, or even on your dashboard.

I still used it, but when my year was up, they tried to gouge me for $35 or something like that & I told them to take a HIKE.

I've tried the online texting services where you can text a US cell phone back & forth, but they are both terrible.

One dings all the time whether you get texts or not & it's a very low sound.

The other is louder, but half the time it doesn't ding & it also deletes ALL of my texts after a while or deletes my phone number even if I was using it.

So there you have it.

For phone calls, I use ACN & it's crystal clear most of the time unless you are having Internet issues.

The one issue is that they don't have call block & I was being spammed non stop by a financial company & I had no way to stop it.