"never deal with any company that only has a mobile phone number"

[somebusinessadviceplease]

Hi all,

My husband and I own a home improvements company. We've been going three years now, and business is steady. We run it from our home office.

We did at first have a landline number as the business number, but decided about a year in that it's an unnecessary expense and that plenty of businesses just use mobiles these days, plus using a mobile means we can answer any time, any where. So we switched our business number to a mobile number on all our literature, website and it's written on our van.

Someone commented on one of our adverts on SM today - "never deal with any company that only has a mobile phone number"

Lots of people commented saying that's old fashioned or nonsense, but one or two did agree.

We get enough work to keep us going, our reviews are excellent and we've won a couple of small awards, but is only having a mobile number making us miss out on more work we could be winning?

Would you deal with a company that only has a mobile number?

My dad ran his company up until he died 2 years ago using only a mobile number. Not even a website or email address. He never had an issue with getting clients and was able to pick and choose as he got more requests than capacity.

Most of his work was from leaflets through doors, and word of mouth, and he mostly had older clients (50+) so it's not true that older people automatically find it shady.

Yes, the old idea of a landline being more reputable etc is long gone. People can "buy" landline numbers and use them via internet/mobile without actually having a fixed landline. You can buy numbers with STD codes in a different locality to make it look like you're based there. The idea a landline number gives more reliability/credibility is utter nonsense these days and people falling for it put themselves at risk if they give themselves a false sense of confidence.

I'm more impressed with a decent sign-written van, rather than an anonymous clapped out old banger. Yes, I know con-men and disreputables can "fake" that image too, but for me, I get more confidence that just someone with a landline number.