Questions

What happens when somebody calls?

The assistant answers with your greeting, says it is an AI assistant, and asks what the job is. It looks the job up in your price list and says the price you set. It asks where the caller is, offers two times from your calendar, takes the name, address and number, reads them back, and books the visit.

A line set to take messages works differently: no prices, no calendar, no address. It finds out what the call is about, takes the name and when to call back, and sends that to you. The time to meet is agreed when you ring back.

The job reaches you by email when the call ends: one call, one email. If the caller hangs up halfway, you still get what was collected — a call that ended without a booking is a lead, not nothing.

Does my number stay mine?

Yes. You keep your number and set a conditional forward on it — calls you do not pick up go to the CallDozer line, calls you do pick up are yours as before. We do not port it or take it over.

Moving your number to us is the other case, and it happens only if you ask. It then sits on our account and goes with you when you leave: your new carrier files for it and we do not hold it.

The number the calls land on is rented from us. It is on our account, we pay the carrier for it every month, and it goes back when you stop using the service. That is why it is billed monthly. You can advertise it instead of forwarding — then callers reach the line directly — or keep advertising your own. Both work.

What does it cost?

$0.25 per minute of answered call, rounded up. A call shorter than a minute counts as one. A three-and-a-half minute conversation is $1.

$5 a month for each number that reaches your line.

$0.05 a minute for a call you answered yourself, on a number you set to ring your phone before the assistant. The ringing costs nothing: billing starts when you pick up.

$19.50 once, and only if you register the line to text your customers. It is a carrier fee, passed on as it is. Calls do not need it: the line answers and the job reaches you by email either way.

Whatever happens, calls and number rent cost you at most $99 in a calendar month. Past that the calls are still answered and cost nothing. The one-off registration fee is separate from that ceiling.

A call where the assistant only got as far as the greeting is free. That is a wrong number or a robot, and your ceiling should not be spent on somebody else's spam.

There is no plan to choose: the number's rent is charged every month, the talking is by the minute, and the registration fee is once and only if you ask for it. In a month with no calls the bill is the rent.

Whose prices does it quote?

Yours, and only the ones on your list. You pick the jobs your trade does from a catalogue and set the price for each. Anything the caller describes that is not on your list is never given a number — the assistant takes the details and tells them you will confirm.

A job with no price set is honest about it: the assistant offers to come out and look rather than inventing a figure.

What if the job is not one I can take?

It is still a lead, and you still get it. Work that needs a licence you do not hold, or is over the limit for unlicensed work in your state, is not quoted and not put in your calendar — but the details, the address, the name and the number are collected and sent to you, and the caller is told you will look at it and call back. What happens next is your decision, not the assistant's.

An emergency is the exception. Gas, smoke, water at a panel: the caller is told to hang up and call 911 first, before anything else.

Are calls recorded?

No. Recording is off, and the greeting does not claim otherwise. What is kept is a written transcript — what was said, what the assistant did, what it cost — and it is deleted after 60 days.

Two things outlive the transcript, on purpose. A booking — name, phone, address, job, date — stays while you are a customer, because it is your record of work. And the name of someone who has called before, so the line can greet them by name next time; of them we keep only that: who called, which number they rang, and when. No job, no address, nothing that was said.

What languages does it speak?

English, Spanish and Russian, and it switches between them inside a single call as soon as it hears which one the caller is using. You choose which of the three it will switch into and which one it greets in.

Vietnamese and Chinese work differently: the recogniser cannot pick them out mid-call, so they need a number of their own that answers in that language and nothing else. Such a line takes the job, the address and the number and sends them to you — it does not quote prices, because the price list is not written in those languages yet.

What does it do with my calendar?

It reads when you are busy — the hours only, never what is in them — across every calendar on your Google account, so it does not offer a time you are already booked.

It writes into a separate calendar called CallDozer that it creates in your account. It cannot write into your own calendars: the access you grant does not allow it.

What happens if the balance runs out?

The line keeps answering for 7 more days. A phone that goes quiet does not hurt us, it hurts the people trying to reach you — they call the next number on the list.

You can have the balance top itself up from a saved card, with a limit you set on how much it may take in a month. That is off unless you turn it on: a card charged while nobody is looking is something you should have agreed to on purpose.

Can a caller reach me directly?

Yes, and today that works one way: a number can be set to ring your own phone first, for as many rings as you choose. Pick up and the call is yours; miss it and the assistant answers. Those minutes are cheaper than the rest — the price is above — and the ringing itself costs nothing: billing starts when you pick up.

Handing over a call that is already with the assistant is built and switched off. It is a cold transfer — if you do not pick up, the caller is left in silence. So when a caller asks for a person, the assistant says you will call back and sends you the request.

How do I stop?

Remove the forward from your number and the calls come back to you the same minute. The rented number goes back to us when you stop. Your bookings, leads and transcripts stay visible for as long as they are kept.