Denise Howell mentioned a service called Infone and so I checked it out. As Denise mentioned in her post, this costs nothing to sign up for. It’s one of those things that –when you need it– you’d pay a lot more for than what they are charging.
I suggest you read the list of features to see exactly what they do, but the gist of it is they provide incredibly useful telephone assistance (e.g. need directions to a location while you are driving?). The basic cost is nothing, unless you call them. Then it’s 89 cents for the first call (in which you can ask for lots of different pieces of information) up to 15 minutes, and then its 5 cents a minute after that. The first 5 calls are free so you can try it out right away just to test it.
One interesting thing about Infone is their use of voice-recognition technology. Because it is a pay-per-use service they have to bill you through a credit card. But they want you to be able to access their service from any phone without the hassle of authentication so they take a couple of voice samples. After the simple registration process (including the voice sample input) when you call their 800 number you just have to say “Hello Infone” and you are authenticated and ready to use the service.
So basically for the limited time investment of signing up you have a high-powered information assistance service that is a toll-free call away, and which you only pay for if, and when, you use it. Talk about a no-brainer.
P.S. If you want a better practice, start using the 80/20 Principle.
