I am fairly new to this and decided to read through the forum a bit just to see what others are facing...

One topic that seems to come up often is giving your real phone number and having businesses contact you with follow up after the shop is complete. To mitigate this risk, I personally use Google Voice. This is a free service that gives you a phone number and voicemail box. You can make calls from it, receive calls, send and receive text messaging, and record your calls that you make and receive. The way it works is you setup your personal number in the application, anytime someone calls your google voice number, it simply rings your personal device, when you make a call through the app, it calls your personal line, connects you, and then calls the number you dial allowing your google voice number to show on caller ID with the name of the city in which you chose your number. It is an easy and free way that prevents you from giving your actual phone number out. As apart of the google account, you get access to the other free features of the google suite, such as Gmail, I created a shopping specific email address that is associated with my google voice number, so I give that email, and that phone number on all of my shops. I hope this info helps in some way... If you don't have an account, or want to sign up, just simply visit the link below and choose to create an account.

https://www.google.com/voice