[asterisk-users] Call Stealing

[Geoff Lane]

On Thursday, January 15, 2009, David Gibbons wrote:

> I'm confused as to why you think leaving a phone off the hook is
> better than parking the call and hanging up the phone.

Simply that you don't have to remember to park the call. With call
parking, if you forget to park the call before moving location you
have to return to the original location, park the call, then try
again. With call stealing, you can't forget to park the call because
it's not required.

> The phone that's off the hook can't receive any more calls after
> you've 'pulled' the one it was on the line with, assuming you don't
> walk back to that phone and subsequently hang it up, making the
> originating extension effectively useless.

The first person to walk by the handset who hears the engaged tone
hangs up. I've been using this system for about eight years and it's
never been an issue. Also, the originating extension isn't effectively
useless because if you hear the phone in the next room ring, you can
hang up the originating extension and within a couple of seconds it
also rings so that you can take the call.

> Call parking and hanging up the originating extension is actually a
> more elegant solution in my opinion.

I can see pros and cons to each. However, I (and all my family) are
used to call stealing so it would be better if we could duplicate that
rather than having to "retrain" everyone to use call parking.

-- 
Geoff