Voicemail

[craiggiarc]

I'm after some feedback fro users that have used alternative voicemail systems other than the standard one supplied by Alltel,

The ones I've come accross so far are: -

• www.youmail.com
• www.grandcentral.com and
• www.callwave.com

You mail is my service of choice as it's free and you can customize the voicemail message for each person tha calls you but I understand that it has problems with Alltel.

Has anyone else used these services, with or without Alltel? And if so what are your comments?

Thanks in advance

Craig

[munkyv22]

Standard Voicemail works just fine for me...

[mehoff88]

Wow i never heard of programs like this. Im going to have to try it out. That would be awesome to have personalized messages for each contact.

[bigdave72]

I've been using Grandcentral for some time now and love it. By adding my Grandcentral number to My Circle and only giving that number out to people as my phone number, I essentially have unlimited free incoming calls now. My family uses my Alltel number and that way I can take advantage of the M2M and unlimited text messaging and since they're the only ones I text anyway it works out perfectly.

Since My Circle was implemented and I added on Grandcentral I was able to lower my Alltel anytime minutes from well in excess of 2000 minutes per month to an average of around 200 - 300 minutes per. With 3 lines of service plus a data card that saved me a nice little chunk of change. Consider me sold.

Since Google bought Grandcentral a few weeks ago you have to be invited (like Gmail) to get an account and I've given out all my invites it's become so popular.

By the way, Grandcentral is free and also allows you to set individual greetings. The fact that Google now owns it is a testament to how well it works IMO and also a good sign it will continue to grow and develop.

Just my 2¢ worth.

[ermax]

I setup a GC account about a week before they switched to Google. I wasn't really looking at using them for anything other then a VM replacement. I like GCs mobile web page for checking your VM. I was going to create a PPC program to interface with the web interface that would automaticly download the VMs to the phone for local playback with a nice non web GUI.

I ditched GC after reciving a call on my home phone from a friend that lives in Hong Kong that told me that when he called my cellphone it rang a few times and then rather then asking him to leave a VM it just poped him into my VM menu without a password or anything. He was able to play my msgs and all. He hung up and called back again and the same thing happened.

When Alltel forwards unanswered calls to another number they also forward the caller ID info from the original caller. Well this friend form HK doesn't ever have and CallerID info so I am guessing that Alltel defaults to your cellphone number if the original caller doesn't have anything to forward. So the GC thinks you are calling from your cellphone to check your VM and puts you directly into the VM without a password.

This is a BIG problem. I emailed GC about this and they never responded.

My guess is YouMail knows about this problem with Alltel so they don't let Alltel users use YouMail.

If Alltel forwards a call that has "unavailable" as there caller ID then they should forward the call as "unavailable" and not substitut your own cellphone number as the caller id.

It's a shame because I was really liking GC. Even if you simply dial in to check your VM using touch tones it still kills Alltel's VM system.

Now that Google has taken over I could see them making a PPC program like I wanted to make. It seams everyone is scrambling to make a iPhone like VM system that is independent of the cell provider.

[ermax]

Originally Posted by ermax

My guess is YouMail knows about this problem with Alltel so they don't let Alltel users use YouMail.

Well I emailed YouMail support asking why they don't support Alltel and told them about my problem with GC and this was their response:

Yes this is a problem with Alltel; we are currently attempting to fix the problem between YouMail and Alltel and will hopefully be able to support them again, I however can not speak for GC.

PS:: I hope you have a fantastic Friday and great weekend. =)

So I guess the problem lies with Alltel's silly way of forwarding caller id info. I bet Alltel will never resolve this problem. Oh well.

[craiggiarc]

That is very dissapointing news as I'm loving the features of both CallWave and GC. But that is a pretty fundamental problem and one that won't be resolved until Alltel pull their finger out.

Needless to say, I'm not holding my breath!