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Is Voicemail Dead? I wish…

by Ronen Halevy on Jul 8th, 2008 at 6:30 am EST
17 Comments »
 

VoicemailHow many times a day do you get a voicemail that says “Hey its ____ call me back.” It happens to me over 20 times a day!

To give you a little background I have stopped listening to my voicemail and have resorted to using a combination of GrandCentral, YouMail, & PhoneTag to manage this torrent of voicemails.

I considered myself a rebel until I read this article by Michael Arrington which begins:

Voicemail is dead. Please tell everyone so they’ll stop using it.

I could not agree more. I guess I am not the only one who hates the concept of voicemail. I tried turning off my voicemail but then I had people sending me emails and coming by my desk just to tell me that there is a problem with my voicemail.

If you share my hatred for the voicemail system let me know what you have done to get people to stop leaving them. Or if you are the one leaving me all the voicemails BUGGER OFF!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 and is filed under News.
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17 Comments to “Is Voicemail Dead? I wish…”

  1. Posted by: Ryan Merck
    July 8, 2008 at 6:52 am EST

    I share the same contempt for voicemail. Verizon has repeatedly told me they can’t turn my voicemail feature off.

    In turn, I called me voicemail for a good hour, and filled it up with empty messages, and turned the voicemail notification off on my phone. Now I don’t give a damn!

  2. Posted by: Cole
    July 8, 2008 at 8:25 am EST

    I totally agree, been using YouMail for awhile and it works great. Would love to try GrandCentral out if anyone wants to send me an invite ; )

  3. Posted by: DavidB
    July 8, 2008 at 8:44 am EST

    I read Michael’s article over the weekend and I’ve been thinking about it.

    I can’t say I love voice mail, BUT I do find it to be a essential tool for my job. If I call someone and they don’t answer, I don’t expect them to see that I called and call me back. If I didn’t leave a message, it wasn’t THAT important. If it’s something important, I leave a message. If not so important, I’ve moved on and either called another number to reach them or called someone else.

    What is it with people that call you back just because they see your number on their caller ID? I NEVER call someone back if they don’t leave a message when they called me and I didn’t answer. I LIVE on the phone most of the day due to the nature of my job, if I don’t answer there’s a good reason, and I get dozens of calls per day. My voice mail message says to leave a message or I won’t be calling you back. I have NO PROBLEM with people trying to call me, not leaving a message, and then sending me a PIN or SMS or BBMessenger or email. Hey, they wanted to reach me and I couldn’t answer the phone so they tried another route of contact. And I do the same in return.

    I really MUST try out one of these voice mail to text services I’ve read about here though. It would be so much easier on me and make me more productive in my job if people could leave a message and know that I’d get a text and attachment of their message sent to me. I’ve been sorta waiting for a stable BB OS upgrade for my ‘berry before I go off adding something like that though. And I need one that works via BB PIN or email only, as I have SMS send and receive totally disabled for my phone.

  4. Posted by: VerSe
    July 8, 2008 at 9:19 am EST

    There was a mention of using GrandCentral, Youmail, and PhoneTag in this post. Are you using them collectively or all for different number. Like I like PhoneTag, but love what you can do with YouMail, I just don’t want to give up PhoneTag’s Visual Voicemail application for the Blackberry.

    Is there a way to use them together? I would Prefer just Youmail and PhoneTag, but if GrandCentral is in the mix too, that is great.

  5. Posted by: Ronen Halevy
    July 8, 2008 at 9:52 am EST

    I actually use a combination of SimulScribe & Grandcentral. SimulScribe/phonetag has a great service where you have an email address that you can send any voice attachment to and it will transcribe it. So you setup GrandCentral to forward voicemail attachments to phonetag and….

  6. Posted by: warren
    July 8, 2008 at 10:25 am EST

    I would love to try out grand central if someone could send me an invite! Thanks

  7. Posted by: Randy R.
    July 8, 2008 at 11:38 am EST

    I’ve lost some friends (associates) just for not checking my voice mail for months, it also made my life less clustered. But then I got a blackberry with youmail…Now my life IS streamlined. :: sighz :: j.k. Youmail made me appreciate voicemail once again.

  8. Posted by: Jon
    July 8, 2008 at 1:22 pm EST

    Voice mail is indispensible. Sorry. I love it. I use callwave which transcribes my voice mails to text. But there are certain voicemails that are priceless, both in business and personal life.

    I third what Warren and Cole said about GrandCentral.

  9. Posted by: Bla1ze
    July 8, 2008 at 1:28 pm EST

    I removed my voicemail from my phone..anyone who is really important or knows me, will know to either email me or IM/BBM me..for that matter I barely ever even use my phone to “talk” to people anymore.

    Uhh has technology made me a recluse to voice to voice or face to face interactions?

  10. Posted by: Nikolaus
    July 8, 2008 at 2:09 pm EST

    I use a combination of GrandCentral and YouMail. I am personally very happy with both. I really prefer voicemail you can either access via the web, and also have send directly to you as a .mp3 or .wav plus a transcription of the text (could be a better algorithm). I don’t miss my carrier’s supplied voicemail at all, though it was much better than they used to be.

  11. Posted by: Sharon
    July 8, 2008 at 2:17 pm EST

    I like voicemail and couldn’t imagine not having it. We only have a cell phone as our phone. We have no landline. So when people can’t reach is, then they can leave a message. Sometimes the phone goes straight to voicemail and never rings, so not having voicemail wouldn’t work.
    We still have many family and friends who don’t have email and/or messenging etc.

    Voicemail is vital for us

  12. Posted by: Sharon
    July 8, 2008 at 2:26 pm EST

    I like voicemail and couldn’t imagine not having it. We only have a cell phone as our phone. We have no landline. So when people can’t reach is, then they can leave a message. Sometimes the phone goes straight to voicemail and never rings, so not having voicemail wouldn’t work.
    We still have many family and friends who don’t have email and/or messenging etc.

    Voicemail is vital for us

    By the way, youmail doesn’t work with US Cellular :(

  13. Posted by: Randy R.
    July 8, 2008 at 2:39 pm EST

    I also the 4th the notion of an invite to grand central.

  14. Posted by: Bla1ze
    July 8, 2008 at 3:17 pm EST

    hehe!! Where were you all when GC was handing them out free?

  15. Posted by: Randy R.
    July 8, 2008 at 4:21 pm EST

    @Bla1ze

    I was buying my first blackberry :-X lol

  16. Posted by: Randy R.
    July 8, 2008 at 5:42 pm EST

    Actually to be honest I was watching Juno around that time :-X

    Sorry for spamming.

  17. Posted by: Dave
    July 9, 2008 at 9:43 am EST

    I don’t know a single person that has been able to sign up for GC in months. The invite a friend option mysteriously disappeared from my account months ago and anyone signing up now gets and automated message that they will “get an account when a number becomes available”. If you already have a GC account you can combine it with PhoneTag which is the ultimate web 2.0 voicemail management set up.

    Other then that, PhoneTag offers a free visual voicemail application for BlackBerry called SimulSays – http://www.simulsays.com.

    Berry Review posted a 30 day free trial link of PhoneTag awhile back as well: https://apps.simulscribe.com/signup/a/berryreview