I have been a happy camper with YouMail for a while now and recently they started charging for their subscription service. I have not had the volume really needed to start paying for the transcription service and reconciled with the free plan. But Google Voice was released last week and the new features are pretty good.(Really good infact). I did not want to start giving away my Google voice number as I have used my cell phone number for years(Like many people).
I discovered a really simple solution to
1) get all the features I wanted from YouMail,
2) use Google Voice as my voicemail manager and transcription service
3) STILL keep my existing number.
From your cell phone just dial this exactly as you see it
*004*1XXXXXXXXXX#
where the X represents your 10 digit Google Voice number.
That’s it. You are done. All calls are forwarded to Google Voice and it acts as your voicemail inbox and transcription service.
Please Note: This worked for my iPhone. Please let me know in the comments if it worked for you or not.
[Updated:] This will not work if you have your Google Voice forwarding back to your cellphone. I did not realize it at first but my Google Voice was forwarding to my land line.
Great idea .. but don’t you need to set google voice so all messages go straight to voicemail? Or else what will happen is a call will come to your cell, ring a few times, redirect to your google voice which will then redirect to your cell again.
We’d be really interested in hearing what your experience is with Google Voice transcriptions.
YouMail has supplied free automated transcriptions for the past year, and worked with several different transcription providers during that time. What we have found is that “best guess” quality is entertaining and can be useful when it works. However, it generally falls far short of what professional users require – where the goal is to reliably not have to play voicemails, and to be able to simply forward transcriptions to assistants and co-workers. As a result, we’ve focused on near-perfect transcription that involves humans and that has a real cost. What we’ve seen is an awful lot of people trying out the “best guess” free and then paying a small amount for almost perfect transcriptions.
Alex
CEO, YouMail
Hi Alex,
Thanks for the comment. Appreciate your response. I do agree that your transcription is a pretty good and a few people I know have signed up based on my recommendation. For now, the google transcription is working out pretty well for me although it does not have the same workflow that you guys provide. One issue with the transcription, at least for me, is that most of the times I do not need near perfect transcription for voicemail. Just a general gist of the message is enough for me to understand the full message and follow up as needed. But I can see in other kinds of services where it would be useful.
Just my 2 cents.
I came across this post because I was trying to find a use for my google voice account and thought maybe it could replace my youmail account, but I quickly realized that youmail (for now) has the features that I want/need. I dont know thats its really fair to compare the two even considering using google voice in this way is technically using it backwards. I do pay for youmail right now and feel the cost is so low that it doesnt matter. But when considering this switch to google voice(which I’ve switched back to youmail already) I took into consideration the idea that I wanted to help support youmail as I feel they have made great improvements over the past year or so that I’ve been using them. I still think their website needs an overhaul, but thats just my right brain talking.
I’d be lost without youmail though. The Missed Call feature is fantastic for when I’m on the subway as I get a text the moment I get out and I can call the person back, even if they didnt leave me a voicemail.
I finally got my grandcentral account upgraded to google voice. I didn’t want to give everyone a new phone to replace my mobile number so I just set my google voice account to “Do Not Disturb” (Settings – General). I then setup conditional call forwarding on my cell (for AT&T you just dial *004*1xxxxxxxxxx# where xxx is your Google Voice number. That’s it. People still call my cell phone but if the line is busy or I’m not available, the call then gets redirected to google voice. I changed my greeting on GV to tell callers to speak clearly and now transcription comes in almost perfect! I can also play different greetings based on contact groups. Family members hear one greeting, business contacts another etc. Bye youmail .. (sorry Alex)
Thanks for the post. I just made the switch to Google Voice from my youmail account.
Fortunately I did not have to change my “Do Not Disturb” or forwarding GV back to my cell setting!
When I call my Google Voice number it forwards the # to my Tmobile # and then to my Google voicemail box. (if missed or busy)
When I place the call to my tmobile number it also forwards my calls (if missed, busy) to my Google voicemail box. (it rings a little longer on the other end)
I loved youmail but I’m making the switch since my contacts are already integrated with the GV acct. Also with youmail, listening to voicemail on the computer is really quiet! I usually turn the speakers up!
There is only one real feature I miss from YouMail – you do not get notified about missed called and have to check online for it. Its not too much of a problem, but besides that minor feature, it has completely replace my youmail account. Thanks for your comment
I think I have to agree with Josh that GV and Youmail are somewhat different beast. Youmail is great if you are like me and everyone calls your cell (my one number to ring all), though I don’t get reception in the building I work at. This means that during the day I get emails with MP3s of the message, or if my cell dies and I didn’t realize it, I still get pestered with an email. Although I am a big user of all things google, until I have numerous phones that people actually call, a robust voicemail service like YouMail is great. And honestly, do people really have that many phones? Its like when people had multiple beepers; just doesn’t happen anymore. I do occasionally give out my work number for purely business relations (vendors, etc.), and in that case, do I really want a critical (or annoying) business call to be routed around god knows where and ring my cell? Granted, being able to transfer calls mid call is neat as well as listening in (though I thought call monitoring was considered rude), but necessary?
But back to centralization, the goal of GV. Even the former status quo of having a work and business email is starting to fade, especially with gmail. What I am trying to get at is that although GV is great at solving a problem (too many phones), I can’t see that problem being around for much longer. We always move towards centralization, not by forwarding, but just adopting a single service. Therefore, how does putting my messages, and ability to be reached in the hands of google (which does fail, like a month ago, or maybe slows, like last week) seems a bit silly relative the benefits.
That’s my preaching and thanks for a good thread here.
I’ve been using GC and now GV for quite a long time now, and perhaps I’ve just missed how to do this, but my biggest issue at the moment is reconciling the two number thing. GV is really nice when I am around my computer so I can make a call to someone from the GV number, but when I call people using my cell, obviously it doesn’t go through GV and people end up asking me “who is this” all the time. Does anyone have any ideas on what can help me here? The comments have all been great, everyone!
Jake, this seems to be one of the major downsides of forwarding services like this. I’m sure at some point there will be an integrated way around this, but for now…
This is not as convenient as it should be, but if you call your GV number, one of the menu options will be to place a call. When you do it this way, the call comes from your GV number.
A pain if you want to just be able to dial from your cell phone’s phonebook or received call log. Once upon a time I set up the stored number for my voicemail on my cell phone with pauses and my mailbox PIN so that it would automatically log me into voicemail. A similar trick could be used to add people in your address book for one-touch dialing, to at least simplify it a little bit.
I have wanted to switch from YouMail for awhile. They seem to be blatantly ignorning Windows Mobile users as they have downloadable apps for other operating systems. Google Voice doesn’t have an application either and I’m thinking of going with Fusion Voicemail Plus.
For those who want to hear the other side of the argument, I found an interesting thread to not forward to Google Voice as well.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/voice/thread?tid=7c63838aae334fe3&hl=en
I use GV Mobile on my jailbroken iPhone. It uses contacts from my address book, I press the persons name, wait, and my Google Voice number calls me back (recently, the contact’s name came up as calling me…perhaps GV has been updated). It would be nice to have complete integration, however I doubt at&t will allow this. And GV Mobile doesn’t show transcriptions.