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Google Voice...now what?

J

jsalimao

Newbie
Hi guys,
Thanks to a very kind user on this forum, I now have Google voice. I setup my account last night.

Now the question...what do I do with it? I know this is an extremely stupid question but I am not sure of all the things it can do or how to apply it. I am curious what you guys are using it for.

Any tips, tricks or recommendations?

Thanks,
Joe
 
I am using it for text messaging to eliminate it from my phones plan. Basically I have GV set up to send me an email when I get a text. Gmail pushes the text to my phone and I can simply reply to the email.


Some people suggested setting up GV to foward texts to your cellphone, but that defeats the purpose of using it for free texts.

Hopefully, they will start pushing texts to the phone and add a popup notification feature.

I also use it for all my calls and have my gv number as one of my 5 friends and family to cut down on minutes.
 
Google Voice is a basically a routing service for your phones. It works to its full potential only if you have multiple phone numbers added to it. If not that is okay (I only have one phone registered to mine). There are a couple main features you should be aware of:

Visual and Transcribed voicemail. When someone leaves a voicemail after calling your google voice number the voicemail will be transcribed into text (unless you turn that option off). You can access these voicemails from your handset via the Google voice app. This will save you minutes and effort.

Free unlimited SMS (texting). If you get the google voice app for your phone (which you definitely should - there is no reason not to) then you can do all your texting through the app. This means no more paying for texting (only paying for data). Go to your google voice settings and stop forwarding text messages to your handset because you will get everything via the google voice app.

Pitfall of Google Voice app texting: The google voice app does not support push data. This means that it only checks for new voicemails/texts every X minutes. The lowest refresh rate interval is 5 minutes. I personally don't mind waiting the extra 5 minutes for a text message if it means I get unlimited free texting. Remember that you can always manually refresh to check for new messages. If you still can't wait those extra couple of minutes then forward your text messages to your gmail address. Since Android gets push gmail you will once again have instant push text messaging.

Unlimited Minutes: If you have the friends and family promotion from Verizon then you can add your google voice number to your free calling numbers and you will get unlimited calling through it. The pitfall is that when you place a call using the google voice app it doesn't go through your google voice number but instead it goes through some google voice route through number. If you pay attention to your phone bill you will quickly figure out which number is the route through number. Add that to your friends and family list and you will now have unlimited calling out.

I think I've covered the main points. Anything else?


For more information read the Google Voice blog: Google Voice Blog
 
I use it to "see" any voice mail messages that I get so that I don't have to go through the steps to listen to a message that I don't really need.

I also use it to give out my GV number instead of my real number. If someone starts pestering me via the GV number I can easily block them by going into GV online. I received a package yesterday and there was my number right there on the outside of the package in case the UPS guy needed to call me. But it was my GV number so I didn't care.

I haven't had this yet but if I need to drop off a car or something, I can give my GV number and have it ring both my phone and my husbands phone if they need to call. I can see this as a great feature for parents with young children in day care or school. One number will ring both parents.

Those are just a few benefits that I see.
 
I just installed GV but like the OP, no clue what to do w/ it and haven't given out the number.

I'm slighlty confused with the voice mail feature. Last night someone was trying to reach me on my regular verizon phone #, placed a gazillion calls, all which i missed since I was sound asleep.

This morning i have a crap load of emails and GV notifications with the voicemail. So now i have essentially visual voice mail like the iphone plus the transcribe. I don't pay for this so my question is, how the F' did google grab my regular verizon voice mails if i never even gave it my VM password and am I gonna get charged by VZN now?
 
ponchera said:
I just installed GV but like the OP, no clue what to do w/ it and haven't given out the number.

I'm slighlty confused with the voice mail feature. Last night someone was trying to reach me on my regular verizon phone #, placed a gazillion calls, all which i missed since I was sound asleep.

This morning i have a crap load of emails and GV notifications with the voicemail. So now i have essentially visual voice mail like the iphone plus the transcribe. I don't pay for this so my question is, how the F' did google grab my regular verizon voice mails if i never even gave it my VM password and am I gonna get charged by VZN now?
Click to expand...

Nevermind.. just read this and got the explanation, i must have set it up w/o knowing wtf i was doing:
http://greg-loesch.com/blog/456/google-voice-verizon-tips-tricks/#voicemail
 
ponchera said:
I just installed GV but like the OP, no clue what to do w/ it and haven't given out the number.

I'm slighlty confused with the voice mail feature. Last night someone was trying to reach me on my regular verizon phone #, placed a gazillion calls, all which i missed since I was sound asleep.

This morning i have a crap load of emails and GV notifications with the voicemail. So now i have essentially visual voice mail like the iphone plus the transcribe. I don't pay for this so my question is, how the F' did google grab my regular verizon voice mails if i never even gave it my VM password and am I gonna get charged by VZN now?
Click to expand...

Google didn't grab your VZW voice mails and no you won't get charged by Verizon. What you must have done is call the *71 number and follow the directions. What this did was forward unanswered calls made to your verizon number to your google voice number. Then the people left the voice mails on google voice.
 
You can basically get Visual Voicemail for free if you follow the article posted above. Thanks for the link! I've had a number for months but never really bothered with it because it violated much of the M2M minutes and wasn't worth it. Turning it into a Visual Voicemail method though is virtually invisible to your friends and family and only adds ease to yourself :)
 
I use GV to bypass Verizon's awful voicemail system. I sit in front of a computer all day long and hated dealing with Verizon's system. Now I can just read the transcription on my computer or my phone. Interestingly, the transcription always fails with Irish or English accents.

I use it to block an extremely annoying person from calling me. On my phone, this number is sent directly to voicemail. In GV, the number is blocked. The caller hears "this number is disconnected..."

I also use it in combination with the "selective call acceptance" on my landline. All numbers but 10 or so to my landline are blocked. When my landline rings, I know it's someone I want to talk to.
 
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