My business is winding down and I was thinking of canceling my business phone line and just using Google Voice. I could have an outgoing message that said the business is closing, but would still refer callers to my cell if it’s the IRS or other people that would still need to get in touch with me.
I don’t want to use it for calling or anything; I just want to keep a central number for the business that could record messages.
But it seems to good to be true – there must be a downside, right? Anyone know of any?
I’ve been using it for years now and haven’t found a downside. I’ve no idea how they make money off of it, and have been expecting them to cancel it any time, but for now it’s been great. Nice voice mail transcription and free texts.
Really, the risk of it being cancelled is probably the biggest problem. I only use it for personal use, not business, so that’s not a huge risk.
I use it as a business line, that gets forwarded to my cell phone (and I can make outgoing calls from my google voice number).
Its been great, no real issues. The voice mail transcription for me is almost useless, though often highly entertaining to see what google thinks the person is saying. That may also be partly due to the nature of the business and messages, where a personal quick message may come across better.
I don’t think there is any downside to getting a google voice number and using it, except of course that they might start charging for it at any time.
I’ve been using a google voice number for years and never had any problems.
The transcription service isn’t ALWAYS useless, either. Especially for automated messages from doctor’s offices or telemarketers where they have a computerized voice, they get it almost or exactly word-for-word correctly. And if the human is very professional and slow-speaking, it usually does a good job too.
So, I say go for it, but don’t expect it to be free forever.
I am not a paid Google employee, I promise, but if you’re interested in using just your google number as an actual phone number and not just forwarding number, you can get an Obidevice. I use this as my house phone and it works great, just like a regular phone.
So people who call my google voice number will ring my cell phone, and my “house phone”, even though my house phone has no other number associated, it’s just plugged into the Obi.
No doubt, sometimes it produces entertaining results. But I often find that a few keywords are enough for me to get the gist of the message. It also seems to do well for numbers, so I find myself searching for a scrap of paper for a note far less often.
And even aside from transcription, it’s nice to play back the message when I’m sitting at my desktop.
I briefly went Google Voice only, and at one point I was unreachable for three days. Incoming calls never rang my phone. I gave it up completely after that. I don’t know how Google Voice’s reliability compares to standard phone service, but at least when Sprint screws up, I can contact a human being and complain and keep complaining until it’s fixed.
Like any VOIP service, the quality is sometimes less than a land line.
I’m not sure GV will allow you to port in a land line number. A couple of ways around that: port the land line number to a cheap mobile prepaid phone for a couple of months and then into GV, or port it instead to a VOIP product like Ooma or MagicJack.
When someone leaves a message it says something like “This Google Voice Subscriber blah blah something…” which might turn off some people potentially. But as it’s not for extensive use, I think it’s not much of a disadvantage.
I don’t think Google is likely to shut down Google voice. It’s as far as I can tell a very popular service. They don’t necessarily need to make money off of it. All those voice mails which get transcribed? The good transcriptions (you can mark transcriptions as good) anonymously go into a a giant database which i’m sure helps improve their voice translation services or other voice recognition services.
It also keeps you dependent on Google and keeps you visiting their other services.
Google voice has no significant downsides IMHO considering it’s a nearly free service (small porting fee). You could always port back from GV to a real land line number if you find it unacceptable. No reason not to try it.
I’ve been using it since the GrandCentral days and concur that there’s no downside (yet). The real upside for me is that I’ve been able to ditch my POTS landline completely by putting an Obi between my phone and router. For a one-time $40 outlay I can make and receive all the calls I ever need, which adds up to a huge savings given all the hours-long conference calls my job requires. Everyone tells me the voice quality is better over GV/Obi than a standard landline or cell phone too. And having a single contact number that rings my Obi/landline as well as my cell phones makes handling client calls while I’m out of the house seamless.
Each of the past few years Google has announced that they’re extending free domestic long-distance for the next calendar year, but always with the unspoken implication that they might start charging for it thereafter. So far I’ve enjoyed six or seven years of free access, so I’ll gamble on it remaining that way for a while.
Bear in mind that GV doesn’t provide 911 service, but it doesn’t sound like that’s an issue for your situation.
The other downside is that Google is theoretically recording/analyzing all your calls to send you more targeted ads. Just don’t say anything you wouldn’t want Larry Page to tell your grandmother and you’ll be fine.
In your particular use case, the only potential downside I can think of is that unless you’re using a smartphone or dialing through a special Google Voice number (essentially like a phone card), your outgoing phone number will not be the same as your Google Voice number. Incoming calls get forwarded to your landline, but when you call them back on the landline it’ll appear to them as the landline’s regular number. The Obi seems to be able to deal with that, but I’ve never used one myself.
And just for your future reference in case you decide to use it for other purposes, other issues that I’ve encountered (but which don’t apply to your case):
Text messages get sent over the data connection instead of the (usually more reliable) voice connection. If you’re in an area that gets voice and SMS reception but not internet, your GV text messages will be delayed until you re-enter.
Voicemails and text messages don’t quite get pushed/synced perfectly to over devices. Every once in a while I’ll notice that a text message that has shown up online still hasn’t shown up on my cell phone, etc. A manual refresh usually fixes this, but if you’re using it for business-critical, time-sensitive applications, I’d definitely be careful.
On a smartphone, other apps don’t necessarily know to use Google Voice instead of regular SMS. There are automatic “I’m busy” SMS replies, for example, and they still try to send a regular SMS – which at best results in confusion as it’ll send through your normal cell number and not your GV number, and at worst won’t send at all because you don’t have a SMS plan at all or have it blocked like I do.
Dialing a new contact over a smartphone requires an internet connection. Google Voice routes every “real” destination number through a special, unique Google Voice number that it looks up the first time you contact that number. If you don’t have an internet connection, the call will fail altogether. After the first time, though, GV remembers that special number and you can call it even without an internet connection (though you obviously still need cellular coverage).
All in all, though, these are just minor gripes. I use GV multiple times a day across three devices and I wouldn’t be able to live without it.
For a while, I had a 1-way speech path problem with every outgoing Google Voice call. They could hear me, I could not hear them (or it may have been the other way around). This problem went away by itself.
People would call me, then immediately get a “subscriber is not available” message. I finally figured out that this was because it was set to ring both my land line and my mobile, and my mobile had a very weak signal in my house. The mobile giving the error would be counted as a connection, so it wouldn’t even get to ringing my land line. This was avoided by setting up call screening.
When I make a GV call from my mobile, the voice quality is noticeably less, no doubt because of a VOIP link in the call.