Google Voice - The Non-Invite thread

[Big D]

Hey guys. There are a few GV threads going but they all seem to turn into a request for/offer of invites.

I thought I'd start a thread that just covered questions. I'll start:

1. Can you customize the interface?

2. When I playback messages, I can barely hear them. Any way to control volume? It doesn't seem to respond to the volume rocker.

3. Can you use a canned gretting that you just record your name into a la VZ's voicemail?

Thanks all.

 

[Leastbay]

How can I get mine to work? Ive had it about a week and when someone calls and it gets to voicemail it says call cannot be completed.

 

[Big D]

Anyone figured out the volume thing? Are you even getting the problem?

 

[dberthia]

How can I get mine to work? Ive had it about a week and when someone calls and it gets to voicemail it says call cannot be completed.

Any time I try to call my GV number from a local land line I get a "You have to dial a 1 first" message. Dialing the 1 doesn't work either. Calls from mobile phone go through without any problems. Very frustrating.

 

[dandanaka]

The volume for playback has been an issue for everyone. I hope they find a quick fix fro this bug

 

[Big D]

Anyone else having this problem?

I don't get a notification in the status bar (or in GV) until I open the app on the phone.

Is this a setting issue?

 

[Luxferro]

How can I get mine to work? Ive had it about a week and when someone calls and it gets to voicemail it says call cannot be completed.

Any time I try to call my GV number from a local land line I get a "You have to dial a 1 first" message. Dialing the 1 doesn't work either. Calls from mobile phone go through without any problems. Very frustrating.

Mine works just fine.

Did you pick a google # based in your area code? if not you may need to dial the whole 10 digit # (xxx) xxx-xxxx

 

[Luxferro]

The volume for playback has been an issue for everyone. I hope they find a quick fix fro this bug

I thought they fixed this in a google voice app update? I think I read that in some change logs or something.

Mines works fine.

 

[Luxferro]

A tip for you guys, in case you didn't know.

How to make your phones not ring a million times before going to voicemail:

Google Voice + Voicemail number of rings to message - Google Voice Help

Just disable it like suggested in the link above. Don't worry, if someone calls your real cell #, it still rings.. but it only rings like 5-6 times before going to voicemail - same as the google voice #. I just did some testing now, and it all seems to be working great for me.

Last week my boss called me, and didn't leave a voice message. Now I know why. He has my real cell # and I called it from my work phone, and it tooks like 5-6 verizon rings, then it forwards the call to google voice, which then rings another 5-6+ rings before finally going to voicemail.

With the changes in the link above, my phone rings no more then 5-6 rings before going to voice mail, no matter if someone called my GV # or real cell #

 

[HarleyDad09]

How about this one..

I was in such a rush to set up my Google Voice account I clicked "Use my mobile number" instead of having google give me a number. Does anyone know if there is a way to go back and get a google number? Thanks

 

[Big D]

Man. The transcription is a total joke. Worthless.

Anyone else not getting notifications until you open the app?

 

[monkeydog]

How about this one..

I was in such a rush to set up my Google Voice account I clicked "Use my mobile number" instead of having google give me a number. Does anyone know if there is a way to go back and get a google number? Thanks

Unfortunately there is no way to do this at the moment. Unless you get a 2nd voice account. Here is a nearly 500 post thread from the google help forums on this issue

I actually chose to use my own number at first too. To fix it you need to get a 2nd voice account (choose a google number this time) on a seperate google account and then fill out this form to have the 2nd voice account transferred to your main account. The transfer can take anywhere from a couple days to 2 weeks, it took them 9 days to transfer mine.

I would give you another invite if I had one so you could sort it out. If you don't have access to another invite and really want to get this fixed instead of waiting for google to fix it you can find voice invites for $.99 on ebay fairly easily. It's what I did to get the 2nd voice account.

 

[HarleyDad09]

Monkeydog..thanks for the tip man! I will definatly try it out. Was it worth it getting the google number? I hit up Vincent from Google on Facebook and he asked for my account info so he could take care of it. i am going to see if that goes anywhere. I will keep you guys posted!

 

[monkeydog]

The main reason I wanted a google number instead of using my existing number was that without a google number callers always had to re-enter my entire phone number to leave a voicemail. With a google number callers dont need to do that because google already knows what number the call is for since you have a voice number (even when they call your real mobile number) so it instantly goes to voicemail without the caller having to re-enter anything.
You can also assign more than one phone to your voice number so if you don't pick up on one phone it will go ahead and ring all the other phones designated with your voice account. And some other features are that you can set up schedules for when it should ring or not ring certain phones, set up a screening procedure if an unknown caller calls which will prompt the caller to say their name then when you pick up the phone it will play that recording of their name to you so you can decide if you want to answer it for real or not.
I don't use a lot of the features but I can see how they could be really useful to some.
With a voice number you can have everyone call it and text it and it will forward to your real phone just fine, however voice doesn't support MMS at the moment, so picture messages and things like that will not be able to make it through the voice system so those would have to be sent to your real number, not the voice number.

Just a quick edit add on. With a voice number you can also send texts from google.com/voice and you can call from google.com/voice however when you call its more like it auto dials your phone, it will call your phone and then connect you to the number you dialed from the website.

 

[Big D]

Anyone have an issue with Google Voice playback being too low?

Here's a solution:

Download the Volume Control app. The bottom setting is "In-call Volume." Turn that up all the way. That's the setting that controls the GV playback volume.