I did watch them. Same link was in my invite email.
Many people on this forum have said that when they use the GV number, it does not use minutes. Are they lying?
I think that one person mentioned that you had to add the google number to your friends and family 10 list. Would that make the difference?
There appears to be a lot of confusion on this thread about free calls versus calls that utilize your anytime minutes. Let me clear this up.
- The
only way to get "free" calls with GV is to set up your assigned google voice number as one of your 5 (or 10) "calling circle" numbers. If you have a standard voice plan that does not include this feature you
cannot place "free" calls using google voice.
Effectively, when you use the GV app to place a call, it is simply abstracting the process for you. If you used a regular phone you would:
1. Call your google voice number
2. press '2'
3. dial the number you wish to connect to
4. google voice connects you to that number
By using the GV app, it essentially performs this process for you so it's as simple as dialing a single number. Because you have actually called your google voice number which is
not a Verizon number, you
will be charged airtime for the call (unless, as I said before, you have added your GV number to your calling circle).
I hope that clarifies.
My two cents about getting a GV number or not would definitely be to go for it. Any features you get without signing up for the number you will
still get if you do sign up for the number. It's up to you whether or not you use your newly assigned GV number, but you might as well get it. A couple tips:
- You can set up google voice to "hijack" your carrier's voicemail. If someone calls your
Verizon number, your google voicemail will still pick up - giving you visual voicemail and voicemail transcription. This is the feature I'm currently using and I've been pretty happy. To set this up:
(this assumes you have already added your verizon line to google voice)
1. go to
www.google.com/voice and log into your account
2. go to settings-->Phones, you should see a link next to your mobile phone that says something like "activate google voicemail on this phone"
3. follow the prompts - dial a specific number from your droid and your voicemail will be switched to google voice - pretty easy!
NOTE: something I had to figure out by trial and error --> once you set up voicemail hijacking, GV will, by default, forward missed calls from your cell phone to any other phones set up on your GV account
even if the caller called your cell phone number directly. To turn this off:
1. Settings-->phones-->Edit (below your mobile number)
2. click "show advanced settings"
3. under "forwarding options" click "go straight to voicemail"
Hope that helps some folks. I've been playing around with GV for a little while now and I think I'm getting the hang of the feature set. Let me know if anyone else has questions; cheers!
