That's a feature I really want and it's not easy to do.
If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will not just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that "the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time" ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don't pay your phonebill or something.
I want my phone to ring and ring and ring until the caller gives up. I think I can do this with the twilio API, but man that's a lot of work for something (seemingly) simple.
It's great to see someone from a company pop up in a discussion to help out a user, but this is absolutely not the way to run a company. It leads to the Google approach to support, where you can only get a non-automated reply only if you raise enough stink by on social media, or happen to know someone who works there.
Now, each individual case where an employee unexpectedly helps out is great, but this is NOT 'how you run a company'. You should focus on getting your general customer service and support lines to be good.
I've never dealt with this company before, or even heard of them until today, so their normal lines of support might be great. This isn't meant to be a specific criticism of Charge.
However, it does seem odd to me that a phone company appears to give no contact phone numbers on their web site. That's not a good sign!
Phone support is a hard thing to do well. And we have a pretty high bar for support. So I know this sounds like a dodge, but we really are waiting until we can confidently roll out strong phone support to push it.
For now, whenever a customer has a problem that can't be solved via email, one of the founders will call.
Obviously that doesn't scale, so we need to figure out phone support, but we're aiming for what I call "Zappos-level" quality and that's easier said than done.
Company phone numbers usually only lead to an automated phone tree and maybe if you stab zero enough time (since it's likely not an option anywhere in the tree itself), some very underpaid person at the very end doing "support" who barely speaks English, can only read from a prepared script, and doesn't have the authority to help you with anything important.
I just expect this from any tech company today. It's not like you're going to get assistance from anyone at Google, for instance. I tried forever when someone was abusing our open source trademark and then doxxed me on blogspot. But all the "official" channels were completely ignored. I think my unlisted home phone number and old office address is still posted there with a call for people to harass me for DMCAing pirated commercial software they had hosted on random locker sites that used my GPLed code in violation of the license to package it.
Just tried this. After a few rings you get a default message where some guy says "The person you have called is unavailable right now, please try again later."
We could actually set up some fancy forwarding to make this message configurable, similar to how Google Voice's voicemail works.
I'm thinking the reason you can't get the feature you want is because some engineers who designed the call setup for cell networks decided keeping the phone's battery from dying as a result of excessive ringing is a nice feature. I'm with you though, I hate voice mail. So does my mom. She recorded her outgoing message to politely say she never checks v/m and to text or email.
Sony Z3's have voicemail built in. Sadly they are glass both sides and break too easily. The other thing to consider is that when you are out of range or it is turned off, you may well miss an important call. All smartphones should be able to take a message first, and if that fails, then, it should fall to the carrier.
Which would be fine with me, since the scammers/spammers wouldn't do it. I don't like voice mail; but there is a difference between voice mail from a friend or family member and one telling me I've one a free carpet cleaning, an alarm service, need new windows, etc. (Not to mention the upcoming political robocalls.)
Back in the 1980s I was taught that callers should always count to 10 rings before giving up. It is rude to give up earlier because you may have interrupted somebody. The phone starts ringing, so they start to put away what they are doing and then go to the phone. By the time they get there, you might have hung up if you don't wait for 10 rings. When getting a call, normally you'd try to get to the phone unless you can't do it within 10 rings.
Some reasons for 10 rings:
* must wipe butt
* must get kids out of swimming pool
* must shut down the tractor (there exist loud outside ringers)
* must finish... because not Paris Hilton
* must put baby into a safe spot (crib, strapped into chair, playpen, etc.)
* must remove engine oil from hands
That was a world I liked better. Answering machines ruined it. At first they were set to at least 4 rings. This caused people to start hanging up earlier, and assuming that others would do likewise. If you assume this, you won't run for the phone, thereby discouraging people from waiting. It's a feedback loop. Later, answering machines were set to just 2 rings. I guess cell phones were the final nail in the coffin for the old 10-ring standard. Since many people would carry their phone, callers got used to immediate pick-up. Not every phone is a cell phone! Even if that were so, many of the old reasons still apply!
Great post. Makes since. Makes me remember something I read that came decades earlier. It was a write-up about how the telephones were one of the worst things that happened in the home and the office. The reason is they create a sense of urgency forcing you to answer immediately for something that may not be important. They also put the caller in control of your time a bit. So, outside fun or profitable stuff, they're actually a negative compared to the letters and such that preceded them.
Lesson learned for modern world might be to send messages asynchronously by default with a note to call them soon or at some time range if it's extra important. I mean, it's what we do with email and messaging for sure. Let's just not forget that maybe the person on the other end doesn't want to answer or even look at the phone.
Yup, I learned in retail during that time that you always deal with the customer in front of you before you answer the phone, too. Serving the person actually in your store is more important than serving the one sitting at home.
I don't really like talking on the phone and prefer face-to-face interaction. However, experience dealing with retailers (less enlightened than yourself) forced me to conclude that customers using the phone were more important. Too many times, I've had a retailer or receptionist answer the phone in the middle of an interaction.
Ok, that's sort of workable ... EDIT: ok, actually not so much - if you are out of coverage area and your phone rings zero times and goes right to voicemail (that's how it works with carriers in the US) then the caller calls you and goes right to silence, and presumably they retry 1-2-3x and get frustrated ... not even sure this is the right number, etc. Whereas if the phone just rang and rang and rang, at least it wouldn't be a bizarre outcome for them ...
I would also like the ability to play a message, but then have no ability to leave a message.
The lame way to do this is to let your vm inbox fill up, and then everyone gets the "the person you called is too stupid to figure out voicemail" message.
What I would like is an option to play a message ("hi you've reached so and so and here is my email address and have a nice day!") and then ... no beep ... no message ... nothing. Maybe just pause a bit and then a fast-busy.[1]
How can I do things like this ? I've been meaning for years to self-provide my own dial tone in the same way I self-provide my own email, but I just don't have the time to get it all set up.
Record two minutes of ringing, so that depending on the type you record and the phone of the caller they either think it's ringing normally or two minutes, or think it changed to a different sort of ringing and assume it's some weird technical thing.
Related anecdote, I have a friend who lives in NYC who told me he recorded his voicemail to start with the beep (or beeps?) that sound like a network confirmation of a call hang up, and then his "Please leave me a message" message a couple of seconds later, so that automated dialers would be fooled into thinking the call was dead, and hang up rather than leave a message. I'm not familiar with American phone systems and am not sure if this is a story from the past (he's certainly been hacking systems for longer than I've been alive) or if it's still useful to this day (I'll pay attention if I ever call and get his voicemail, but we don't speak often).
This was the message on my voice mail before I had switched to a carrier that made it easy to turn it off (that wasn't the reason I switched, that was a nice surprise):
---
Hi, this is Evan.
I will never ever ever ever listen to the voice mail you’re about to leave, because voice mail is a pain in the butt.
So if you actually want to reach me, you can either send me an SMS, send me e-mail, or try my home number.
Feel free to leave a voice message if you want, but remember, I will never ever listen to it. Have a nice day!
---
I don't actually give them the email or home number details on the assumption that if they don't have those already, they are probably someone who's call I'm that stressed about receiving.
Generally I got positive feedback once people did get in contact with me.
I did have a similar one on message bank on the home number, which also mentioned that I keep turning message bank off, and the phone company kept turning it back on again.
@blisterpeanuts: Unfortunately, Google Voice isn't available in the Antipodes.
@post_break: Don't know that I would characterise it as passive aggressive. It isn't meant to be, certainly not to the caller. As I said, most people who heard it found it amusing more than annoying. One even asked if they could steal the idea.
My friend has a passive aggressive voice mail message like this. So every time I get his voice mail I leave a long message which I know he has to listen to.
I honestly can't believe how much I've written in this comment about such an insignificant annoyance from a few years. Consider it self-therapy that I accidentally left on HN.
I previously had a phone on Vodafone in the UK, and infuriatingly their voicemail system would not allow you to delete a message until you had listened to it for either 3 or 5 seconds, I can't remember.
Most of my messages were either spam calls I knew would have left a voicemail from when I rejected them, or my dad who has finally learned that I'm just as likely to call him back from seeing him in my missed calls list and therefore he no longer needs to leave a "Hey, it's me calling, feel free to call back or not" every single time. (It took several years of begging him to not leave a message unless he either a.) had a piece of information he wanted to give me in that message or b.) there was a time sensitivity beyond normal conversation.)
So for each message you wanted to delete, you had to listen to the robotic voice say "Caller, oh, eight, hundred, [pause], seven, etc etc etc, called, today, at, twelve, fifty, seven, PM, [pause]" then the message would start, you wait what you think is the right amount of time before pressing 3 to delete, and if you get it a fraction of a second too early, not only does it not delete it, but it tells you (in those slow, monotic, robot, words) "I'm sorry, but you cannot delete this message until you have listened to at least three seconds." AND THEN IT WOULD START AGAIN FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO WHAT FUCKING NUMBER HAD CALLED AT WHAT TIME.
Man, that's like therapy, writing that out. My mobile number was quite publicly available, included in press releases that were googleble, etc. so I got a fair few spammy voicemails. Thankfully, eventually either I discovered or their system added, the ability (bug) that if you press 3 (the delete button) almost immediately after the end of the robotic words "message deleted", you could time it so the system knew you had already deleted the last message, but hadn't reset the clock for how long you had to listen to the next message for, so once you knew the rhythm you could delete them in about 5 seconds each without being stuck listening.
You can use something like Vitelity vMobile which routes your cell phone as an extension to a PBX system/SIP server. This gives you total and complete control of what happens on incoming and outbound calls. For example, you could have your cell phone number give an IVR menu, ring forever, play hold music, you're only limited by your SIP server. This is the closest I've seen to providing your own dialtone.
I used it for a while and the only con---and it is a major con for me---is that, like most innovative or unique MVNOs, it's riding on Sprint. And Sprint is really terrible, at least where I live, which made the service great, except that getting data to work often involved walking around in large circles til I was able to catch an LTE signal.
Maybe record a message from a text-to-speech program that says "Voicemail service is currently unavailable for a week of planned maintenance. Please try another time." Then, the person listening might say, "Down? And wait a week? Nevermind..."
I once stuck a telco "This number is no longer in service" recording (w/ the "special information tone" preceding) and as much silence as the voicemail system would allow as my outgoing greeting. People _still_ left messages...
My outgoing message is a close proximity iPhone recording of my 93 dodge dakota's door buzzer. Seems to also solve the VM problem, although the diligent VMers express confusion often. But those aren't VMs I'm interested in receiving, so it kinda works out.
I have t-mobile and just called up support and asked them to disable voicemail. My phone does just ring and ring without any weird messages to the caller. Maybe other phone companies are different but if you have t-mobile just call them up and ask them to turn it off. Very quick and easy.
I think many phone companies have an incentive to keep the voicemail systems up and running - if your call is forwarded to a voice mail service the call is connected and therefore billed. If you reach the automated messages for failed call setups (busy/terminal cannot be reached etc), they are not billable.
Is it possible to just have my actual phone handle voicemail? I'm walking around with more computing power in my pocket then we used to fly a space shuttle, you would think it would be able to record a simple voice message from a phone line.
In the UK AAISP offers that service but it becomes complicated because it involves an outbound call for the forwarding that has to be billed to the original recipient, not the caller ( since his calling rate was fixed on dialing the first number )
Almost nobody is using voicemails, where I know (Czech Rep., Slovakia, Spain, Hungary) - it used to be the default (voicemail is on) to get charged for the calls into it, but I think it is not even so anymore (because it was too annoying for the users that the companies had to change it).
It rings for some time and then you get some "the user is not available at the moment".
Sometimes I really wonder how the US tech is stuck in the past (while generally is not, of course).
In UK I just called a special number to disable voicemail. There's also a code you can "call" to set the time between "no-answer" and "divert to this other number that's your voicemail"
I almost never call/sms anyone from my phone, so it costs almost $0/year to run
PhoneTag[0] can do that via email, though the transcriptions are generally good enough that you don't need to listen to them. I've been using it for years and don't remember the last time I actually had to listen to a transcript.
That's a feature I really want and it's not easy to do.
If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will not just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that "the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time" ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don't pay your phonebill or something.
I want my phone to ring and ring and ring until the caller gives up. I think I can do this with the twilio API, but man that's a lot of work for something (seemingly) simple.
edit: this is the discussion I found that makes me think I could accomplish this with twilio: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22410430/twilio-respond-t...