Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcantor | Hacker News Reader

This is like saying "The Titanic now lets you bring your own lawn chair." I wish I had never started using Google Voice. The Android app is so janky that it may as well not exist. It's been three years and I still can't receive picture messages. Text messages get dropped 20% of the time, and you have to choose between having them forwarded to your cell phone with contact names inexplicably prepended to every message (often resulting in long texts being split up into 3 or more parts that get delivered in the wrong order) or having them delivered via pull notification on the Android app, which might notify you of new texts within 24 hours. Sometimes, calls will instantly disconnect when I pick them up. There is no support. There is no hope. There is only Google, the Fortress of Customer Solitude.

View on HN

... and GV still cant send international text messages. I mean come on....let me pay for it at the very least.

I will gladly pay to send/receive mms, international text.

Its mind boggling that they expect your google voice number to be "the one to rule them all" when it can't emulate half the functions that are considered minimum today.

(Disclosure: I work at Twilio.)

International SMS is a really nasty landscape. I know firsthand that it's very hard to put together an international SMS product that is anywhere near what we would consider reliable. I imagine if Google offered it, even more people would complain about its unreliability than are complaining about its current absence.

This is a problem that Twilio is actively trying to solve.

As a customer at T-Mobile I have issues sending text messages overseas, or even back to the US when I am in Europe that I completely understand this, and also understand why Google isn't implementing it.

Thanks for the insight. It'd be interesting to know from a technical standpoint where the problems lie, if you don't mind providing a little detail.

I would have happily paid $10/month for Google Voice if that translated into a more reliable service. As it stands now I just don't trust it. I use it exclusively as a SPAM dump these days. In the last month or so I noticed voice mail transcription just stopped working (or are massively delayed?) even when the messages are perfectly clear. So that was the last useful feature for me and now it doesn't work anymore.

At the risk of complaining about a free service, the most frustrating/humorous part is their voice to text translation service. While about the only thing that comes out accurate is the number the call came from, the rest of the conversation translates to phrases that are worse than any drunk dial line. Again, good for a laugh but not dependable enough to build a solid business model on if you’re trying for a large piece of the cell market.

Oh, it's no risk. I openly complain about Google Voice and it has never been anything except 100% free-as-in-beer. I wish I paid for Google Voice so I could demand that they refund me. You see, I got on board when it was still called GrandCentral, and there seemed to be every intention to create a Real Product with Real Support that people would pay Real Money for. Then Google bought it, and I figured, "Great! Now it'll be a Real Product just like Google search or Gmail, but free, or at least affordable!" Instead I got this bupkus. Bah, humbug! etc.

The transcriptions are fabulous, by the way--I think a great business model would be piping them into a web service for use instead of Markov chains in spam e-mail. Once it translated an entire message from my Dad as an ominous string of "Ha ha ha ha ha"s.

the english transcripts of international messages are the best

I guess I've had better luck--the text translation is far from perfect--BUT, it has been sufficient for me to find out the gist of the message. Also, I get an email notification--for example, today, while I was at work, I got a call from a Verizon tech that they were at my house. My phone was in my office and I was in another location (with email), so I get the notification and see the number. This is useful for me.

Another nice use case is that when I go out of the country, I can see if someone called my US number--so while the service is not perfect, at least for me, I find it useful--and free ;>

I think that's the main problem, you have to get "lucky" in order to get text translation that is "sufficient to find out the gist of the message".

>delivered via pull notification on the Android app, which might notify you of new texts within 24 hours.

Is not accurate. As far as anecdotes are concerned, the Activity navigation is wonky in the Android app, but I have ZERO problems with dropped texts. My friends email me picturse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com