How to get rid of Google Voice voicemail

[B360155]

I set up a Google Voice account so I could try out their free visual voicemail service and it was terrible...totally inaccurate (and sometimes humorous) transcriptions. Great idea but not ready for prime time. Uninstalled the app from my phone and voicemails still kept going to Google Voice. Took me awhile to find out how to get rid of it, but this is how you do it:

Go to the Google Voice web site on your PC/laptop, upper right corner click on settings icon, then "voice settings" . Then click on "deactivate voicemail" it will tell you to dial *73 on your phone. When you do that it turns off the Google Voice service. Now your stock voicemail should be working again.

 

[Greavous]

im with you on this one. sometimes more isnt better and free isnt worth the price. ive been catchin hell from the gf ever since i installed and configured GV. when googling on how to rid myself of it there is a comment on their site that "unfortunately" there is no way to delete google voice from your google account that this time. if you ditch your gmail you cant get the same name back again....

hope deactivating the voice mail works. thanks

 

[realfutbol]

I agree that the VisualVoiceMail translations are horrible but I enjoy a bunch of the benefits that come with GV.

1) With the GV app on your DX you don't have to call to get your voicemail. Open the app and hit play.

2) You can check/listen to your voicemails on the web. I have a job where it isn't good to be on your phone during the day but it's okay to be on a computer, so I can have instant access to my voicemails without having to wait till lunch or afterwork.

3) Being able to create different voicemail greetings for different people is a nice bonus.

Many, many pluses to out weigh the translations (which hopefully they are working on as people "donate" unuseful translations.)

 

[jxker]

I use it and love it, sure the translations are sloppy, but you can get the gist of it.. and you can always listen to it if for some reason...there are a ton of things you can do with it and except for the crappy translation to text, they all work well

 

[Kevmueller]

I have had this with my X and I finally got my wife off her Blackberry on on to a Droid 2 and got her set-up. She was a visual voice mail user (and we paid for it so I am saving money). Yes the translations are not 100% but if you notice it will put in gray words they are not sure about and black are words they are sure about. I have found that most of it depends on how well the person who leaves a message talks. I called to test this on my wifes phone and it was almost 100% accurate. My sister will call and leave me a message and she talks a 100 words a minute and it is awful.

I personally like this, it is free, is shows on my phone and I can read it and if I am not sure about something I can click on it and listen to it. It does the job for what I need and best of all, it is free!!!

 

[LaFlavor]

Yeah, even without an accurate voice to text translation, I'm not seeing the downside of having it. A visual voicemail app is pretty handy to have, even if I still have to listen to the voicemail. Way easier than pressing 1 to listen to new message, 2 to record a message...etc...

 

[B360155]

Another negative for me was that I'm not a texter so I don't have a text messaging plan. I usually interact with my friends/family via emails or chats. The Google Voice message is sent to you as a text message and so for me, it was actually costing me more to use this "free" service. And if somebody paused while they were leaving a voicemail message, it would start a new text, so for one voicemail, I sometimes ended up getting charged for multiple text messages. I can see how some might benefit by having it, but for me it didn't make sense.

 

[ChiefHopper]

Another negative for me was that I'm not a texter so I don't have a text messaging plan. I usually interact with my friends/family via emails or chats. The Google Voice message is sent to you as a text message and so for me, it was actually costing me more to use this "free" service. And if somebody paused while they were leaving a voicemail message, it would start a new text, so for one voicemail, I sometimes ended up getting charged for multiple text messages. I can see how some might benefit by having it, but for me it didn't make sense.

Go to your google voice mail settings. You can click text messages off. And check messages sent as emails and save the new settings.

 

[Kevmueller]

Also if you turn off texts and emails you can put a widget on your phone that will show you the most current message and when you touch it will open your whole e-mail box.

 

[B360155]

OK, you guys are awesome...taught an old dog some new tricks! After reading your posts, I went back into the settings and changed them as suggested and put a widget on one of my home screens. Voice translations are still terrible, but now that I've turned off the text message notification and won't get charged for those, I'm a happy camper...thanks everyone!

 

[zoo16]

I used Google Voice for a few months but ended up switching back to regular voicemail. My main problem was that it was very inconsistent as to when it would show the voicemail message. I tested it and had my wife call and let it go to voicemail. She left a message, and it took over an hour before Google Voice showed that I had a message. Sometimes it would be a couple hours! Anyone else run into this?

 

[B360155]

I still have it on my phone right now, but I'm not totally sold on it at all and am considering taking it back off again and going back to stock voicemail. I had one time where somebody swore that they left me a message and I never got it. And a couple of times, I've received the thing that says I got a message and I can listen to it, but it says the text part couldn't be sent. And the transcriptions are still terrible. No way I can figure out a whole message just by looking at the text without playing it back and listening to it.