Grand Central Sucks Too
To continue with my cranky geek trend today, Ken Camp beat me to the punch in saying that Grand Central sucks because it gives you yet another damned phone number. I too have a ton of phone numbers. I am reachable at my desk right now by no less than seven phone numbers. I've lost count of how many phone numbers I really have, and I'm sure it's more than the nine Ken claims he has.
Grand Central has lots of cool features, I'll give you that. However, it doesn't make things any simpler for me. Pretty much everyone and their brother calls me on one number already: my mobile phone. I'm not telling everyone to call me on a different number–it's too much work. As far as call management features go, if you call and I don't want to talk to you, I either don't answer it or I turn it off. Pretty damned simple and it doesn't require a web browser.
Oh, for a "unified email" box? Have that. Between my Gizmo Project number and my mobile phone–the two numbers most of my calls are directed to–voicemails show up in my regular inbox. Gizmo, because it's a feature they offer. For my mobile phones, you can thank the folks at GotVoice, a service that isn't asking me to change my phone number, my calling habits, or anything like that. It just integrates with what I have.
I don't want cheap phone calls. I don't want another phone number, either for me or the people I call. I want something that integrates with what I already have and makes life easier. Is that too much to ask?
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Comment by Anonymous
I totally agree.
I totally agree.
Comment by Anonymous
You’re totally missing the point
The fact of the matter is, if you had a GC account, you (and whoever calls all 23 of your numbers) could forget all the extra phone numbers and use just one. All your phone calls go to one number and then you get the call at whichever of your 54 locations you happen to be. I find it ironic that you seem to be an IDEAL candidate for this product and you’re pissing on it without having used it. Interesting.
Comment by Anonymous
Not missing the point at all!
I have a lot of numbers, but much everyone calls me on one number already–my mobile phone. It works almost everywhere I am, including at home. Why exactly do I need this service?
Comment by Anonymous
Only missing SOME of the point
PhoneBoy…have followed your blog since my Dialpad days, and always liked your point of view (but that’s enough sucking up for now). One of the problems we’re trying to solve is not just tying all your numbers together, but to give you some tools to handle your calls better even if you only have one number. Sounds like my user behavior is more like your…tons of numbers so everybody calls my cell to get me. Problem is that too many calls are now coming into my cell. I end up taking a bunch of cell calls while standing next to my home phone or sitting next to my office phone. It costs me more and sounds worse. And even though I know who is calling me, it may or may not be important enough to be interrupted. I used to send the caller to voicemail if I was unsure, and then quickly call my voicemail to check. Or I’d wait for the caller to call me back again immeditiately to signal it was important. Both were bad solutions. Now I just hit 3 to hear the message as its being left and hit star to join if it is important.
Comment by Anonymous
You don’t want cheap phone calls?!
While it may not matter to you whether phone calls get any cheaper, let me assure you that there are still many of us for whom it does matter - that’s one reason so many people are using VoIP. What would be the point of using VoIP at all, if not to cut the cost of calls?
One particular use I can see for this service is to give the older members of your family (parents and grandparents) a single number to dial, that first of all is a local call (yes, that still matters to many older folks). While younger people may not have an issue with trying two or three different numbers to reach a friend, many older people are doing good to remember a single number, and get very frustrated when they get shunted off to voicemail or an answering machine. This is exactly the type of service that one could use to give mom and dad a local number to call, and then configure it so that it would ring all your numbers.
In any case, I don’t think you do your readers any service by concluding that because you can’t see any obvious use for a service, it’s not useful to anyone. And no, I do not work for Grand Central nor am I affiliated with them in any way, in fact I do not even use their service (in part because the only coverage they have in my state is on the opposite side of the state, and in part because of the 100 minute limitation on “free” incoming calls). One thing I do think would make them more popular among the geek crowd would be if they allowed users to specify a sip address (or perhaps a Sipbroker number) as one of the destinations, so you could have the number ring in on the second line of a VoIP adapter, or come in to an Asterisk box or something like that.
That said, I personally think it’s folly for any company to think they are going to make money selling incoming calls. I’d use the 100 free minutes, maybe, but I can’t personally envision any circumstance where I’d pay for additional incoming minutes. But then, that’s just me, and I’m sure that there are others who don’t have a problem with that.
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Comment by charlie
I have a Vonage line and a verizon cell phone. I set vonage to simultaneously ring the house and cell phones. I only give out the Vonage number. When I’m at home both phones ring simultaneously. I use zero cell phone minutes at home and people only need one number to find me. I would use the grandcentral service for the phone number of a business that has no physical location and several people collaborate in that business. Problem is, there is no grandcentral service available. I would not use the service for my personal phone because I have to have both voip and cell phones and Vonage provides simultaneous ring already. Grandcentral is not going to be free.
Comment by Mark
If it sucks and you don’t need another phone number then why do you have one? I see the Grand Central call me button on this blog so you must still be using it nearly two years later. Give me frickin break.