Too much hype has been made about Google Voice being free. As a poor sap who just got a bill this morning for $140 *over* my regular monthly bill from T-Mobile, I can tell you that Google Voice calls are not free. Google Voice calls are calls to an intermediary phone number (in my case, one in Palm Springs) that count against your plan’s minutes. T-Mobile charged me for every minute over my “included” minutes. And I went way over my minutes because I thought that my Google Voice calls didn’t count against my minutes. Boy was I wrong.
Upon further investigation, I found that you could use Google Voice to make unlimited calls if you added your GV number to a carrier plan that allowed you to make unlimited calls to a select few numbers– plans like My Circle, Friends & Family, A-list, and MyFaves. I don’t know about other carriers, but guess what? T-Mobile doesn’t offer MyFaves anymore. So your only option for “unlimited calls” is a more expensive unlimited calling plan. And if you pay for that, then what’s the point of using Google Voice?
Google Voice provides some advantages over calls made the regular way, such as the ability to record calls (with the other party’s knowledge), the ability to send and receive SMS (not MMS) without it counting against your text limits (if you don’t already have an unlimited text plan), the ability to receive voice mails over the Internet and have them transcribed for you (as long as you don’t mind that Google is mining your messages for consumer data about you), and the ability to have both your cell phone and home phone ring when someone calls your Google Voice number. All those features may be worth it to you if you understand that Google mines every word in your phone calls, text messages, and voice mails. But as a way to save money? No, sir, no, ma’am. Google Voice calls are NOT free.
Google Voice is not a VoIP service. If you want that, get Skype. That’s what I might do now that I’ve learned my hundred-and-forty-dollar lesson.
Tags: Android, Costly, Free, Google, Google Voice, Mistake, Skype, SMS, Sucker, T-Mobile, VOIP
Good advice!
Of course, this is coming from someone who only just realized that *69 on the telephone is a fee service. Duh.
Are you really that stupid?
Thanks, Kimberly.
Scott, I’m smart enough to know that I was in very good company thinking that Google Voice calls were free. It is a widely held misconception.
And I don’t appreciate your tone. I don’t write my blog for know-it-alls. I write my blog posts for the many people who actually benefit from them. The last time I had a know-it-all comment on one of my blog posts, my advice turned out to be viewed by almost a thousand people and generated over twenty comments on Flickr (so far). Just as there are many people who don’t know how to write their own hyperlinks, there are many people who think Google Voice calls are free. If you can’t appreciate the sharing of vital information with people who can use it, then you might as well take your smart ass to another blog.
MORON!
The calls ARE free!
BUT your provider charges you as normal minutes DUH!!!! you stupid mother fucker!
IF google voice wasn’t free GOOGLE would bill you!
fucking idiot
wow.. so much hostility. So Is it free or not?
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2355955,00.asp
i think the answer is right there
Yeah, really, the hostility surprises me too. And I’m sorry if I played into it. It’s a lot easier, though, for a person to write five hateful words on someone else’s blog without a link to their name than it is to write a blog post in the first place. If someone wants to write a cogent argument to refute my original argument, I welcome the respectful exchange of ideas. What I won’t tolerate is people’s use of my blog to denigrate what I write without offering anything useful of their own.
Now, on to Ed. I don’t know if you noticed, but the article you linked to is precisely the article I linked to in the word “free” in the first sentence of my post. The reason I linked to it is because the article is, perhaps innocently, deceptive. The PC Mag author says that domestic long-distance calling is free with Google Voice. Well, I can call any number in the U.S. for the same price with my T-Mobile voice plan, but that doesn’t mean it’s “free.” As soon as I go over the allotted minutes in my rate plan, all those minutes are charged the same, no matter whether they are long-distance or local.
And the PC Mag author is just wrong when he lumps Google Voice in with “a number of voice-over-the-Internet and call-back technologies.” As I said in my post, I found out the hard way that Google Voice is not VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol or “voice-over-the-Internet” as the PC Mag author put it). If Google Voice were VoIP, it would work over my WiFi connection at home when I took out my SIM card. It does not. And, if Google Voice carried my calls “over-the-Internet” then T-Mobile would not count Google Voice minutes in my rate plan. It is just plain silly to call Google Voice free in any way. Google Voice calls are no more free than any other call you make on your cell phone.