Leaving voice mail without their phone ringing
August 4, 2016 4:23 PM Subscribe
I want to be able to "call" people without their phone ringing, instead going straight to their voice mail. I'm aware of slydial. But I can't use it. Details abound.
I have to call people. It's a given in my business. However, anxiety makes this nigh on impossible. A mentor suggested sending my calls straight to their voice mail box instead. This sounds like a wonderful idea! Mentor uses slydial to make this happen. Awesome, I'll look into it! This is where complications occur.
I have a cell phone. I don't use it much because it has limited minutes, and to buy more minutes goes beyond my currently limited budget. (It's an Obamaphone, 350 minutes and unlimited texts for $0. To add 30 minutes, it's $10.90. More minutes become cheaper per minute, but funds for lump out of pocket expenditures are often quite limited.) If I use slydial on this phone, I use minutes, then use more minutes when folks call back, since this phone's number would be the one showing up.
For most of my phone communications, I use my Google Voice number on either my tablet or my desktop. On the desktop, I go to gmail.com and make and receive calls from there. On my tablet, it's all through the Hangouts app. No limits on minutes or texts. I can not use slydial with Google Voice. I asked. But this is the number I want to use, this is the number I want business-types calling, this is the number I want showing up everywhere.
I've Googled til my eyes are falling out of my head, with no luck. So I turn to you all. How can I use Google Voice / Hangouts but send calls straight to people's voice mail?
I have to call people. It's a given in my business. However, anxiety makes this nigh on impossible. A mentor suggested sending my calls straight to their voice mail box instead. This sounds like a wonderful idea! Mentor uses slydial to make this happen. Awesome, I'll look into it! This is where complications occur.
I have a cell phone. I don't use it much because it has limited minutes, and to buy more minutes goes beyond my currently limited budget. (It's an Obamaphone, 350 minutes and unlimited texts for $0. To add 30 minutes, it's $10.90. More minutes become cheaper per minute, but funds for lump out of pocket expenditures are often quite limited.) If I use slydial on this phone, I use minutes, then use more minutes when folks call back, since this phone's number would be the one showing up.
For most of my phone communications, I use my Google Voice number on either my tablet or my desktop. On the desktop, I go to gmail.com and make and receive calls from there. On my tablet, it's all through the Hangouts app. No limits on minutes or texts. I can not use slydial with Google Voice. I asked. But this is the number I want to use, this is the number I want business-types calling, this is the number I want showing up everywhere.
I've Googled til my eyes are falling out of my head, with no luck. So I turn to you all. How can I use Google Voice / Hangouts but send calls straight to people's voice mail?
Response by poster: Sure, my business should be paying for business related calls. However, it's not profitable enough at the moment to do so. (There's a blizzard's worth of snowflakes going on here. I'm trying to keep things simple enough so you're not reading a novel here.)
posted by The Almighty Mommy Goddess at 4:50 PM on August 4, 2016
posted by The Almighty Mommy Goddess at 4:50 PM on August 4, 2016
Any chance you could just make the calls to these businesses in the evening when nobody's there to pick up?
posted by rockindata at 6:06 PM on August 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by rockindata at 6:06 PM on August 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
It looks like SlyDial works not just as a mobile app, but as a number you can dial. Try calling 267-759-3425 from google voice and see if that does what you want. (I dialed it and confirmed the number is still good, but didn't try leaving a sneaky voicemail.)
posted by instamatic at 6:06 PM on August 4, 2016
posted by instamatic at 6:06 PM on August 4, 2016
I'm not sure if this practical for you, but when your call gets forwarded to voicemail (skipping some boring-ass technicalities) it goes to an actual phone number. You can call that number if you know who your contact has their phone service with and get what we call the "open tree". That usually gets you a menu that you can punch the contact's number into and get straight to their mailbox.
It'd be a pain, and might not work with every provider, but being somewhat familiar with the joys of anxiety, it might be worth it. Good luck.
posted by Kreiger at 1:02 PM on August 5, 2016
It'd be a pain, and might not work with every provider, but being somewhat familiar with the joys of anxiety, it might be worth it. Good luck.
posted by Kreiger at 1:02 PM on August 5, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 4:47 PM on August 4, 2016 [1 favorite]