I don’t trust cellular carries to deliver all of my calls. I used to, but I don’t any more.
It started when my wife began reporting that I wasn’t answering my calls. Strange. I always answered her calls asap and my phone wasn’t showing any missed calls. I figured it was a temporary glitch and we went on about our lives. But then it happened again and again and again.
I looked at my phone – no missed calls. I looked at her phone – sure enough there was an outgoing call to my phone. Now I was getting concerned. It seemed some calls were never reaching me. I did some research and found that under limited circumstances a missed call might not be recorded in one’s phone log (or on in one’s call logs on the provider’s websites).
I have used Google Voice for years and I thought about making it my main number but I’m kind of disappointed with some of the features (or lack thereof) in Google’s offering. So I’m wondering – do you use a phone service that you trust? I’m particularly looking for the following features:
- Missed calls are always logged, no exceptions.
- Robust call history interface.
- Runs as an app on my smartphone, web.
- Provides transcribed voicemails.
- Records high quality vm greeting messages.
- Allows one to adjust the number of rings before voicemail is triggered.
- Is trustworthy and reliable.
- Does frequent updates but practices best practices to avoid service outages or other failures.
- Ability to make/receive calls.
- Ability to make/receive sms.
It seems part of the problem may be that I was working out of my basement for a while – which has very low cell signal. Yes, I had Wi-Fi and my phone was enabled for Wireless Calling but I suspect this may have been part of the problem…it certainly didn’t help with the missed calls.
I hypothesize the issue is something like this:
Caller –> Cellular Provider –> Attempt Cellular Connection –> Fails, Attempt Wi-Fi Connection –> Fails –> Phone Call Terminates –> No call in phone log.
Whereas the normal stream of events might be something like:
Caller –> Cellular Provider –> Attempt Cellular Connection –> Fails, Send to Voicemail –> Phone Call Terminations –> Call in phone log.
The way I think it should work looks something like:
Caller –> Cellular Provider –> Add Call to Call Log –> Called (/Voicemail/Wi-Fi/Failed).
Thoughts? Suggestions?
A few promising options I’m considering (but need to dig deeper on): dialpad, mightycall, grasshopper
I checked out Guru99’s top recommendations, a few of their options had some interesting features I’d like but aren’t critical.
- Send faxes (receive them would be cool too) – Grasshopper, Dingtone, Ooma
It would be great if there was also an option to have folks select 0 for regular and 1 for urgent phone calls…this could be achieved using an automated attendant.