Google Voice gives users the ability to change numbers
Well it’s not incoming number portability but it’s better than nothing… While the Google Voice team continues to battle through a massive back log of customers itching for their invites, a nifty new feature popped up today for current Google Voice users. Love the service but hate your number? Well now you can change it on the Phones tab under Settings. There is a one-time fee of $10 to change your number but it’s a small price to pay. If you need help picking a new Google Voice number, there’s even a great little number picker tool that lets you type out words and try to snag their corresponding phone numbers. The best part — your old number stays active for 90 days so you don’t have to go crazy hitting all your contacts with your new contact info in a rush. Sweet!
Lame.
I’m from Canada.
How do I play?
One feature I miss from Grand Central and wish Google Voice would add is the ability to set profiles based upon time of day. For instance, I would want my cell phone and work phone to ring between the hours of 8a.m. to 4.pm. (M-F)and my Home phone / cell phone to ring afterwards.
You don’t.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot that as a GrandCentral user I had that ability.
I wonder why they did away with that, it was most useful!
tuh tuh tuh tour
@William
Only available in the US currently.
Drew, i have profiles setup on my GV account so my work cell rings during the day and my personal G1 rings at night.
Edit your phone in GV, Show Advanced Settings and you’ll see Ring Schedule at the bottom.
Just got a invite from them about 1/2 hour ago, cool.
You can do that: go to settings/phones, edit a phone and click on advanced settings
Vincent
For each of your phone numbers you can indeed customize the times of day when the phone rings.
Click Settings, Phones, then select a specific number, edit, Advanced; under Ring Schedule, you can then specify times when you do not want the phone to ring. You can set up multiple blocks of time as well.
how long ago did you sign up keymaker?
Hurry up Google I need this now!
I have two Google accounts. I picked a vanity number for one Google account but would like it placed on my other Google account instead. Is there a way to swap the numbers on each others accounts? I want to keep both numbers but again, just swap the numbers since the vanity name would match the vanity number. I was logged in under the wrong account when I got both invites. Thank you!
Thank you Jeromy for finding that! Those settings are a little buried, it would have taken me a long time to discover that:) Now if only there was a Blackberry App to make quick changes on the fly. I know, I know, all things in due time.
how do you get the invite. i NEED one.
Got my google voice invite tonight….Very cool.
Got a local area code and worked like a charm.
I just switched mine to a number that translates to “NOT-GEEK” and is not only in my area code, but the next town over from where I live. This is great for analog friends who still think they pay a fee to make a long distance call.
There were a lot of good vanity numbers available. I’m embarrassed to admit how long I spent looking for the right one.
Can i go through the change your number que and if I don’t like the numbers that come up just cancel and still have my original number?
I’ve yet to see the grand scheme behing google voice.
Back in the early 90s, all of the telecoms offered this kind of function to the carriers. Nortel, Alcatel, Lucent, they all had a product.
None was a big seller and where there was interest, it was replaced with PBX functionality.
There is nothing that makes this more desirable now, except the higher penetration of mobiles. I wonder what Google sees here.
@MC – your number is left unchanged until you complete the purchase. I scanned through hundreds of numbers and canceled out, then came back a while later to select the one I wanted.
The only thing that thing is good for is to switch out numbers from yours to one of their pool of numbers. It does add the number pool interface though.
I got my invite yesterday. I started setting up my account. But now i have to advertise this new number which is pretty annoying. Hopefully number porting will happen soon.
When i will get invitation for google voice i am trying from last 6 months