Google Voice

I'm not quite sure where to begin, but I guess this story starts back in October when we were preparing to move to England and trying to find renters for our house...

When we started listing our home online we realized we didn't want to give our personal cellphone numbers out for everyone in the world to see. So we set up a Google Voice account. With this account we were able to create a new phone number which we could have routed to ring on our personal cellphones. When our phones would ring it would indicate if it was a regular call or a Google Voice call. It was very neat and extremely handy.

Well, when we moved to England our cellphones stopped working. It was really important to us to have a working phone because of course we wanted to talk to our families, but also, we needed a way for our new renters to contact us in the case of an emergency.

So we purchased a Skype phone. The Skype phone allows us to make and receive unlimited calls to and from the US for a small annual fee. We needed a phone number for our Skype phone so we rerouted our Google Voice number from our now worthless cellphones to our new Skype phone.

The phone itself does not have an answering machine. It will indicate that we missed a call and it may or may not list who the call was from. If we log into our Skype account we can listen to messages. We also receive email notifications from Google Voice with a typed out script of the message.

I love receiving the Google Voice emails. First of all, it let's us know we have a message so that we can log into Skype and listen to the audio version. But the main reason I LOVE Google Voice emails is because the scripts are not even remotely close to what the caller said. Here is what I mean...:

Google Voice:
Hey, I'm our family property and I was just calling to say hey check in with you guys the house intentions. That's Grandpa's going hands...

Real Translations:
Hey Lamar family, it's Aubrey and I was just calling to say hey, check in with you guys, see how adventures with Grandpa are going...


Here is one from me to Adam...


Google Voice:
Hey honey, I wasn't thinking about you. I want to call you forgot to you later. Please give me a call whenever you if it doesn't say goodbye, love you bye just. 


Real Translation:
Hey Honey, I was just thinking about ya and I wanted to call you before it got to late. Just give me a call whenever you get this and its a good time. Love you, bye.


Final one...


Google Voice:
Hey, if you need, just calling to chat for almost the airport where 85 minutes away, molesting hectic go potty. So we pulled over. I guess I'll talk to you later. Love you bye. 

Real Translation:
Hey Sweetie, um, I was just calling to chat. We're almost to the airport, we're maybe 5 minutes away but Weston had to go potty so we pulled over. But I guess I'll talk to you later, love you, bye. 

So I guess the moral of this story is that you should call us, and if we don't answer, definitely leave a message.