American Voicemail prompts - Can we change them?

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Sep 13, 2006 Posts: 3

I received this email from Vonage regarding the American voice prompts:

Thank you for contacting Customer Care.

We understand that you want us to change the American Voicemail
greeting.

We would like to inform you that we are an United States based
Company, hence the greeting was in American style, but we will surely
consider your points so that in future will change them.

We hope this has answered your enquiry. If you have any further
questions please visit our website at www.vonage.co.uk where you will
find answers to most customer enquiries.

Customer Care
Vonage UK
The Broadband Phone Company
www.vonage.co.uk

Posts: 71 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jul 19, 2005 Posts: 71

So were FreeTalk and they had UK voice prompts for UK customers.

I think what that really means is we cannot be arsed to put any investment into the service for UK customers?

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: May 22, 2006 Posts: 4

do you really expect any product development from a company that can't make any money? Vonage was a nice idea but if it doesn't get bought by a services provider and bundled with internet, tv and mobile, it's doomed.

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Sep 05, 2006 Posts: 7

hi there
I got round the problem with voicemail, by recording my own telling the person ringing me to just record a message and replace the handset! Then you dont get the Vonage message saying to hit the pound key, works like a dream for retreiving voicemail over the phone and as a attatchment, hope this helps! By the way, spoke to someone at Vonage today re billing and mentioned about uk customers and the pound key, he said that this as been brought up at one of the meetings they have!

Cheers, Bob

Posts: 37 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Jun 19, 2006 Posts: 37

bobgarb wrote:

I got round the problem with voicemail, by recording my own telling the person ringing me to just record a message and replace the handset! Then you dont get the Vonage message saying to hit the pound key

Bob,

How does that work. As soon as your message is finished playing to the caller they get the American woman saying to record after the tone and hit the pound key; how do you stop that?

Dave

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Sep 05, 2006 Posts: 7

you setup a message saying " Sorry we are not able to take your call, but if you leave us your name and number, followed by the message and then HANG UP! we will get back to you, " You cant stop the messaage that Vonage send out re the pound key, but by getting the caller to hang up they never hear it, the message still gets saved ok!

Hope this helps, bob

Posts: 19 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 31, 2007 Posts: 19

Nothing happened so far. Still says 'pound' as far as I know Sad

Posts: 1327 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Nov 08, 2006 Posts: 1327

The recording says press the pound key/hash key. According to wiki this is what it says.

# hash / hash mark / hash sign

* the most common name outside the U.S., including in the Ireland, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
* Used in Ireland, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand on touch-tone telephones – "Please press the hash key"
* In the UK and Australia the symbol is often used as medical shorthand for 'fracture' [1][2]
* Used among computer professionals. For example, in Unix scripting, it's used in combination with an exclamation mark to produce a "#!" or "hash-bang," used to tell the kernel which program to use to run the script.

Maybe when this thread had started the has key wasn't part of it. I never press the pound, hash, number sign # key, I also hang up after the message. If you do press the #key it gives the option of listening to your message, rerecord the message or mark it as priority, not sure what the priority really does.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 16, 2007 Posts: 3

Remember folks, America is the country that re-filmed The Italian Job and Fever Pitch, and make their own versions of just about every good British comedy (such as The Office). Do you see us making our own copy of The Simpsons? I grew up watching Miami Vice, Cagney & Lacey, etc. No, we watch it all, learning about the cultural differences.

Americans know no cultural differences. They have 50 states all the bloody same, with franchised fast food chains at every motorway *cough* highway exit.

Someone said 99% of people in the UK don't know what the pound key is. If spoken in the American voice which offers some context to the word, I would think that to be closer to 95%. I can guarantee though that 100% of Americans would have no clue what "hash" is. Unless it's brown.

Change this, Vonage, and change it quickly. From a US-based British expat.

Trousers, petrol, trainers!