OK, so GrandCentral under Google is now 0 for 2. First they turned off the custom MP3 feature, and now they're dropping "a very small number" of the phone numbers that have already been issued:
Hmm. Wasn't the whole point to quit giving out your home/work/mobile numbers, and instead steer everyone to this cool new GrandCentral number "that you can keep for life"?
I like GrandCentral -- it's a cool service with lots of potential. And I've yet to start relying on it as my primary contact number, so this change isn't a huge inconvenience for me. But it is annoying, and a good reminder that beta services are often just that.
18 August 2007 - 12:12am
Isn't that interesting that in these days everything seems to be in permanent "beta", using this explain service outages, feature removal, etc?
Great customer services everywhere...
18 August 2007 - 11:10pm
Thanks for the post. I've responded to it on a blog over at ZDNet:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=353
Michael Krigsman
http://projectfailures.com
19 August 2007 - 11:53am
Seems to be a problem with some 703 numbers, I guess. I got the same email (my blog post about it is the URL on this comment).
I was also not happy that the only way they notified me was through the email. They really should have left me a voicemail and/or popped something up on my account page. If my spam filter ate the email, I'd never know that I had a week to make the change.
FWIW, Vincent offered to cover the expense of redoing my business cards. I'm going to take him up on it. I think Google can afford it.
20 August 2007 - 3:28am
Troy,
I know that no excuse will change the issue, but this is due to one of our underlying carriers and is unrelated to the Google acquisition. We have provided the few affected users with an alternate number in the same area code and are working with them to ease the transition as much as possible.
Vincent Paquet
20 August 2007 - 3:02pm
Vincent:
Thanks for taking the time to respond -- I think that says something about GrandCentral's commitment to taking care of its users.
And that's a fair point about this not being Google's "fault" per se; that wasn't something I meant to suggest. I do assume, on the other hand, that discontinuing the custom MP3 ringtone feature was a (not unreasonable) Google-legal decision. If that wasn't the case, I'd be curious to know the actual reasons.
As for the number-swap, my main point was the last line: a "reminder that beta services are often just that" -- especially when a web venture has to work directly with something as convoluted as the U.S. telecom oligopoly. (Just ask Vonage...)
It's an unfortunate Catch-22 that GrandCentral and others have to wrestle with. For the most part, I'm rooting for you guys -- but it'll still be a while before my new GC number is the one I hand out by default.
20 August 2007 - 11:44am
So am I to assume that if I did not receive a notification, my number will remain the same...for now...?
21 August 2007 - 1:53pm
Check out “Phone Number Bank.”
http://www.phonenumberbank.com
They let you port them a number to them that they will house (or “bank” if you will), allowing you to REALLY hold on to you number for as long as you want. They ported my number quickly and the service works great.
20 December 2007 - 4:50pm
It's good to know some services are reliable. I'm still waiting for my plumbing services company to find the time to resolve my problems.
1 May 2008 - 12:23pm
Couldn't they test their service fully before signing people up. This is very upsetting I can tell you from experience.
9 May 2008 - 9:03am
What is FBI? (something tells me it's a dumb question:D)
Post new comment