Last week while listening to TWIT, Jason Calacanis (of Mahalo.com) mentioned a really interesting service which I think everyone should use.

I sincerely HATE voicemail. The reason is that it takes longer time to dial and listen to it than to read the same text in an email. Visual VoiceMail on my iPhone helped out a bit - but again, I have to open up a VoiceMail app, click on the thing, and still - listen (sometimes for longer than I’d like). Then you do not hear the number so you replay the damn thing over and over.

The Solution: PHONETAG.COM… I kid you not, this is one of the best services I ever used. I do not mind paying for things that make my life fun again. Here’s the winning scenario:

It comes down to price in the end. If you receive a bunch of voicemail I think even $29.95/month is worth it (for the unlimited plan).

  • You get a phone call which goes to a voice mail.
  • 20 seconds later your voicemail comes via email (or via SMS) transcribed into text - together with an MP3 file attached (in case you want to save it or listen to it).

For $9.99 you get 40 transcribed messages a month.

If all that is still too much, for $.35 cents a message (up to 40 messages a month) you can get the service on pay-per-message basis. This plan is working for me at the moment very well.

There’s a free trial too. If you hate voicemail as much as I do - you will thank me in less than a week for writing this post! Everyone reads text faster than listening to voicemail. 

Hope you have fun (and save some time and money).