AT&T Office@Hand vs. Google Voice

I wish I had read the reviews before purchasing. AT&T is simply the worst company I have ever dealt with for any service. Ever. I have spent hours on hold trying to explain that my newly purchased AT&T phones from Yealink do not work. "Searching for base". That is all I get. After several attempts to figure out what is going on or why or how to fix I am still without working office phones. I finally got thru to someone that informed me that my phones were removed from my account. I offered the order number to prove I did in fact purchase the phone's from AT&T but they could not use this information. It is unsettling how this could happen and I cannot fix it. I have been deleted. I know I am not alone in my frustration. I will now begin working on removing AT&T from my life. Including the shotting Fiber Optic line at home and at work

[Google Voice is] great if you have a workforce that needs to make calls for business purposes from their personal mobile device, while keeping their personal phone number private. If you have a large company with its own telecom system, it probably won't be necessary if employees already have their own landlines or separate work phones.

Incentivized

• [I think] they do nothing well.
• They do not respond timely, and they fix very few issues.
• I had to go out and hire an IT person just so he could do their job for them.
• They could not even port our numbers correctly.
• They lost two of my numbers.
• I have lost thousands of dollars in business because of them.

• Google Voice has been great for setting up additional phone lines and numbers.
• The voicemail inbox is a great feature and you can see when messages come in online and listen to the messages from your computer.
• Google Voice allows us to have multiple phone numbers and lines for specific business purposes.

Incentivized

• Terrible customer service
• Many advanced features that most now want are not developed yet
• No Voicemail to text or even as an attachment to emails so getting voicemail remotely is horrible/difficult

• It can be tricky to configure exactly how you want it. If you are particular about which voicemail greeting goes to which number, and how it appears when it rings through to the phone - it can take a good amount of work to set it up properly.

Incentivized

It's user friendly, how to use it is self explanatory, they support all their own options while someone like Phone Booth uses a third party. I can cancel Google Voice anytime and I choose how much I spend with Google Voice

Simply the worst customer service I have ever experienced. It took me over 72 minutes to write this review. That is how long I have been on hold unsuccessfully. I cannot imagine that anyone in charge of AT&T would care that I will gladly take my business elsewhere but if you do... someone in the system has my contact information. I won't hold my breath.

I haven't had problems with dropped calls, bad reception, lost recordings - everything works the way it should. The iOS app is easy to use, and the process is easy to explain to other people. It's also the cheapest way I've found to call internationally - I've used it to interview people from London and Austraila.

Incentivized

They do not offer support unless you have the Business account for Google Voice under G Suite. This is tough, because Google doesn't really have a customer support team for this service, so when it gets shut down for a few hours, we have no choice but to wait it out. But this doesn't happen that often, which is great.

Incentivized

It is a pretty seamless program to transfer to, even for people who either have little experience with these programs or people who were stuck on Skype

Incentivized

Selected AT&T due to name recognition. Some other vendors had much superior systems but CEO demanded name recognition. Lesson learned that name does mean better service.

Google Voice at the peak of its adoption did serve as a very real and effective solution. However bugs persisted, and innovation lacked, and support for the product soon declined. However, there are several other solutions provided that focus on making one product as best as it could be. Google made it clear to me as a customer, that this was a backup for a backup. When you look at the simplicity on its own, it appears to be fantastic, however as you dive deeper, and experience its lack of smooth edges, you find that it's been built by engineers who were given a scope, rather than solving for a use case and listening to customer feedback. Many of the other solutions available on the market, see this opportunity. This is why voice communication is a growing SaaS vertical, albeit competitive. Understanding the customer here is key, and Google understands what drives value to the larger organization. As a business owner, I understand, that when a business has to allocate resources, another department, or service suffers. Unfortunately this product feels to be the one that has met that fate

Incentivized

• I wish I had never switched from my local VOIP phone provider
• Office at Hand is a mistake I wish I'd never made

• Google Voice has saved us a lot of time in regards to overall productivity.
• Google Voice allows us to operate at a greater scale than without it.
• Google voice allows us to track which advertisements are working best.
• Google Voice allows us to spend less time listening to voicemails.

Incentivized