Steve has a good writeup on GrandCentral. I’ve been testing this too, and generally like it. However I’ve run into a problem that’s probably going to cause me to stop using the service (until I get an option to work around the issue).
When someone calls your GrandCentral number, it rings your other phones for about 30 seconds. GrandCentral starts the 30 second timer when it sends out the calls, not when your phones start ringing. Too often, my cell phone rings only once and when I answer the call has already been sent to GrandCentral voicemail1.
This isn’t really GrandCentral’s problem per se. I’m sure most of you have experienced this – it can take 10-20 seconds for the ringing to start when you call someone’s cell phone. It’s a problem of the call taking too long to be routed through your carrier’s network. However since GrandCentral doesn’t account for this problem on the cell carrier side, the end result is that I’m not going to use their service.
I hope that GrandCentral will introduce an option to set how long to ring phones before sending calls to voice mail. If they do that, then I’ll consider making it my primary number.
- Especially when I was driving through Nebraska on I-80. [back]