Google Voice SMS is broken

I don’t have a texting (SMS) plan on my phone . . . it’s $5/month for 200 messages and $20 for unlimited (AT&T) and though it would come in handy sometimes I refuse to pay for something that should be free!  Also I never think to use it because I just use the SMS feature of the Google Chat app from within Gmail.  It’s even more useful now that I have an Android phone and all my contacts from my phone are synced with my contacts in Gmail so I have all my phone numbers right in Gmail and can text when I need to.

Anyway . . .

When the Google Voice app for Android came out I was excited because I could send AND receive text messages from my phone . . . I just had to let people know about my alternate SMS phone number.  That part was easy since I could make phone calls from my cell phone and choose to use Google Voice for that call.  All the app does is call your Google Voice number, press 2 and then the number you want to dial  The effect is that a) the phone call is delayed a few seconds and b) the recipient sees your Google Voice number on caller id.  There are a couple of problems with Google Voice SMS though:

  1. When I send a message from the phone it seems to arrive pretty quickly for the recipient but when someone replies there is a *huge* delay . . . more than 5 minutes most times.
  2. You can’t text to 5 digit numbers (called “Short Code” I guess) from within Google Voice SMS either online or with the app.    I keep getting the error “Error: this message was not successfully delivered.” That sucks because to set up Twitter you need to send a verification to a 5 digit number and I bought Axe deodorant from Target just to get the 300 MS points and I had to text a code to a 5 digit number and it didn’t work.

There are other issues with Google Voice but overall it’s really cool.  I just can’t wait until I can port an old number from Vonage!

Sheldon