Skype Compatibility with YouMail
My Skype subscription needed to be renewed today, which made me wonder if I could use YouMail for voicemail. After browsing the support information on the YouMail site and not finding the information I was looking for, I sent a short note to tech support asking if Skype was compatible. Here’s the reply I received…
Dear Drew,
The way that the YouMail service works is by having you set up a special type of call forwarding called “conditional” forwarding. This means that your calls are only forwarded under certain conditions; when you do not answer or the line is busy. In order to use YouMail you do not need to have a phone with an existing voicemail capability, you only need a line with conditional forwarding capabilities. As long as you can forward your unanswered calls, you can send them to YouMail.
This said, some users have had difficulty with using our service with VOIP’s. The reason for this is that not all VOIP’s provide certain information which we need to identify your account. The information that we need to identify the account is called the OCN, or “originally called number”. You can find out if your VOIP is compatible to the YouMail service by adding the number to your account (or creating one) and setting up call forwarding to (714)204-3114. If you hear a voice prompt that asks for your ten digit phone number, or (if you are calling from a YouMail phone) you are just logged into your YouMail account, this means that we did not receive the OCN and that number will not be compatible with our service. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, however, the policies of the VOIP’s are beyond our control. If you have any further questions, please feel free to call tech support at (800)374-0013 Mon-Fri 9am-5pm PST. Thanks!
Best regards,
Alexandra DellaVecchia
YouMail Tech Support
Unfortunately, my experiment this evening failed. Using an unrelated phone, I called my Skype number and was eventually forwarded to YouMail, only to be asked to enter a ten digit phone number. As explained above, this indicates Skype isn’t relaying the OCN.
As a last resort, I can forward Skype calls I don’t pick up after a certain period to my regular cell, which after ringing and not getting answered forwards the call to YouMail. When I tested this the first couple seconds of my voicemail message was truncated, but at least a caller will eventually end up at YouMail.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
John F. February 8th, 2009 at 4:27 am
Same problem led me here, too. In my case, it’s a VoIP service called Net2phone rather than Skype.
I came to the same conclusion (and the same workaround).