The importer will grab online contact info from Gmail and Yahoo, or offline contacts from
Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Palm Desktop, LinkedIn, Plaxo, or anybody else than can export into the CSV format of one of those. Also note that YouMail can pull contacts from Plaxo which syncs with just about EVERYBODY, making the list of sources rather complete.

Congrats to the YouMail team for making this happen, I’m really looking forward to tighter integration of my communication habits with YouMail now that this critical feature has been released. Thanks!

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.

“We love our customers, we don’t hate them.”
-Ken Brickley, VP Online Marketing

I had a pleasant chat over the phone with Ken Brickley this afternoon regarding my post this morning, who was calling to clarify the situation regarding importing contacts into YouMail. Apparently this is one of their most requested additions, and they’ve been working on it for some time now. Unfortunately, they ran into a database architecture problem and had to rework parts of the back-end before starting on implementing the feature itself. Ken estimated that the first beta would be available in approximately a month, and offered to let me test it. Of course I said yes! For me personally this is going to be the feature that really makes YouMail work.

All in all I was impressed by YouMail’s rapid response to my post, and frankly feel satisfied as long as they’re working on it. If I don’t get a beta invitation in a month I’ll only be mildly dissapointed, it was my earlier misconception that they weren’t working on it at all that got me riled up.

For anyone that hasn’t given YouMail a look yet I HIGHLY recommend it. They’ve got a very functional, friendly, well put together application that I would recommend to any of my friends and family. From the reading and trials I’ve done thus far they also seem to be leading the pack in value-added voicemail, and are constantly adding useful new features. (Useful as soon as my contacts are imported at least. ) Impressively, they’re even offering speech-to-text transcription with their accounts which are free, a service I see elsewhere costing $30/month.

I’d just like to say keep up the good work to Ken and the rest of the YouMail team, and I can’t wait for the release of contact importing!

Contacting the company directly in a polite manner just got me blown off. I’ve even given them the better part of a year to resolve the issue. After receiving yet another new email from them touting the amazing new features they’ve added I’ve grown more than a little frustrated and have decided to take my grievances public. Hence the following open letter to YouMail…

YouMail,

With every new feature you release I get more and more frustrated. They are ALL a waste of time until I can import my contacts! I am NOT going to sit and re-enter hundreds of names and numbers! The new social-networking style features you’ve added? USELESS without contact importing!!!! Smart greetings? USELESS!!!! Personalized greetings? USELESS!!!!! I’m sure there’s plenty of others features you’ve wasted time developing, those are just examples of what I’ve tried to use but cannot because you don’t have contact importing. I’ve contacted you about this issue in the past, a basic resolution would be VERY easy to implement, yet you choose to completely ignore your customers and their real-world needs. Wake up! YouMail needs contact importing!!! Stop wasting time on these other features until you’ve got the necessary core functionality working!!!

Sincerely,

FRUSTRATED YouMail Customer

The resolution is simple! I would make do if it even let me import a CSV file. Or they could just partner with Plaxo which already does the heavy work of syncing with everything. In short, there’s lots of easy solutions rather than requiring me to waste my day doing mindless repetitive manual data transfer from one computer to another.

In fairness, I wouldn’t be so upset if I didn’t see such potential for YouMail and what they’re doing. Although my contact list is empty I still use the service and consider it a huge improvement over regular voicemail. I REALLY want to use YouMail to its fullest potential, and I want to love using it, but so far they’re making it impossible. YouMail, please listen to your customers and do this little thing to make your service so much better!