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Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

charge.co

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Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#141

Post by natch »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #49
ajkjk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your reaction is relatively rare these days. More and more I see lots of people in tech and gaming communities embracing the words 'nerd' and 'geek' as a way of describing their social subgroup. For example, 'geeky' has come to be desirable in lots of fashion (just google 'geeky guy' and it's all about how desirable they are! okay, maybe those search results are tailored to me?), and it's a thing people would…

Yeah I've noticed that. I guess I'm more comfortable with "geek" instead of "nerd". "geek" just feels a bit nicer for some reason. Haha you can also kind of see a difference if you compare Google Images results for "geeky guy" vs. "nerdy guy". At least in my results, "nerdy" fares quite a lot worse. Bottom line, I don't appreciate it when "business guys" call us the "nerds" they get to build their startups. And I als…

See the nerd/geek/dweeb/dork Venn diagram (Google, or elsewhere on this thread) to understand why geek feels nicer.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#143

Post by corin_ »

rsync wrote: post #34
joshbaptiste wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get rid of VM notifications, I recorded 2 minute+ of silence as my VM greeting, zero VMs after that.

Ok, that's sort of workable ... EDIT: ok, actually not so much - if you are out of coverage area and your phone rings zero times and goes right to voicemail (that's how it works with carriers in the US) then the caller calls you and goes right to silence, and presumably they retry 1-2-3x and get frustrated ... not even sure this is the right number, etc. Whereas if the phone just rang and rang and rang, at least it w…

Record two minutes of ringing, so that depending on the type you record and the phone of the caller they either think it's ringing normally or two minutes, or think it changed to a different sort of ringing and assume it's some weird technical thing.

Related anecdote, I have a friend who lives in NYC who told me he recorded his voicemail to start with the beep (or beeps?) that sound like a network confirmation of a call hang up, and then his "Please leave me a message" message a couple of seconds later, so that automated dialers would be fooled into thinking the call was dead, and hang up rather than leave a message. I'm not familiar with American phone systems and am not sure if this is a story from the past (he's certainly been hacking systems for longer than I've been alive) or if it's still useful to this day (I'll pay attention if I ever call and get his voicemail, but we don't speak often).

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#144

Post by asuffield »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #47
stanleydrew wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charge CEO here. We can definitely disable voicemail for you. I actually have it disabled myself. Just send us an email to get it removed. We should probably just add a checkbox for it in the management UI though now that I think about it.

And this is how you run a company, everyone please take note. User feedback is actually seriously considered and responded to in an acceptable manner.

It's how you run a company that has a high-margin (aka "premium", "expensive") product with a small userbase.

This is your expected outcome when you are wealthy.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#145

Post by corin_ »

jacalata wrote: post #132
post_break wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend has a passive aggressive voice mail message like this. So every time I get his voice mail I leave a long message which I know he has to listen to.

Did you know you can delete voicemails without listening to them?

I honestly can't believe how much I've written in this comment about such an insignificant annoyance from a few years. Consider it self-therapy that I accidentally left on HN.

I previously had a phone on Vodafone in the UK, and infuriatingly their voicemail system would not allow you to delete a message until you had listened to it for either 3 or 5 seconds, I can't remember.

Most of my messages were either spam calls I knew would have left a voicemail from when I rejected them, or my dad who has finally learned that I'm just as likely to call him back from seeing him in my missed calls list and therefore he no longer needs to leave a "Hey, it's me calling, feel free to call back or not" every single time. (It took several years of begging him to not leave a message unless he either a.) had a piece of information he wanted to give me in that message or b.) there was a time sensitivity beyond normal conversation.)

So for each message you wanted to delete, you had to listen to the robotic voice say "Caller, oh, eight, hundred, [pause], seven, etc etc etc, called, today, at, twelve, fifty, seven, PM, [pause]" then the message would start, you wait what you think is the right amount of time before pressing 3 to delete, and if you get it a fraction of a second too early, not only does it not delete it, but it tells you (in those slow, monotic, robot, words) "I'm sorry, but you cannot delete this message until you have listened to at least three seconds." AND THEN IT WOULD START AGAIN FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO WHAT FUCKING NUMBER HAD CALLED AT WHAT TIME.

Man, that's like therapy, writing that out. My mobile number was quite publicly available, included in press releases that were googleble, etc. so I got a fair few spammy voicemails. Thankfully, eventually either I discovered or their system added, the ability (bug) that if you press 3 (the delete button) almost immediately after the end of the robotic words "message deleted", you could time it so the system knew you had already deleted the last message, but hadn't reset the clock for how long you had to listen to the next message for, so once you knew the rhythm you could delete them in about 5 seconds each without being stuck listening.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#146

Post by dewiz »

rsync wrote: post #11

Can I have no voicemail ? That's a feature I really want and it's not easy to do. If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will not just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that "the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time" ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don't pay your phonebill or som…

There are free ways to disable voicemail, e.g. on Android see No More VoiceMail app or http://m.wikihow.com/Disable-Voicemail-on-Android

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#147

Post by ikeboy »

niij wrote: post #108
ikeboy wrote: post #48

I'm paying no monthly fees on Ringplus for a decent plan (3500 min/sms/mb). It's not so simple to get, they have "flash promos" with good plans, but if you sign up for promo emails at https://promos.ringplus.net/ you should be able to catch them (one's going on today and tomorrow). The only catches are a weirdly structured sign up fee (minimum top up for most plans, and now they have member+ only plans, which costs $…

How is this even possible? Their site seems so sketchy.

They do charge random startup fees, and they have ads on every call you place, but only before it's picked up.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#149

Post by mpclark »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #90
burfog wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the 1980s I was taught that callers should always count to 10 rings before giving up. It is rude to give up earlier because you may have interrupted somebody. The phone starts ringing, so they start to put away what they are doing and then go to the phone. By the time they get there, you might have hung up if you don't wait for 10 rings. When getting a call, normally you'd try to get to the phone unless you c…

Great post. Makes since. Makes me remember something I read that came decades earlier. It was a write-up about how the telephones were one of the worst things that happened in the home and the office. The reason is they create a sense of urgency forcing you to answer immediately for something that may not be important. They also put the caller in control of your time a bit. So, outside fun or profitable stuff, they'r…

Yup, I learned in retail during that time that you always deal with the customer in front of you before you answer the phone, too. Serving the person actually in your store is more important than serving the one sitting at home.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#150

Post by cornedor »

post_break wrote: post #97

Nerds use data, and this pricing structure basically punishes them for it. I have unlimited data and 7gb tethering with T-Mobile and unless they do something stupid or close their doors I will just keep throwing money at them. I managed to snag it at $50 a month too.

I'm lucky to have a unlimited plan for €12 a month. The only downside is that it is just 3G, but in comparison to other plans totally fine. The counter where I can see how much data I used is completly broken on the site since they stopped selling it in 2011.
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