After having a Grand Central account for a long time that I never really used, which has now become Google Voice, I’ve finally found it to be some what useful.
Thanks to my brother tipping me off to this trick, I’ve got a faster voice mail service that can email the messages to me, transcribe them to text, text message them to me, etc.
You can also create groups and setup each group of contacts to reach a different voice mail greeting.
To do this yourself, all you have to do is:
- Create a Google Voice account for yourself and select a phone number.
- Go to your Google Voice account and open Settings -> Phones and uncheck any phones listed.
- Go to Settings -> General and under Notifications you can set it to email you or text the message to yourself.
- Dial *71 + 10 digit Google Voice number
Basically, what this does is forward the caller to your Google Voice number if you fail to answer the call. From that point Google Voice just intercepts the call with the Voice Mail greeting message.
If you ever want to undo this little trick, all you have to do is dial *710 on your mobile device and your original voice mail service will be restored (since the phone no longer forwards to the Google Voice number).
These numbers (*71 and *710) are as far as I know generic, however, if they don’t seem to work for your phone service, just do a quick google search for “busy number call forwarding” + your service provider.
Good luck and enjoy! 
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thank you for this post, I have tmobile so hopefully this will help me out.
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Wow! What a site. You have a real knack for making a blog readable and easy on the eyes. Some sites look like train wrecks, but not this site – it’s a pleasure to read. I find VoIP very interesting. I have learned a lot in implementing a small VoIP network at home, and am thinking of starting VoIP business in my area. There are a number of small businesses in my region that would benefit from it greatly.