Here’s an email I sent to Packet8.Net sales and tech support (drop ‘em a line if you agree).

I’ve written about them before, but I still hate their voice mail system.
Hi,

I’ve been using Packet8 for nearly a year now, and I have to say, I have very few complaints. A few downtimes here and there (mainly the phone doesn’t come back online when it goes down, unless I reset the phone box). Troubling, but expected via the nature of the Internet.

The biggest problem I have is the whole Voicemail system. First off, you can’t just pick up the phone and dial your number to reach voicemail (like you do on cellular phones), Instead we have to dial: “012-0555″

I still haven’t memeorized it. Furthermore, for dialing voice mail away from home, I have to dial: “1-888-898-7887″…why couldn’t have chosen a system that works like cellular, which is what everyone is used to. Simply dial your number, if you’re not calling from your phone number, hit # when you hear the greeting to access Voice mail. Much easier than having to remember 2 funky phone numbers, (3 if you are outside the USA).

Also, the menu and interface for listening to voicemail is bad. I can’t figure out how to delete them, half the time I get a “Hello—” and it’s cut off. Not sure why that is, then I can’t simply hit #7 to delete it, after the message is over it won’t delete it. I have to hit #7 WHILE the message is playing (this doesn’t make sense to me - as you would want to hear the entire message before deleting as well as deleting in the middle).

I also couln’t figure out how to skip the message. If I have 10 message, and the first one is one I want to skip, instead of simply skipping, I have to listen to the entire thing. Other than that, keep up the good work!

By the way, I’m posting this gripe on www.chovy.com in the hopes that somebody at Packet8 will re-act to it, and choose a more user-friendly VMail system.