Sounds great, right? You can scan an e-mail quickly, whereas a voicemail can take a few minutes to listen to. With voicemail, you also need to write down any important phone numbers.

Sometimes, it works great, and sometimes it’s awful. For example, here’s how they transcribed a very clear voicemail message:

“Hi. This my sent it. Why iraq at some my name is when i send i’m i’m i’m not a lot of times. I’m calling to come from our point of for tomorrow morning at 8 am fair enough 3 fifty. You have any questions or like changing things he’s gonna so call back at 61739311 a there was. You know. Thank you.”

Notice the phone number is incomplete and it doesn’t tell you who it’s from. Really, it tells you nothing. Here’s the original voicemail message (typed by me):

“Hi, this message is for Erica (lastname). My name is Vanessa and I’m calling from Lexus of Watertown. I’m calling to confirm your appointment tomorrow morning for 8am for your ES350. If you have any questions or would like to change anything, please call us back at (ten-digit phone number). Thank you.” 

In this case, the visual voicemail was useless. About half the time, however, they type it up perfectly. My theory is that sometimes a human being types it, and sometimes you get voice recognition software. Clearly I got voice recognition software for this message. Don’t bother with the software, Vonage. It doesn’t work.