Speech to text on phone messages

The newest Samsung phones reportedly have a “speech-to-text” feature supported by AI. I think older models can have it, too.

I looked at that, but very few of my callers actually leave a message. They just hang up and try again later. I’d subscribe to the phone company’s agent-assisted calls, but it sounds so cumbersome – caller talks to agent, who transcribes to my computer, but the computer sits in another room and isn’t always turned on, so how does the agent let me know somebody is talking to them and to get up and go to the computer and turn it on and find the email section, etc etc. I don’t use a smart phone and can’t afford to buy one or pay for an account for it, so people can’t text me. And the agent-assisted service is also financially out of range, considering how little use I’d get of it. Too many of my calls are automated messages, which would ignore any instructions explaining that the person they’re trying to reach is hearing-impaired and to dial whatever the number is, 711 I think?, first and an agent will take down their calls and relay it to me. I’ve tried to explain the problem to the phone company’s customer service when I inquire about it, but they seem to be baffled by someone who, amazingly, doesn’t own a cell phone that is carried everywhere and is perpetually turned on and that does text messaging. It really all boils down to money that I don’t have and can’t get from any source. My pension, my sole source of income, covers the rent and utility bills and groceries each month (fortunately I don’t eat much) with $11 left over until the next pension arrives.

A viable solution for anyone with access to the internet is google voice.

You get a free g-voice #, and call forward busy/no answer calls from your main # using a landline, voip, or cell phone, and mr. google will send you an email with the transcrbed message, and play it back for you! If you have a cellphone you’ll get a notification as well

And did I mention It’s FREE!!

I investigated that after reading your post, but it seems it’s only in the US, or at least, it gives you an American phone number to receive the calls forwarded. I’m in Canada, with only a landline, and can’t afford to buy a cell phone as well or in place of the landline. It’s a pity, as it sounded like a good idea for someone like me who can’t clearly hear messages left on my phone.

A habit that's helped me: when someone leaves a voicemail I can't quite make out, I save the audio and run it through a free speech-to-text tool in my browser to get a readable transcript. Accuracy is noticeably better when the recording is played back clearly, so I keep background noise down and replay the unclear parts. I always read through and tidy up the transcript afterwards, since names and numbers are the bits that usually come out wrong. The one I use for this is [Speech to Text](https://speech-to-text.co/2), which works in the browser with nothing to install.