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Sprint Captel 800i

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How many people are using this and are they happy with it. How long a delay are you experiencing between words that are spoken and the closed captioning appearing on the screen?

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I use it occassionaly. The delay is usually about two or three seconds. If I am talking with someone who knows me, then they realize I’ll be a bit slow because I have to wait till the captions come up. The captions are fairly accurate for normal conversations.

However, I tried using it last month when talking with an IT professional and we were talking IT jargon. Captel had no clue what we were talking about and the “translation” was practically jibberish. Eventually they just gave up and stopped trying.

I just got mine last week and noticed that the lag depends on the operator. I’ve had some serious lag delays in the order of 10 to 15 seconds, as well as some 2 to 3 second “fast” responses.

Having said that, just having this thing is a godsend, and give me the confidence to use the telephone once again.

I did have a conversation with a person with a thick Indian accent. That gave the operator a bit of a challenge to keep up, and eventually I had to have someone else handle the call…

I have just received and installed my CapTel 800i. Like hearing aids, it is not perfect
but it helps you quite a bit. My experience has been the same…it depends on the who is doing the captioning.

My first call was to my cable company which took 44 min., being shifted to 4 different departments, and towards the end of the call, another operator took over. The first seemed to type the words as the party spoke them. The second was a good 10 sec. behind so I just told the speaker to slow down and let me catch up.
The next day I had to call them again and it was right on!..I have made two more calls to companies with automated systems and all was clear to me via display screen.
The fonts are large and very readable.

Another feature I like is the complete text of the captioned call remains on your phone until you delete it. Next week VoiceMail will be added to my phone service and I shall be trying it out then.

The phone without captions is not any great device for severe hearing loss as the increase in db is 40 but when I consider that I am alone here and have not answered the phone in 2 1/2 yrs, I would say this will be a blessing for me.

The feeling of independence is worth its weight in gold.:slight_smile:

Well, I notice that on the order page for the CapTel 800i you can choose if you want Sprint or Hamilton to be your provider; there’s also a No Preference option.

I don’t know what to choose. I guess No Preference?

I just chatted with a WCI customer service representative and they asked me what state I was in and then informed me of my default (relay) provider in my state, which happens to be Hamilton. But if I were to choose Sprint, than Sprint would be my provider. They said it wouldn’t make a difference.

Adrien, I do not even remember having a choice so I would have to assume that I have the default relay service.
Caller ID and Voice Mail were just added to my phone yesterday by my cable company and what a joy it is to see the voice mailbox messages on the display. No more guessing what that young caller was trying to tell me.

Again the feature of having all your conversations saved until deleted, has been great. I just argued with my cable company over the fact they did not come the day service was promised and when they insisted that I must have heard wrong, I just read back their conversation to them. Oops! and they apologized plus gave me installation charge for free.:smiley:
I hope you will find this phone as helpful as I have.

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