Using Google Voice for your apartment buzzer

This is the first thing most people try, and it is a reasonable thing to try. A free number that rings your phone and your roommate's phone is exactly the shape of the problem.

It works for some people. When it fails, it fails at the last step, which is the worst possible place for it to fail.

What Google Voice gets right, and what that is worth

The appeal is real, so it is worth stating plainly before the problems. A personal Google Voice number is free with no subscription, it is a real number the lobby panel will happily dial, it can ring several linked devices at the same time, and you keep it if you change carriers.

All of which is worth nothing on the one thing a buzzer has to do. A number that rings four phones but cannot open your door is a number that gets everyone to the intercom to watch a courier leave. That is not a partial success, it is the same locked door with more people looking at it. The other ways to get more than one phone ringing all trade money for not having this problem.

The three things that break it

1. The door digit does not get through

This is the big one. Pressing 9 does not send a command. It plays an audio tone into the call, and the lobby panel opens the door because it recognises that sound. The mechanism is worth understanding.

Google Voice sits in the middle of that call and re-encodes the audio. Keypad tones frequently do not survive it intact, or arrive too short or too quiet for the panel to accept. You get a call, you talk to the person at the door, you press 9, and nothing happens.

2. Call screening intercepts the building

Google Voice screens calls from numbers it does not recognise. A lobby panel is permanently a number it does not recognise, and it is calling on behalf of someone standing in the cold.

Screening asks the caller to say their name and then asks you to accept. A courier will not do this. Turn screening off entirely on the number you use for your buzzer, and add the building number to your contacts.

3. Availability outside the United States

Google Voice personal numbers are a US product. If you are in Canada, you generally cannot sign up for one without a US number and a US-based account, and numbers obtained through workarounds have a habit of being reclaimed.

A US number in a Canadian building has a second problem: many buildings restrict their directory to local numbers, because the building pays for the call.

How to test it properly

If you are going to try it, test in this order. It takes fifteen minutes and saves you from finding out during a delivery.

1. Turn off call screening and spam filtering Both, on the Google Voice number itself. Screening will stop a courier dead.
2. Call the Google Voice number from another phone and press 9 Answer on your linked device, press 9, and listen on the calling phone. You should hear the tone clearly. If you hear nothing, stop here.
3. Ask the building to update the directory Give them your unit and the Google Voice number.
4. Test from the lobby, three times, on different days Once is not a test. The tone problem is intermittent, and you want to know that before a courier does.
5. Test with the phones locked and in your pocket Different from testing with the app open, and closer to how it will actually be used.

When to stop trying

If the door does not open on two out of three lobby tests, it is not going to get better. The tone problem is not something you can configure your way out of.

At that point the options are a landline that forwards, a VoIP line with a ring group, or a number built for this. BuzzMeBro is the last of those: a local number for your apartment that rings up to 4 phones at once and passes the door digit, for $11.99 a month. The full comparison of options.