YouMail - VoiceMail Transcription - Expensive But Worth It

I have lots of digital era pet peeves. Phone books are one of them. I came home from work yesterday to find this giant yellow dead tree sitting at my door step. Horrible. Who uses those things anymore? Another is junk mail, for a lot of the same reasons. Please, make it stop. One more, and the focus of this post, is listening to voicemails. I've been horrible for years. Caller ID was the death of voicemails for me. I see who called, and call them right back, rarely (OK never) listening to their message. I tried leaving a VM recording asking people to text me instead of leaving a voicemail, but that only pissed off my doctor and auto mechanic. There have been a few transcription services for the iPhone that never quite made it. I recently did some more investigating on VM transcription services, and came across YouMail. You install the app, and to configure it, you basically allow it to hijack the voicemail from your carrier, and redirect callers to the YouMail servers. Overall the app is pretty easy to use, and gives you lots of VM management features not available on the iPhone (folder, archives, forwarding, etc. . .). I tried the transcription service for the 1 week trial, and loved it. My biggest gripes are the cost and pricing tiers (which go hand in hand!). The saver package provides 20 transcriptions a month and only transcribes the first 20 seconds of the message for $5/month or $55/year. The unlimited package transcribes unlimited VMs of unlimited length for a whopping $40/month or $450/year. That's as much as some cell minute packages. I went for the plus package that transcribes the first 60 seconds of 100 messages a month. Still pricey, but I bit the bullet, and with a discount code, it cost me $180 for the year. Pricey, but worth it if you hate listening to voicemail.