Review Voice123

[Julie Williams]

Please review voice123.com if you have experience with them.
Please leave comments.
What do you think of the new System?
How do you like SmartCast?
How do you like the new rating system?
Please be specific.

[AlexisAdair]

I'm logged in, but not sure what setting I'm missing... The status info bottom right says I cannot edit my posts, cannot delete my posts, and cannot vote in polls.

I would vote NO to Voice123 unless they get rid of SmartCast. Prior to SmartCast, it was an excellent site. Now it's a joke. Eventually, I'm going to write a detailed explanation of everything that's wrong with the new system, and I'll post it here when I do. But there are dozens of problems with it, and most of them are with the whole *concept* of the new SmartCast and its stated goals. The problems are not simply technical glitches that can be solved. They're philosophical and economic ideas and assumptions that are just plain wrong.

Definitely NOT worth the grossly inflated $295 per year subscription. Not by a long shot.

Alexis

[edit 8/10] Now I'm able to vote, so I did, and (surprise) I voted NO.

[Grant Holmes]

Julie,

I think one more option needs to be present: "Too early to tell", or "The jury is still out"

I really disliked SmartCast in its release, not just because of the system, but because of how bad customer service was. As the dust settles, leads seem to be improving, but they have a lot to fix to make the system hum. The rating system is really not ready for prime time.
--

I also seem to be limited in this forum:

You can post new topics in this forum
You can reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum

A poll I can't vote on?! opps.

[JoeActor]

If they were to replace SmartCast with a simple Filtering system (where we have control), I'd gladly change my vote to an "OK" for Voice123.

Right now, SmartCast is the main issue, and it's standing between me and a potential income stream.

But there are always others,
Joe J Thomas
www.JoeActor.com

[Colin Campbell]

SmartCast with all it's intelligence is inheritly flawed in the most simple way. Asking for a limited number of auditions keeps the lead open only a short time leading to a mass swarm of resopnses and the closing of the lead before many many talented people have a chance to even consider whether they want to audition for it or not.

[videochas]

Voice123 was always problematic. You were REQUIRED to fill in some fields in your reply... and you even had to use a specified number of characters. I used to just swipe my finger down the number row with the shift key on, resulting in: !@#$%^&*()_. And you can guess which finger I used for the expression. But you could tolerate the idiocy as long as the leads kept coming in, but now it's only a couple of leads a day, and they are crummy leads with low budgets. The upping of the fee was the final insult. I'm outta there now... I'll check back next year.

[Julie Williams]

I disagree with the basic precept of limiting leads, Colin, when that's what we paid for. And I don't think people should be penalized for auditioning.

I don't think they intended to make it a "race" but in reality, it's more of a race than ever now.

But about having to fill in so many fields vid chas... even before Smart cast... I'm not sure what you're talking about. I never had a problem iwth any of that. The only issues for me before were that you couldn't get a demo from the site and submit it instead of custom audition back then. Sometimes, whild travelling, internet service was slow and I'd really need to upload a demo from their site, rather than my computer. But otherwise I thought it was good. I told all my students that they needed to be on there and voices.com.

I really love the custom templates that voices.com has for auditioning. I just pull down menu for commercial, narration, audiobook,, etc. and all I have to do is add client's name in the greeting, and send.

[videochas]

The "remarks" field in the old system had to have some text in it or the system would kick you back when you tried to submit your audition. I complained about it and the fools there said that they had determined that auditions which had text in that field were more likely to get hired than those that didn't, so they made it a requirement to "help me". I told them to stop being nannies and stop helping me. That's when I started the !@#$%^&*()_ thing. They emailed me telling me to stop doing that as it made their system look bad. I returned a comment that they had the power to eliminate it, by removing the requirement for text in the box. That's where matters stood when they instituted Dumbcasting.

[Amanda Geyer]

As V123 currently stands, No, I do not recommend it for anyone. When I paid for Premium service, I was not under the impression that I was paying for opportunities in the SmartCast lottery.

[videochas]

Voice-Overs.com is a great service, particularly so when compared to Voice123. Quite slick!