I accidentally bypassed google voicemail on two separate accounts.

[jimates]

I set up my sisters google voice account on an Obi110. Her incoming calls to her google voice number never went to voicemail. Either her answering machine or her cell phone voicemail answered the calls after many rings.

I set up my niece's google voice on a Obi110 3 days later and got the same results.

Last night after going to my niece's for a training session her google voice calls changed. They started going directly to voicemail instead of ringing the Obi like they had been for two days prior. The calls were not ringing her google talk forwarding phone. I figured out what the problem was, and in doing so realized that was the reason google voicemail wasn't picking up.

Try to follow this, I did all this set up from my home on my computer.
She had a google voice number associated with a gmail account, but wanted it changed to a new gmail account.
I created the new gmail account and did the request at google and transferred the google voice account to the new gmail account.
I configured the Obi using the credential from the new gmail account and everything worked great.

Here is where the change occured.
Last night when I visited her house, I opened the new gmail account on her computer for the first time. I did not realize it, but this is when the calls stopped ringing the google talk and started going to google voicemail.
A while later I was trying to figure out what the problem was when I opened the new gmail account again to place a test call. I immediately saw I had to enable calling from within gmail and I was prompted to install the plug in for google voice/video. After doing this, the calls started ringing the google talk again, but now they were being handled by google voice mail in "the normal manner".

My deduction with a combination of things involved.
Since the google voice number was already successfully working, and ringing google talk for that number, and since my original setup was done from my computer, which already has the plug in installed (I have opened the new gmail account on here several times), gmail did not recognize that I had not made the first call from within the new gmail account. Once I opened the gmail on her computer (which did not have the plug in installed) I had to make that first call from within the gmail account in order to get google talk to ring, again.

Now my sisters set up was exactly the same. I have not opened the new gmail account anywhere except my computer and the google talk rings fine but google voicemail does not handle the calls at all.

I think she likes it that way, more to the norm of what she is used to, so I don't want to experiment to find out what I already suspect will happen.

I may do my google voice number the same way to get away from google voicemail. The only thing for me is that my cell phone will still pick up before my answering machine, it even beats google voice to it now.

[RFord]

I'm a little bit confused here.  Are you saying that in order to disable Google Voice Voicemail, all one has to do is to create a NEW gmail account, make a request to Google to have your the OLD number (associated with the old gmail account) transferred to the NEW gmail account?  The required "one" call should not be made from the NEW account, but you have to at least open the new gmail account and sign into and out of chat on the new account and of course enable "Google Chat" on the NEW account under Google Voice, as one of your forwarding phone.

So the important thing here is not to make ANY calls from the NEW gmail, but since you already make the required minimum one call from the OLD gmail account, then this will disable Google Voice?  The reason I'm confuse is you said that all calls were going to GV Voicemail before you "open" the new gmail account (I assume you mean signing into and out of chat on NEW gmail account.  Could you clarify exactly what needs to be done to disable GV Voicemail?

[jimates]

When you transfer to the new account, everything will be transferred, including the settings and the forwarding phones list. This means that google talk will already be in the list (with the new gmail address under it), even though the one call was never made from the new gmail account.

I did open the new gmail account (on my pc), but only to set the mail forwarding so that emails for voicemail, missed calls and text messages would be forwarded to a comcast account. I never changed the chat settings or even attempted to make a phone call from within the gmail account.

The incoming calls were not answered by google. But once I opened the new gmail account on her pc (which did not have the plug in installed) all calls started going direct to vm. By opening it on her pc, somehow google recognized that the one call was never made and quit forwarding calls to google talk.

[jimates]

Well, the account is still bypassing google's voicemail and going to her answering machine. Everything else for google voice is working correctly.