David Pogue Wants to Take Back the Beep

David Pogue has distilled into useful form a long-standing complaint I have (and one reason I have long had a voice mail greeting that asked people not to leave me voicemail): cell phone companies set up the greeting, caller instructions, and playback system prompts in large part to maximize their revenue per user; by his calculations, the "mandatory 15-second voicmail instructions" from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and others is earning those companies something near a billion dollars a year in charges. Pogue suggests that users should "take back the beep," and to that end provides contact information for the largest cell carriers in order to register a complaint — and, more helpful in the short run, suggests ways in which to make better use of paid-for phone minutes by alerting callers how to bypass the annoying instructions.

Earth to David!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the # key. It works on T-Mobile and with many other vendor's voicemail systems. It was not a grand conspiracy to rack up minutes when answering machines allowed you to customize your greeting (even though long distance charges were 28 cents a minutes back in that day). It's not a conspiracy now.

Try the crumbly windmills next time.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Swizec]

Many Europeans actually get 5 weeks paid vacation ... just sayin'

Re:Earth to David!

[Anubis IV]

He mentions the # in the article. That's not the point. The point is that millions upon millions of customers are not as smart as you are, so they listen through that voicemail message every single time they want to leave a message. That adds up to hundreds of thousands or millions of wasted man-hours each year, as well as additional charges to some customers.

And if you had read TFA, you'd have noticed that he mentioned the fact that he's talked to high-up execs at these companies and that they admitted to him that they do it for the purpose of collecting additional charges. So, while "conspiracy" may be a rather strong word, it's not altogether inaccurate.

Re:No problem on Sprint

[semifamous]

Instructions that I posted here:
http://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/20563 [sprint.com]

      1. Call Your Voicemail
      2. At the menu, press 3 for Personal Options
      3. Press 2 for Greeting
      4. Press 1 to change the greeting.
      5. To enable/disable the instructions, press 3

Re:No problem on Sprint

[semifamous]

Oh, and as long as you're in Personal Options, listen for the "Expert Mode" option and enable that. Should shave a few seconds of your voicemail checking.

Re:T-Mobile

[clone53421]

No, you'd get billed for 120 minutes. It rounds up, not down.

not universal

[damn_registrars]

It's called the # key. It works on T-Mobile and with many other vendor's voicemail systems

On Sprint you press 1.
On Verizon there is no key. You can mash keys until you run out of buttons and the closest you'll get is a prompt asking for the customer's PIN.
I don't know anyone currently on AT&T so I don't know what the option is for their voicemail (if there is one).

It's not a conspiracy now.

Its not a universal standard, either. Maybe we don't need to go all the way to beep-only, but it would be nice if there was a consistent way to bypass other people's voicemail greetings, especially if you don't know beforehand what network they use.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Lord Ender]

It's a double edged sword. Yes, there are some great EU market regulations (like standardized cellphone chargers), but there are some pretty terrible regulations, too. Many of the EU market regulations are extremely expensive to comply with. You would not be happy, I assure you, if prices at Fry's and Microcenter were as high as prices are at retail stores in France.

Re:Sort of competitive US cell market needs more r

[QuoteMstr]

Huh? That's incoherent. If four companies each charge the same for a message and they have identical margins, then their cost is the same. A lower uniforn margin applied to the same cost will result in a uniform price. Also, if you were to try that, companies would just doctor their margin figures to support a higher price.

The Sherman Antitrust Act [wikipedia.org] already has a remedy for price fixing: the act made it a felony. All we need to do is enforce this 1898 piece of legislation.

Sprint lets you turn this off

[pdragon04]

I hadn't even realized it until I was bored one time when I was checking my voicemail. I went through the other options to see what was available and one of them was to turn off these pre-recorded caller instructions that he's complaining about.

Maybe people just need to check what options their voicemail provides them instead of jumping to drastic measures like this? Wait... I forgot who I'm talking to here...

Re:Take back the seconds

[jrmcferren]

On at&t, and T-Mobile pressing the # key skips the greeting, on Verizon Wireless and Sprint you press the * key. It is usually the key opposite of the key you press to get the login prompts. For example you press * on at&t to get the login prompts, and # to skip the greeting.

A Proud at&t User.

Carriers get paid for incoming calls

[bruckie]

An interesting, relatively unknown fact that I picked up while working on telephony systems a while back: carriers get paid (by other carriers) for incoming calls.

Not only do you pay more to your carrier to listen to the inane voicemail prompt (since you might use more minutes), but your carrier also pays more to your friend's carrier. For example, if I'm an AT&T customer and I call a Verizon customer to leave a voicemail, AT&T has to pay Verizon for every second that I'm on the phone. This (perverse) incentive makes more sense than charging people for more minutes, since often the company charging for minutes (AT&T in this case) is not the company that controls the recorded message (Verizon).

--Bruce

Re:Take back the seconds

[xaxa]

Metric already is the law, and pints are defined to be 568mL (to the nearest mL).

You are welcome to call your 568mL serving of beer a "pint", and it's likely most people will continue to do so.

Re:Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[Jay L]

While we're turning in geek cards...

Yes, # skips the greeting when calling AT&T subscribers and, apparently, T-Mobile subscribers. If you call a Verizon customer and press #, you get the login prompt, and (AFAICT) no way to actually leave your friend a message without calling back.

So, just as TFA says: You can skip everyone's greeting, but you have to memorize which carrier they use.

C'mon, hand it over.

Even worse in Canada...

[Barbarian]

I'm on Bell Mobility in Canada (until July 2009 when I can change without penalty) and not only do we have the listed voice mail annoyances, we also pay $6 each a month for caller id and voicemail. Also there is no trick that a caller can use to skip the greeting. If you record your own, it appends "At the tone, leave your message" anyways.

Did I mention we have to pay about $20 more a month on average (even after currency conversion)?

Re:Sprint lets you turn this off

[ljw1004]

When I used Cingular a few years ago, I could turn it off.

Now that I use T-Mobile, I can turn it off. (I just did it this morning).

that is not what the doc says, and not insighful

[aepervius]

"In fact, the whole reason that ISO 13485 came about is because the FDA determined that ISO 9001 was stupid and dangerous" hm. No. The doc just says they don't see it as necessary to force firm to change to a standardized process. And neither do the EU rely on ISO 13485 for safety too. It is jsut for traceability to have a standardized way of getting documentation and process audit done. The satuff still has to go through a safety test anyway.