Slashdot Mirror
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.
Does the extra 15 seconds added by the operator really cost me anything since my phone bill uses 1-minute increments?
What would save us consumers a lot more money is having cellphone operators bill usage by the second. The European Commission already
forced the European operators to adopt 1-second billing increments.
--
crowdsource your iPhone app ideas
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.
BEEP you, David Pogue!
I have a fixed cost in-voice that doesn't vary unless I talk an absurd amount of time each month (say... 100 hours...)
T-Mobile doesn't charge me to call my own voicemail, so that doesn't matter. As far as leaving a message for others, does anyone really leave longer than a 45-second message anyway (keeping the total under a minute)? Name, number, quick reason you're calling, that's all you need usually.
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
Even on the cheapest plans, there are so many minutes included, plus free nights and weekends, plus free mobile-to-mobile, et cetera. I think I've only gone over my included monthly minutes once.
I suspect that few callers are paying for those 15 seconds of instructions.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Maybe my perception is wrong, but aren't the majority of U.S. cell phone users on a plan that they're paying for in terms of 100s of minutes at least? 15 seconds is annoying, and I agree with his preference for these things going away, but who doesn't just have a monthly plan that dwarfs their actual usage to start with? Pogue's back-of-the-envelope calculations seems to completely ignore this.
But there is no doubt it is a huge earner for the networks. Here in Ireland, and even on Skype now you often have to pay something like 5c as soon as the phone is answered, this includes getting someones voicemail. I never leave a message, I have listened to my own messages being played back at someone elses house and just didn't like it. I prefer to call back or send a SMS.
The worst has to be getting someone's voicemail when calling from a satellite phone, 75c down the drain for nothing. Really wish there was a 5 second chance for you to hang up and not get charged, or better still abolish voicemail altogether. Let people run their own answering machines if they desire but ban voicemail
You know those utterly annoying self-made "leave a message after the beep" messages that include some "cute" song etc. I am sure everyone has had a friend or a acquaintance living abroad that was not at home and made such message for the answering machine. It's so infuriating that my attitude is "I'm not leaving a damn to this guy - fuck him and his minutes-long answering message".
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I gets free incoming. No cost to my voice mail until I check it. And if I check it from a land line, no cost at all. Not to plug or anything.
Get a real phone plan, or one from a decent provider. AT&T just capped my rollover minutes when I hit something like 4000 (in just 2 years on the minimal 700 minute a month plan). Does anyone really have a plan where they regularly go over their monthly allotment, and it's not cheaper to get the next tier?
If the 15 seconds is too painful, read up on the options to skip the message. As for the man up comment - that goes for you, too, Timothy. And while we're at it, why don't you go ahead and turn in your geek card for not knowing you could hit # and skip right to the beep.
Yes, I am in a foul mood this afternoon; thanks for asking.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I've set my Sprint voicemail to play only my voice prompt, which is about 3s long before the beep. It's not difficult.
Although I would question the validity of a billion dollar scam (as another user points out most plans get free minutes and if you exceed your quota by 15 seconds or 1 minutes, wow...) Perhaps it is a cross billing issue between providers?
I HATE that stupid message. It will be the second reason I can't wait to dump Verizon Wireless this fall when my contract expires. Yes I have the "You may press * to bypass this message" at the start of my greeting (yes, it is * for Verizon) but nobody else does this so it is always an insulting guessing game. But just like we sheep consumer blithely accept more and more advertising shoved down our throats so goes the message. I can't wait for the day when I get the verbal instructions on how to use the numeric keypad, (You may now leave a numeric message. To leave a 1, press the 1 key, etc.)
Gosh, helpful Verizon... Maybe society is really becoming so mentally limited this type of stuff is needed.
-Joe
If your message takes 46 seconds to say, it will rack up as 2 minutes instead of 1 minute. Is this how it works?
God spoke to me.
If you are calling a sprint customer, you can bypass their voicemail greeting by pressing 1, and get the beep you really want.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Verizon, who as best I can tell does not allow you to bypass the greeting and prompt. Indeed if you don't like it when people leave you voicemail, become a Verizon subscriber and use a super-long greeting. People will give up on leaving a voicemail on your phone.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
All cell phone companies allow the caller to skip straight to the beep.
It is usually # or *.
Figure yours out.
Make your message something to the effect of:
"Hi, this is fred. I can't take your call now. Leave me a message. In the future, to skip straight to the beep, press X"
Most cell phone companies have a "fast prompt" setting for retrieving your messages. It isn't fast enough for a geek who is used to memorizing interactive prompts, but it is at least 50% faster than normal prompts. Turn yours on.
or maybe it's the pound. Most carriers let you skip the message with that.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Yes.
Get to it people!!
Yes, millions upon millions of people are bloody morons. Big corporations are screwing them over only as long as they remain moronic. Can you explain why I should care?
We shouldn't. Those people are making the service CHEAPER for the rest of us.
I understand the concern of unnecessary use of a few seconds per phone call 5 or 10 years ago, but lately with the advent of VOIP I'd contend this concern has slowly been fading out.
Flashback to 1995 when cellphone bills and long distance calls were by the minute and rather expensive. Only landline local calls were exempt from by-minute charges, and phone companies had a lot of opportunities to increase revenue by lengthening phone calls just a little bit.
Compare that to today when most cellphone users have free night and weekend minutes plus anytime minutes, most landlines have free long distance and some users with unlimited cell plans are immune from these charges. The only people affected are those making international calls or using cellphones during the day while over their minutes. This is an increasingly small demographic.
Compound that with the fact that data is where most of the cellphone money is and you quickly see that keeping people connected via cell tower may prevent more business / data users from connecting who really have the high paying plans. It's actually in cellphone companies' best interest now to keep those lines as clear as possible to support good service to as many new / existing customers as possible instead of keeping the airwaves as busy as possible.
If you have one of the plans which makes you fit into the demographic affected by a 15 second delay, then I can understand your desire to shorten the time to when you can leave a message or leave none at all, but I personally am a fan of voice mail intros as it lets me know I didn't accidentally dial a wrong number. My advice for you is to learn the quick-keys on various carriers that bring you to the voice mailbox immediately (like # on T-mobile and Sprint.) I wouldn't disagree to going to a per-second billing like the EU did, but I promise you can take off your tinfoil hats - there is no conspiracy to make you use more minutes anymore and removing voice mailbox introductions would actually be removing something valuable for some people.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
I refuse to use it...either to leave it or receive it.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
All I want to do is leave a message....that's it. The lady that gives me that 15 sec message doesn't even sound hot, waste of time!
Same goes for when I check my messages, I don't need that many instructions. They need to have an option to turn that off because there are people that need 2 minutes worth of instructions to check a 15 second voice mail, though I just want to get to my voicemail of my roommate yelling racial slurs at me.
Hi, you're reached Bob. If you don't know what to do here, there's really no helping you. (BEEP!)
This, of course, would be ruined with a cell phone voicemail system...
"Why can't we stand up to big corporations here in the US?"
The government is not even in the pocket of big business anymore, big business has assimilated the government, Borg-style. It is not that business has undue influence of government, its that they are simply one and the same entity. The Fed is a private bank, the media controls all of our political decisions, election coverage is directed to the lowest common denominator, through the polarized and biased corporate media. Because of the "us vs. them" mentality, the people refuse to see how bad their guy is fscking them, blaming the other side instead. To paraphrase Bill Hicks, '[Guy 1]I think the puppet on the left best represents my views. [Guy 2]Well I find the puppet on the right more to my liking. [Guy 3]Hey there's one guy holding both puppets! [Gov't] Go back to sleep America... your government is in control.' The people just get fat and stupid, caring more about the how the local sports team is performing (most are even stupid enough to think that this team represents them, failing to notice that the sports team in question is simply another monolithic corporate entity that happens to bear the name of the nearest metropolis) than what is really happening to them. They fail to question the fact that our federal income tax is unconstitutional (and not even on the books!) and enforced by an illegal terrorist organization. They fail to question it when the government decides to tell them that they can be locked in a cell for YEARS for possession a PLANT THAT GROWS IN THE GROUND. They continue listening to what is told to them by the TV, to be good little consumers and to keep buying shit they don't need. A long, rambling post that will probably be modded down, but is that a good enough answer as to why Americans don't stand up to big corporations?
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
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.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I don't care if the companies are trying to catch us for 15seconds more or not. I think the automated messages are annoying as hell and should be optional, purely on the basis of being irritating.
I don't know what regulator would do it (DOJ Anti-Trust or Commerce), but if the cell phone market is supposed to be competitive, regulators should jump all over the cell carriers when they all engage in the same practice billed at the same rate.
The carriers should be required to provide documentation supporting their pricing and if they all have a similar high margin for a given service (eg, over 20% or something) the regulator should find them "non-competitive" and order them all to cut their price to whatever is considered the minimum baseline margin.
Since a price cut to a specific margin from presumably 4 different cost structures would result 4 different and competitive prices, the market would once more be competitive, and those carriers with higher prices would be forced to cut their actual price to match the carrier whose price was lowest; raising prices would not be allowed for six months or something to prevent raising prices back their old rates right away.
For example, if all the carriers charged $0.20 a minute for SMS, and they submitted documentation showing 100-200% margins on them they would then be forced to cut their prices back to a 5% margin. But since each would have a different cost structure, the price they would be required to charge would be different (since one carrier's 5% margin price might be 2 cents versus anothers 4 cents). NOW you have competition again, as the higher priced carriers would scramble to match the lowest price.
There's no way you can call competitive a market that ends up pricing a good or service at the same price with a massive markup for all of them.
Here in Brazil we have a ~7sec message about voicemail, but you only start PAYing after the message is over and you get the actually voicemail.
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
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 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.
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...
I once worked with a guy whose incredibly verbose "please leave a detailed message" message ran to about 45 seconds. In English. It was then followed by about a MINUTE of Spanish.
THEN, only AFTER you had listened to all this, could you actually leave him a message...
Needless to say, I never bothered leaving him any message at all.
My voicemail message just says "please leave a BRIEF message".
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
there are way bigger fish to fry than voicemail
Agreed
SMS
The markup on this is insane, and the main reason why I use it as seldom as possible. I send barely a dozen text messages a year and will keep it that way until the prices come down to earth. And don't try to sell me on an "unlimited text" plan because I have never in my life sent $5 worth of text messages in a month.
MMS
I honestly haven't found a good reason to care about this one yet, one way or the other. Voicemail is adequately cheap and effective for me.
ringtones
On this one I don't care how much they charge. Frankly I think the higher a musical riff is on the billboard charts, the higher the price should be for it as a ringtone. I for one don't want to hear the background to Britney's latest hit while I am waiting in line at the bank. Nor do I want to hear the latest from the newest boy band, anywhere, ever. Why people insist their phones not ring like phones is beyond me.
Now get off my lawn.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Turn off voice mail.
I have no land line, no answering machine, just a cellphone and the voice mail on it has never been enabled.
I don't think I am missing much.
I'd be happy if I could just cancel my cell phone voicemail entirely and have it keep ringing until I answer or the caller gives up like a normal phone does.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I hit 1 when I get voice mail to get to the beep. Rarely works. One friend is kind enough to say press star at the beginning of her message. On another's I need to press 3, and 1 disconnects me. I'd write more, but the point is brevity. Or at least standardization.
In my country, telcos where forced by new legislation to put a message and a beep before being redirected to the real voicemail system, the message must tell the caller that he/she will not be charged before they are redirected. This was the solution to their trick to send a lot of calls to the voicemail recorder in order to always collect payment from the caller, now if for some reason the system is not able to reach the person you are calling, you will not be charged unless you really want to leave a message
I just don't understand why I have to pay when someone else is calling me! And if it's long distance, I have to pay long distance fees! Paying to check your own messages on a service provided by the carrier makes no sense either. Where's the convenience?
If you don't like the way voicemail works, just call your carrier and have it disabled. It's really not that hard. Or better yet, give up your @#(*& cellphone.
Not sure what their motivation was, but AT&T turned off the annoying and insulting 30 seconds of instructions for people who call their iPhone customers. All it does is play the message, then beep.
I'm in the US - land of the fees. When I had a phone through Sprint, calling my own number to check voicemail didn't count against the minutes in my plan. After I fired them and switched to AT&T and an iphone, I don't even have to call (although "visual" voicemail isn't really all that great) to get my voicemail, and the time listening to the messages still doesn't count as minutes used.
These numbers he's throwing out don't mean anything. No one's charged by the second, and most people aren't even charged by the minute these days. Even if they were, only a certain percentage would have the round-off of those 15 seconds effect their bill. Dumbass article.
The owner instructions are just as bad.. I just recently got a Bell Canada phone (through work), and even though I switched it to "fast" prompts, it's still very terrible. Literally it says this:
* You have 1 unheard new messages. To listen to new messages, press one one.
(I *really* don't get why I have to press 1 twice. My voicemail system at work does the same, it's stupid. There's no other option if you press 1 once, it just says to press 1 again).
Press 1..
* You have one unheard message. First unheard message..
It just says the phrase "unheard messages" WAAAY too much.
At home I have an asterisk-based PBX (I used to be a FreePBX developer).. even though its voicemail IVR isn't the best, it beats the pants of both Bell Canada's, and our Panasonic key system at work. However, at home, I almost never listen to voicemail that way. All my messages get emailed to me as a .wav file, much simpler. I actually set up a cron job to delete the actual messages from the PBX after a day so the 'new message' light goes out automatically.
I really wish I could have the email thing for my cell and work phones..
Speak before you think
1: The major reason for voicemail and related services (slamdown notifications where you get a text message stating that someone called you but didn't leave a message) are NOT the minutes you spend but rather call completion. You see, calls that don't terminate when your terminal is not online (a not uncommon occurance in crap networks like the US ones, you would not believe how much time a normal handset in a metropolitan area is offline) are a loss since you don't get missed call information. There is a very, VERY well understod business case for voicemail services and how they affect the average revenue per user.
2: What customers SHOULD do is require that all operators allow them to connect to Google Voice type services, i.e. a service provider that will let them govern the way they receive information and control the modus in which they respond themselves.
3: The charging model of US operators is completely insane compared to the rest of the world. How the hell can you put up with it? Seriously?
I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it -- Groucho Marx
Why bother when you can re-direct voice mail to free services like YouMail?
What really gets me is that there's no standard "Skip instructions" button. On many providers it's "1" but on one provider "1" is the shortcut to hang up. Nice. Who needs a shortcut to hang up???
I see many people missing the finer details. You are billed from the moment you hit SEND, not from the moment they answer. That's why cellphones ring for THIRTY SECONDS (usually about six rings) rather than the more common four or even two. Thirty seconds of ringing, fifteen seconds of instructions, how many of your voicemail messages are under 15 seconds?
Sherman is better but the enforcement standard is too high.
In this proposed remedy it seems impossible that 4 companies would have identical margins for anything. They may all have HIGH margins, but they couldn't have identical ones, and they would be required to submit detailed costs for explaining their margins, preventing or limiting the ability to somehow have identcal margins.
With the actual margin values non-identical, forcing all the carriers into a single same margin would result in a different end price, thus exposing the consumer to varying price levels.
If you REALLY believe Obama got elected because he had more money, then you have already drank the kool-aid. Unlike Republicans, who are blatant about their unwavering support for their corporate benefactors (see Dick Cheney and no-bid contracts for Halliburton KBR, et al), the honest Democrats only agree to give their benefactors a fair hearing. I think it is apparent that Obama is a honest Democrat. A prime example is the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights. This bill did not even make it to the floor when Republicans controlled the legislative branch, but it was passed and signed into law under the Democrats, despite the Republicans tacking on completely unrelated legislation.
Obama got elected because Bush took Republicans' empty rhetoric to it's logical conclusion and the majority of American people finally saw that it was WRONG, and got motivated to right that wrong. It started in earnest in 2006, when the Democrats took the House and culminated in 2008 when they took the Presidency and Senate in 2008. To say that it was campaign finance reform is just RIDICULOUS, and disregards plain facts, but that is the hallmark of Republican rhetoric.
Put away that wide paintbrush, your covering up all the detail.
And I think it would be prudent for many of you to remember that if it wasn't for the 'common idiots' that stormed the beaches at Normandy, flew suicide missions alongside the RAF, and died on unknown beaches in the Pacific, you would be speaking German and / or Japanese!
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Good. I hate voice mail and tag. Email is so much more efficient.
My cell phone voicemail (T-Mobile) take just shy of 5 seconds to start playing back a message, if I have any.
I'm pretty sure most systems let you use short form prompts or longer. You need to be able to configure it.
If you are living on the defaults, you are being screwed everywhere, not just on your cell phone bill.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
If you call for one second or 59 seconds, it still costs you 1 minute. So it really doesn't matter if the "leave a message after the beep" message is 15 seconds or 45 seconds. More importantly, many of us have ridiculously more minutes than we will ever use, so this really is a giant macht nichts.
Hi, this is {name}. Please leave a message.
The caller doesn't need to be explicitly be informed that I may be on another call or away from my desk, nor what information they need to provide if they want to hear back from me. If they're smart enough to have dialed my number they can infer the rest.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
When you're setting up your Sprint voicemail, it gives you the option to disable the reading of all those instructions and just play your outgoing message. Mine is set up that way.
I don't know about the other carriers.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
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
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Bought, unused time is the way that the phone companies make their profit, whether it be with dozens of unused minutes you have leftover at the end of the month, or the 59 seconds you bought but didn't use because you phone call lasted 61. It's an arbitrage opportunity. The point is that if they free up 59 seconds of airtime even though you've paid for it, they can do the same with the next guy, and they next. Ultimately, if you have 60 people make 61 second phone calls, that second minute of airtime made them 60x the amount of profit as if people had actually been using it. The 15 second message is a way of pushing you closer to that magic 61 second mark, and I would imagine the length of that message (and thus the reason it still has that stupid "page this person" option) is calculated to set the average call length to leave a message right at the point where it's most profitable to them.
We're at the point in society where people should know how to leave a message on a damn answering machine. Hell, we stopped having the 'http://' on URLs in ads and business cards five years ago, but somehow people have forgotten how to operate an answering machine/voice mail after them being common for 25 years!
Also, we don't need to be informed someone can't answer the phone, but to leave a message and he'll get back to you. First of all, the voice mail message does not magically know that that is true...maybe he can answer it, and just didn't. Maybe he's dead, and won't return your call ever. Maybe he just doesn't fucking like you. Stop telling me nonsensical shit you don't actually know, you machine. Just record the damn message.
When an answering machines picks up, I should hear, in most cases, be something like "This is John Smith's phone. *beeeep*".
And the only reason there should be any message at all is to confirm we have the right phone number.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Where I live in Portugal(Europe), this issue was discussed several years ago. At the time phone calls were collected by the minute, and not by the second. When you called someone and if the person was out of network or disconnected, it will charged 1 minute even if you didn't want to leave a message.
A bill was passed with the solution. Now the call just starts to count after the beep, so if you don't want to leave a message you just hangup before the beep.
It seems a good solution to me.
You USAmericans, for all the great society you've managed to build in the last couple of centuries, are UNBELIEVABLE docile to what corporations do to you. I mean, here I am, living in a third world country, making fun of you because government regulation made cell companies :
* Don't charge me for receiving calls
* Don't charge for the first 5 seconds of a call, meaning you can decide to hang up before billing starts if voice mail answers
* Bill by the second
Why oh why can't you manage yourself, as a society, to stand up and resiste to corporate abuse?
I don't have a sig.
As far as I know, when you call your voice mail or any internal number (customer support) from your cell phone it doesn't apply to your min. Things might have changed or vary from carrier to carrier, but I am pretty certain that ATT doesnt charge me to listen to voice mail.
Don't forget that the owner of the phone usually also gets to say a few words, leaving less time before you hit the 1 minute barrier.
When metric is the law, no more pints of beer.
Yes you get 0.5L glasses, which are bigger! What is not to love?
Only if you're talking about those teensy little American pints (473ml); the imperial pint, as used in the UK, is 568ml- quite a bit more than half a litre.
;-P
Yeah, that's right. We've got the big man-sized real pints, whereas the size-obsessed Americans can't even beat the European half-litre. Ner ner ner-ner ner!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Press 5.
What does that mean??? [Capcha for this was "greedy" - how appropriate!]
Install an answering machine on your phone. Then it will even be cheaper when roaming is active.
Also, I have programmed my own answering machine / voicemail system in python. Including a blacklist, graylist, optional blocking of all anonymous call, optional blocking of everything except the selected phonebooks. And as the cherry on the cake, it works like a butler taking a call for me. It's very simple, and that is why it works so well. It even greets people with their own name, if I have them in my phonebook (I record the names).
A typical call would look like this:
"Hello $name. Mr. $myName is not in the house right now. Can I take a message for him?"
*waits for caller speaking*
"Ok, I will relay that to him. Have a nice day."
*click*
If they hang up earlier, that's ok too.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Right, these are conspiracy theories and I've read on Snopes those are all wrong! All the TV people say so, too, and sometimes they grin like they're letting me in on a joke while saying it. As do most of the people I know. This is how I know it's true. I also found that, when I dismiss people by making fun of them, I don't have to argue their points. I'm just a happy camper. Rockin' and a-rollin'.
But it's not like I cannot argue my point. For example, I've prepared this:
First, conspiracy theorists! (Just look at them!) Second, tin-foil hats! (Hahaha.) (Hahahahaha!) Third: avian flu, swine fever, abortion, child pornography, terrorism!
Any questions?
Press pound on the ATT network and you will hear the beep immediately and then you can leave your voice mail.
Caller ID and the missed call log only appear if the call actually reaches the phone and then you don't answer. If the phone is out of coverage or powered off, the call doesn't reach the phone at all, so it goes to voice mail at the carrier. When you turn the phone back on, the carrier generally sends a notification so you know to check the messages. But there is no entry in the phone's missed call log.
What is the reason for the +1 insightful mod on the parent here? Are people so stupid that they can't leave a message less than 45 seconds long? The parent is acting like no matter what I do, every time I leave a message I'm going to hit 46 seconds and just get royally screwed, even though if I did that for every single message I actually left it would amount to a very small percentange of my actual talk time anyway.
Who leaves voicemail anymore anyway? It's a hassle. Just text the person, ffs.
Commie asshole.
Wengla02 here from BuzzAboutWireless.com and now the Sprint Community.
We hear you - and we have stood up a brand new forum to talk about this topic:
http://community.sprint.com/baw/community/buzzaboutwireless/general/takebackthebeep
Jack Diemer, our Voicemail guy, has also posted some handy tricks out there to streamline your voicemail experience.
Why do we make the prompts so long? We have to work on the assumption that everyone using voicemail is a beginner - but for customers that have some experience with the system and want to streamline their settings, you can follow these tips at:
http://community.sprint.com/baw/community/sprintblogs/buzz-by-sprint/announcements/blog/2009/07/30/take-back-the-beep
It is really cool to see this level of interest - thanks for visiting!
Will England
When you leave a voicemail, say your name and phone number FIRST, and say it slow and clear. Don't make me wait through your boring and rambling message again and again because you recite your phone number in under 1 second.
"Heyyyyyy.... It's Bob. How ya doing? Guess you couldn't get my call. Must be off having fun without me. *heh* Yeah, well. You know. So. I thought maybe, you know. *pause* We could go grab a beer and *pause* Maybe check out that new club that opened up... When was it?... Gawd... I think it was like... three months ago? Yeah. That place. Heard the DJ rocks. Soooo... If you wanna hang out or something. *pause* Yeah, give me a call either way. That way I know you got this message. *pause* So call me at *subsonic screech that you think contains the numbers 7, 2, and the letter F*"
Does the extra 15 seconds added by the operator really cost me anything since my phone bill uses 1-minute increments?
Yes, it does. On roughly 1/4 of the calls, it pushes you over the next 1 minute boundary, adding to your cost. This is simple statistics.
As Slashdot readers many of you consider yourselves to be scientifically minded and aware of logical fallacies. Why does this mindset breakdown when it comes to politically charged events? You are labeling people nut cases and tinfoil hat wearers and conspiracy theorists the same way people were labeled communists during the McCarthy era. The ad hominem attacks are relentless.
-- LC
Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself being silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.
-- George Orwell
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-- H. L. Mencken
Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity.
-- Marshall McLuhan
The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.
-- Carroll Quigley, "Tragedy and Hope".
Today a new crop of economists, working in an organization known as the Trilateral Commission, is on the verge of creating a new international economic system, one designed by men as brilliant as Keynes and White. Their names are not well known, but these modern thinkers are as important to our age as Keynes and White were to theirs.
Moreover, these economists, like their World War II counterparts, are working closely with high government officials, in this case President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale. And what is now being discussed at the highest levels of government, in both the United States and abroad, is the creation of a new world economic system - a system that will affect jobs in America and elsewhere, the prices consumers pay, and the freedom of individuals, corporations, and nations to enter into a truly planetary economic system. Indeed, many observers see the advent of the Carter administration and what is now being called the "Trilateral" cabinet as the harbinger of this new era.
-- Jeremiah Novak, Christian Science Monitor, February 7, 1977
The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. ... they will rule the future.
-- Barry Goldwater (U.S. Senator), 1964
The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self-created screen. At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties.
-- John F. Hylan, Mayor of New York (1918-1925), 1922
For a long time I felt that FDR had developed many thoughts and ideas that were his own to benefit this country, the United States. But he didn't.
Most of his thoughts were carefully manufactured for him in advance by the Council on Foreign Relations-One World Money Group.
The United Nations is but a long-range, international banking apparatus clearly set up for financial and economic profit by a small group of powerful One-World revolutionaries, hungry for profit and power.
The One-World government leaders and their ever close bankers have now acquired full control of the money and credit machinery of the U.S. via the creation of the privately owned Federal Reserve bank.
-- Curtis Dall (Franklin D. Roo
I have a sprint phone. If I want to skip the instructions, I just hit 1. (actually, I hit 1,1, because I also don't care what the caller's number was unless I don't recognize the voice)
That's not "mandatory." That's just "sensible default." You don't know the rules? just listen. You do know them? just barge through.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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)?
"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.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
As someone who has also followed these events over the years, I congratulate you on being one of the observant ones. These elite bastards are blatant about their plans, yet most people claim this is just conspiracy theory. Well, it is a conspiracy, and no theory to it, it is just plain fact, and they want a global two class society of masters and slaves. That is their ultimate goal and they are pretty close to pulling it off now. They already are running a lot of nations this way. They keep the middle classes they constantly ripoff distracted with their ludicrous "vote" and allegedly different parties. These people by and large refuse to see they are made impotent serfs through the central bank "debt" trap along with taxes. You can never be out of "debt" to them, ever. They own you and all your stuff.
There is only one political party most places, the globalist New World Order corporate party. They may have two or more wings they push in public, but that is as far as "different" goes. They always push a small handful of carefully groomed and selected "candidates" (properly bought and paid for over long time periods by combinations of bribery and blackmail), so that they are assured a win every election, no matter the party label next to the name. Candidates who are not adequately under their control get either ignored, or demonized in their press. And in the background, the real rulers keep issuing their orders and getting their agendas met.
Can he take on the setting for the number of rings before my cell phone rolls to voice mail? It is cunningly set by the carrier to give me just enough time to dig the phone out of my pocket, orient it, and position my finger to accept the call, before it rolls to voicemail while I shout "Hello, Hello!?" into the depths of the restaurant or movie theater I'm currently at.
It used to be, in the days of Yore, that you could choose the number of rings, but I haven't seen that option in a decade.
KeS
At least with Sprint (which I have), you can set your account to skip the instructions and act like an answering machine--your greeting, then a beep. Maybe people should check their voicemail systems (perhaps, even RTFM that came with your phone) before commenting.
This is what I don't like about the modding system. Someone can spout a complete lie and people will mod them up for it, and they never have to support their lie with FACTS. I had thought the /. community was smarter than that, but I stand corrected.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Reading comprehension much? It's honestly hard to believe that you didn't read the summary nor the hundred comments before you posted yours that the minutes used up are from people who are leaving voicemails.
It's not that other countries don't have corruption, but other countries don't see themselves as "leaders of the free world".
The hypocrisy is almost worse than the corruption.
Welcome, most excellent first post.
most of these you can skip to the beep right away by hitting pound at any time after the mail system picks up
Please tag this article: justpressone
My voicemail instructions include the note "press one to leave a message" and then plays music, which requires the caller to learn their way out of this trap.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
When you have Google Voice, T-Mobile & a Blackberry, you can forward all of your voicemails to your Google Voice account. From there, you can screen, block, etc all of your calls. In the Blackberry setup menus for T-Mobile subscribers there is a setting to change the voicemail service's default phone number.
I changed my T-Mobile default voicemail number to my Google Voice number, and now cellular life is great! I get an email every time I receive a voicemail, and I can play back voicemail on a computer or landline without incurring any airtime.
I administer all of my blocked caller lists, etc, in Google Voice and have customized greetings for all of my friends and family. It totally unnerves them when my recording greets them personally by name!
I can send unknown callers to voicemail on the fly, and then listen in while they leave a message.
I don't know if the same settings exist for other cellphone platforms or service providers, but I want to experiment and see if plugging my Blackberry's T-Mobile SIM card into an unlocked iPhone would retain this functionality - it should.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Go into your Blackberry call log, then hit the Blackberry menu key (one with 7 dots on it), goto options, then call forwarding.
Set FORWARD ALL CALLS to DO NOT FORWARD.
Set FORWARD UNANSWERED CALLS for BUSY / NO REPLY / NOT REACHABLE to your Google Voice number!
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Sprint allows this, and I think AT&T does as well. Don't know about the others. Elapsed time of my message? < 3 secs
"you know what to do" <beep>
If you can't afford an additional 15 seconds, perhaps you simply can't afford a cell phone, idiots. No one NEEDS a cell phone. We got along JUST FINE without them for almost 100 years. No one NEEDS voice mail either. I have family members who have neither, and we get ahold of them when we truly need to, just fine...
+++OK ATH