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.

Comments

Self-made "leave a message"

[blind biker]

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".