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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.
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.
Many Europeans actually get 5 weeks paid vacation ... just sayin'
Instructions that I posted here:
http://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/20563
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
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.
No, you'd get billed for 120 minutes. It rounds up, not down.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
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.
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.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
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...
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.
sudo mod me up
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.
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.
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.
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/
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