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

Re:Ridiculous

[Chibi Merrow]

Dick Cheney and no-bid contracts for Halliburton

Halliburton was a no-bid supplier for the US Military since the early Clinton Administration, if not before then. Dick Cheney had nothing to do with it. Thanks for putting that tidbit of idiocy at the beginning and saving me the trouble of reading the rest of your dribble.