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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.
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.
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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.
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
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)?
Mothers.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, it struck me as a 'big scary number' style calculation.
I bet the amount people 'overpay' by using basket style contracts is even huger.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Just mash all the buttons to be sure. The worst that can happen is you beep back at the person for beeping at you. It'd serve them right anyways.
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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...
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.
Stupid me for replying to an AC... Those of us who have Pay as you go cellphones (that's the ONLY flippin' way I'd have one..) care a whole damn lot about that 15 seconds of b.s... As we pay .18/min (VirginMobileUSA PAYG).. That wastes 15 seconds that I *could* be leaving my message, instead I have to listen to that crap......
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
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.
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?
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!
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I know of exactly one, it was not no-bid, in fact their competitor (Dyncorp)won the bid, but it was awarded to KBR because changing contractors would be too expensive. To say this equates with trumping up an aggressive war and awarding the VAST MAJORITY of all contracts (even performing tasks that they never performed before, which they subsequently sub-contracted to great detriment of the soldiers and civilians of Iraq) to Haliburton / KBR et al is disengenuous and a perfect example of right wing empty rhetoric. You may not have known it was a right wing LIE, but SOMEONE down the line knew it was, and yet spread it to all the right wingers who never bother to fact check their so-called 'sources' like Lush Bimbo and Michael the savage Weiner.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Yeah, a "certain percentage" being about 25%. If you tack an extra 15 seconds onto 100 calls of otherwise random length, you will use 25 extra minutes of airtime.
And don't get me started on Verizon's new "please enjoy the music while your party is contacted", so that you get charged while their phone is *RINGING*..
How do you know?
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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.
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visit randi.org
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