David Pogue launches all-out war on canned voicemail messages
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted Jul 30th 2009 1:04PM
posted Jul 30th 2009 1:04PM
At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press 1 for more options. To leave a callback number, press 5. (Beep)Not only is Pogue mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it about the ridiculous idea that we still need to be told how to use voicemail, it turns out those additional messages are actually costing you cold, hard cash. He estimates that Verizon, for instance, is netting around $620 million a year thanks to these little annoyances. So what's to be done? Well Pogue wants the citizens of the internet to take up virtual arms... and complain like nobody's business. He's wrangled together all the best contact points for the four largest carriers in the US (included for your convenience after the break). Let them know you know don't want to pay for voicemail instructions. And hey, while you're at it, tell them the price-gouging on text messages needs to go, too.
Verizon: Post a complaint here.
AT&T: Send e-mail to Mark Siegel, executive director of media relations: MS8460@att.com.
Sprint: Post a complaint here.
T-Mobile: Post a complaint here.
I'm in. (mostly for the text messages)
In emailing Mark Siegel, you get an automated vacation email reply... With a phone number to another guy. Heh.
no shit i always thought we was just giving them more cash every time i leave a message for someone. and TEXTING IS OUT OF THIS WORLD WAY TOO HIGH. I read in a article in either popular science or some other tech mag that says every 500 texts you send is only 1min of total airtime on the cell network but they still seem to find a reason to charge you a arm n a leg to use texting. THATS BS or is it...? cuz we are the ones that are stupid enough to pay for it, so i guess with texting its a lil on both sides to why its still a high priced feature. but its time now people to take these companies on!!!! LETS FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm complaining about texting also.
In China texting cost about .1 Yuan per msg which equals about 2 cents USD.
what about world hunger?
I found some instructions for turning these instructions off for Sprint's voicemail.
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
6. Then press 2 to disable them.
I hate this also. And despite the fact that it takes about 10 seconds to turn off, most people don't do it or realize it.
thanks for the instructions! Now the only thing I have to bitch about is texting but im really not being gouged by that because of discounts from Home Depot so I just saved a bunch of people minutes by deactivating my message!
I just called T-Mobile support. we are not as lucky as Sprint. I was told there is no way to turn off/disable these prompts. I asked the girl if she thought most people would know how to leave a msg. without instructions like these. she laughed and said she thought they probably would.
@OneLove
You're always so good at bringing us back to reality!
Even if cell phone carriers get pressured to the point where they cancel carrier messages all they will do is raise plan rates to make up the difference.
Even better:
I always press 3 to skip straight to the beep. Work most times (especially ATT numbers). Sometimes you get an error, but you gotta try.
i'm in for the sake of camaraderie (since i'm using Gvoice now). But seriously, cell phone companies are in the business of ripping off customers. They make us sit and listen to this crap, and then hit us w/ all the same garbage when we go to listen to the voicemail. U would think that years ago cell phone companies would have set up their systems so that you could actually access your voicemail online. Transcribing, w/e...thats a huge difference, but being able to log onto your account, and simply listen to your voicemail through the web isn't really a huge technological feat.
and dont even get me started on the swindling of text messages. how just about all major all the major carriers were able to simultaneously jack their prices up from .10 a message to .20 (w/out the cost of delivering the messages going up) w/ out getting big time investigated is beyond me. that is truly americans getting ripped off.
i dont wanna harp about goog voice anymore than i have, but i'm really hoping that in the coming months/years (if it really takes off) it will help keep the big telecomm companies honest. because honestly, they're simply raping us (especially you att...i hate your guts)
"You have one unheard message, first unheard message, this message has not been heard...."
FUCK VOICEMAIL
always wondered who that lady is anyway, like thanks to geico i now know who does the movie voice overs. but the voicemail lady remains shroud in mystery
did*
I'm pretty sure he died within the last year
Yeah he was Don LaFontaine, famous for the "In A World" voiceovers. Checkit: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=358659 (excuse the myspaciness...)
Here's better quality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQRtuxdfQHw
I hate them too, but I think the $$ made have declined drastically since most people have so many minutes. Back in the day when minutes were pricey, I think the canned messages helped to increase revenue, but today I would think it's a drop in the bucket.
I'M MAD AS HELL, AND IM NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!
I gotta agree with Mile. That $620m number sounds like the same kind of account the RIAA uses to calculate its loses from bit torrenting!
PPS: David Pogue is always whining about something.
I think $620 million is a high estimate. But by counting the time to connect, the time spent ringing, the voicemail greeting "This is John Gomers, I'm not here, plese leave a message" and the 15 second greeting, you force an unanswered call to last longer than one minute, which could nearly double a persons "call time", forcing them to purchase a larger plan.
I'm with mile also.
I have so many unused minutes it's ridiculous. With ATT they roll over and I keep unused for over a year.
Also, my mom and boss are the only to people ever to leave me a voice mail. Most people that call me just hang up before the voice mail because they'll know I'll see the missed call. If it's really important they'll follow up with a text message.
Kyle: We're not gonna take it. No! We're not gonna take it. No we ain't take it... anymore.
Agreed. In my situation, I set my plan at a number of limits that I don't go over. Even if I were spending an extra 15 minutes/month because of these "outrageous" voicemail directions, my bill would reflect no change. In fact, my carrier would be in effect giving me 15 minutes/month they wouldn't otherwise I have (decreasing the carrier's ARPU). I think most people are probably in the same situation.
In an attempt to make sense of the $620M, I have tried to do the math, and it comes out to $0.0000169/minute (with some assumptions). Obviously, if you go over your plan's limit, you spend more than that on overage minutes. Let's say they cost you $0.10/minute. In that case, if 20% of the 70M subscribers would have to get 15 minutes of overage minutes to make up that $620M - doesn't seem all that realistic to me. Throw in prepaid, pay-as-you-go, and tweak the rate, it could be possible.
Another area to check out would be the company's access fees. Maybe they are charging access fees on their network that gives them some sort of incentive to have customers using more minutes. Typically, though, wireless carriers have fought to lower those access fees, because they are usually paying them, so that doesn't seem to make much sense.
I think we should start a massive complaint campaign to Mr. Pogue asking documentation on his numbers. Or somebody could just give him a call...
I hate it when it won't let me just input my voicemail password. If I do it to early it gives me an invalid password error and I have to wait even longer.
Store your password on your speed dial for your voicemail
agreed
I gotta admit, those messages bug the hell out of me too. The "To leave a callback number, press 5." really annoys me for some reason - let me leave my damn message already and move on!
Most carriers allow you to bypass that message by pressing 1 on the keypad. Then you hear the beep to leave the message
what's really annoying is... what freakin' cell phone doesn't have caller ID?
now if the phone is turned off or has no reception, and the caller goes straight to voicemail... well then I can see why you would need to leave a callback number via text.
but yeah, I'm with you and everyone else. 6 years ago AT&T did not charge for texts received, just charged for sendign (around 10 cents I think). since then it has gone to 20 cents to send or receive.
Or people could go to the voicemail settings and turn this off. Just sayin'.
Start the trend...post a how to for your carrier.
I'm pretty sure that on Verizon Wireless I set it to have "reduced options" or something similar, and all it did was get rid of the callback message - it still says "At the tone please record your message, when you have finished recording you may hang up or press one for more options. [pause] [beep]."
This would be great! I've run through all of the options on AT&T and can't get that message to go away... wonder how much money I've wasted...
in @ tmobile, for me. oh there are so many things I'd love to complain about US carriers, but we gotta start somewhere....
yo
While he's at it, he should also attack the "Please listen closely as our menu has changed." Automated attendants' menus are forever changing and that message has become all too common.
Sprint lets you turn these annoying and pointless messages off, don't know about ATT etc.
agreed Sprint should be removed from this list as it allows you to remove this canned message. It's not their fault people don't do it.
Verizon does as well, and I'd bet AT&T and T-Mobile do, too. It would be nice if anybody bothered doing a little research before complaining about trivial things like this.
Can't you just hit # and go right to the beep? Works for me on AT&T at least
Yep, I think for Verizon it's *.
on sprint, it's 1.
And the first thing Sprint says is how to bypass, "to leave a voice message, press 1" The fact that people are in an uproar about this is lame to me. I bet if they removed this message people would be pissed that when they call someone the beep comes too fast and they are not ready to leave a message. How about we yell at wireless phone companies for raping us with overage charges, expensive pricing plans, crappy customer service, crappy devices, etc. For all these reasons I have moved to Sprint because they are now, in my opinion, the best in all areas.
Works on T-Mobile too.
Most carriers let you hit "1" to jump straight to the tone
and very few of them advertise that fact. i, for one, never knew * worked on verizon, or that my friends could turn off the stupid outgoing message. in a world where most people never learned to set the clock on a VCR, this is a callous and deceitful way to make a buck. i'd like to add that if you travel outside your coverage area, every call to your voicemail costs you long distance roaming, even if it goes to voicemail. say what you want about pogue, he has a lot of readers, and i'm glad he's stirring up trouble.
Does it cost $0.20 to send/receive a SMS messages on all of the carriers? Is that "market demand" or is that "price fixing?"
That I know of, it cost 20c on all major US carriers(smaller carriers vary). Some have more fair plans than others, but the stock price for a text message is 20c. Sprint gives me 200 text messages with my data plan, which I promptly ignore because I use IM which is data which is unlimited with no overage.