Take Back the Beep Campaign (Against Time-Wasting Voicemail Messages)

// added July 31, 2009 // 7 comments //
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JamesAJanisse

more from Tech:

http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2009/07/30/technology/circuitsemail/in...

"Last week, in The Times and on my blog, I've been ranting about one particularly blatant money-grab by U.S. cellphone carriers: the mandatory 15-second voicemail instructions.

Suppose you call my cell to leave me a message. First you hear my own voice: "Hi, it's David Pogue. Leave a message, and I'll get back to you"--and THEN you hear a 15-second canned carrier message.

I, the voicemailbox owner, cannot turn off this additional greeting message. You, the caller, can bypass it, but only if you know the secret keypress--and it's different for each carrier. So you'd have to know which cellphone carrier I use, and that of every person you'll ever call; in other words, this trick is no solution.

These messages are outrageous for two reasons. First, they waste your time. Good heavens: it's 2009. WE KNOW WHAT TO DO AT THE BEEP.

Do we really need to be told to hang up when we're finished!? Would anyone, ever, want to "send a numeric page?" Who still carries a pager, for heaven's sake? Or what about "leave a callback number?" We can SEE the callback number right on our phones!

Second, we're PAYING for these messages. These little 15-second waits add up--bigtime. If Verizon's 70 million customers leave or check messages twice a weekday, Verizon rakes in about $620 million a year. That's your money. And your time: three hours of your time a year, just sitting there listening to the same message over and over again every year.

In 2007, I spoke at an international cellular conference in Italy. The big buzzword was ARPU--Average Revenue Per User. The seminars all had titles like, "Maximizing ARPU In a Digital Age." And yes, several attendees (cell executives) admitted to me, point-blank, that the voicemail instructions exist primarily to make you use up airtime, thereby maximizing ARPU."

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More at the link, including email addresses and complaint forums to post at for carriers to complain about this ridiculous and annoying rule of thumb for mobile voicemails. They're really the reason I tell people not to leave me voicemails, because I hate going through all that garbage.
  1. groups:
    Tech,   Upstream,   Max and Jason: Still Up
  2. tags:
    Tech,  Cell Phones,  AT&T,  Consumers

7 comments // Take Back the Beep Campaign (Against Time-Wasting Voicemail Messages)

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