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Take Back the Beep
Aug. 3, 2009 — Last week, New York Times’ technology expert David Pogue exposed a time-waster that could cost cell-phone customers more than a billion dollars a year: mandatory 15-second voicemail instructions.
Every time a caller leaves a message on your cell phone, they not only get to hear your greeting, but they also have to sit through 15 seconds of monotonous instructions. For example, if you call someone with Verizon, you’ll hear their personal message followed by: “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).” Those 15 seconds of air time don’t come free. Pogue estimates that Verizon customers pay roughly $620 million a year to listen to the instructions, assuming they leave or listen to messages two times a day, on average. Back in 2007, Pogue wrote about a conversation he had in which a cell-phone executive actually admitted these lengthy messages are designed to pad the company’s bottom line. That’s why Pogue launched the “Take Back the Beep” campaign to eliminate or at least make the instructions optional. Tell your cell-phone carrier that you know what to do at the beep, and you’re sick and tired of wasting time and money listening to the same message over and over again all year long. Help take back your beep by contacting your cell carrier at the following links: * Post a Verizon complaint here. * Send AT&T an e-mail here. * Post a Sprint complaint here. (Note: Sprint also has a statement from its "Voicemail Guy.") * Post a T-Mobile complaint here. * Post a U.S. Cellular complaint here. |