Annoying voicemail messages

[dennis in se pa]

I am so tired of hearing the same boring, time wasting, minutes eating machine voicemail message that is left after the person's personal voicemail message. I called AT&T to see if I can turn it off for my cell number and that is not an option!! These messages are worthless and just serve to waste cell phone time. Does anyone know how to stop them?

[widgeon13]

Are you talking about:

Press 1 for Spanish
Press 2 for French
Press 3 for latin.........
Press 4 for Ubangie

[Danny_Ocean]

I've been crying "conspiracy" for years on this subject. You can try to leave a quick message, but by the time you listen to all the "press 1, press 2, press 3", options for delivery, etc., you are over a minute (which means you are billed for 2 mins.). Did you ever notice they don't say "press # to deliver the message" first? The option to deliver the message is always the last item on the list. Why not put this first (as I'm sure it is the most common request), or make all carriers use uniform commands? It's "press 1" to deliver message on some systems, while others say "press #" or even "press 7"...

I know, I know...some non-technical people are going to chime in and say you can just hang up and the message will go thru, but on occasion, you need to mark the message "urgent", so you are forced to listen to the commands from that particular carrier in order to know which key/combination of keys to press.

I smell class-action lawsuit!

[Porsche-O-Phile]

I can't stand voicemail in general. 99% of them are simply so-and-so saying "umm. . . duh. . . I couldn't reach you so I'm leaving this message". Well no schit. When I look at my "missed calls" later, I'll see that I missed a call from you and can then decide to call you back.

The voicemail accomplishes very little that a simple "missed calls" indicator cannot. Maybe 1 in 10 of the ones I get have any meaningful content and save me having to call the other party back to discuss something anyway.

Total wastes of time, IMHO.

[dennis in se pa]

I am talking about the ones on personal phones. I can't turn it off on my own cell phone. I can't turn it off on my office system's voicemail either! After the personal message such as "This is Dennis. Sorry I can't answer the phone...." they force upon us - "If you would like to leave a message please wait for the tone. When you are finished you may press 2 for more options or hang up. Press 5 to leave a call back number" etc. What BS. We know what to do for voicemail. I believe the phone companies do this to eat up the minutes we pay for. We should be able to turn this off.

[Danny_Ocean]

Originally Posted by dennis in se pa

I believe the phone companies do this to eat up the minutes we pay for. We should be able to turn this off.

Well...we always don't know what to do, as each carrier has a different sequence in their menu's. They should all be uniform.

Sprint (my carrier) does have the option to toggle on/off "advanced menus", but I'm not sure if that pertains to the menus I hear when checking my voicemail or those the caller hears. I'll have to screw with it later and see...

[rammstein]

Dennis- your Avatar keeps me from getting my work done. Change it

[dennis in se pa]

A little more research reveals that I can tell people to press"#" during my message to leave a message - that works with AT&T to go right to the beep. "*" works on some other networks.

[dennis in se pa]

re: my avatar - if those could be MY HANDS I would never get any work done!