How to skip that stupid message

[Micky]

OT where off-topic Prohibited where void.

Well this was worthy of a thread of its own.

It turns out that each carrier offers a ?bypass the instructions? keystroke that takes you directly to the beep. (It bypasses both the person?s own recorded greeting and the 15-second carrier nonsense.)

To be as evil as possible, the carriers do not promote or tell you about the existence of this keystroke. Furthermore, the key to press is different with each company:

• for Verizon

1 for Sprint

# for AT&T

# for T-Mobile

Every time you dial a number, you?d have to know which carrier that person uses. Which is, of course, impossible.

[ I just tried it for my AT&T phone and it worked. I might add Press # to skip the message, to my message. I'll have to time their message to know if it's worth it ]

And you can?t just press *-1-# in a row, hoping to cover all bases?because if you press the wrong keystroke for the wrong carrier, you wind up boxed into that system?s voicemail menus.

If you?re clever, though, you can do the ?one-star-pound? method recommend by this blogger:

STEP ONE. Press 1. If it?s Sprint, you get the beep, and you?re done. If you hear an error recording, go on:

STEP TWO. Press *. If it?s Verizon, you get the beep. If not:

STEP THREE: Push #. You get the beep for T-Mobile or Cingular.

You have to pause after each one, and you have to keep listening. But it?s one small way to fight back. Remember: One Star Pound.

Tomorrow in my e-mail column, I?ll offer a more sweeping suggestion. (Sign up at nytimes.com/email.)

Update | 11:17 p.m. AT&T?s Mark Seigel has asked that complaint messages be sent to a different e-mail address, provided below.

Update | 7:50 p.m. Will England of Sprint says the company has now created a brand-new customer forum dedicated to this topic.

Update | 5:19 p.m. T-Mobile had deleted hundreds of complaints on this topic from its forum, and even blocked any new messages containing the word ?beep.? But it has now created a new forum just for complaints on this topic, linked below.

Over the past week, in The New York Times and on my blog, I?ve been ranting about one particularly blatant money-grab by American 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.

• Sprint: ?[Phone number] is not available right now. Please leave a detailed message after the tone. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press pound for more options.?

• Verizon: ?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)?

• AT&T: ?To page this person, press five now. At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished, you may hang up, or press one for more options.?

• T-Mobile: ?Record your message after the tone. To send a numeric page, press five. When you are finished recording, hang up, or for delivery options, press pound.?

(You hear a similar message when you call in to hear your own messages. ?You. Have. 15. Messages. To listen to your messages, press

1.? WHY ELSE WOULD I BE CALLING?)

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.

[UPDATE: Apple iPhone owners don?t hear these instructions?Apple insisted that AT&T remove them. And Sprint already DOES let you turn off the instructions message, although it?s a buried, multi-step procedure, which you can read in the comments below.]

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.

Right now, the carriers continue to enjoy their billion-dollar scam only because we?re not organized enough to do anything about it. But it doesn?t have to be this way. You don?t have to sit there, waiting to leave your message, listening to a speech recorded by a third-grade teacher on Ambien.

Let?s push back, and hard. We want those time-wasting, money-leaking messages eliminated, or at least made optional.

I asked my Twitter followers for help coming up with a war cry, a slogan, to identify this campaign. They came up with some good ones:

?Where?s the Beep??

?Let it Beep?

?We Know. Let?s Go.?

?Lose the Wait?

?My Voicemail, My Recording?

?Hell, no, we won?t hold!?

My favorite, though, is the one that sounds like a call to action: ?Take Back the Beep.?

And here?s how we?re going to do it.

We?re going to descend, en masse, on our carriers. Send them a complaint, politely but firmly. Together, we?ll send them a LOT of complaints.

If enough of us make our unhappiness known, I?ll bet they?ll change.

I?ve told each of the four major carriers that they?ll be hearing from us. They?ve told us where to send the messages:

• Verizon: Post a complaint here:

• AT&T: Send e-mail to: [e-mail].

• Sprint: Post a complaint here:

• T-Mobile: Post a complaint here:

Three of the four carriers are just directing us to their general Web forums. Smells like a cop-out, I know.

Yet all four carriers promise that they?ll read and consider our posts. And we have two things going for us.

First, I have a feeling that the volume of complaints will be too big for them to ignore. To that end, I hope you?ll pass these instructions along, blog them, Twitter them, and spread the word. (Gizmodo, Engadget, Consumerist and others have agreed to help out.) And I hope you?ll take the time to complain yourself. Do it now, before you forget.

Second, we?ll all be watching. I?ll be reporting on the carriers? responses. If they ignore us, we?ll shame them. If they respond, we?ll celebrate them.

Either way, it?s time to rise up. It?s time for this crass, time-wasting money-grab to end for good.

[gfretwell]

Cool, I will try it. Most of my people are Verison so I will start with *

[Paintedcow]

Does anyone know a way to skip the "old voicemails" when I retrieve my current voicemail? In other words, I get a voicemail, and want to hear it, but first I have to listen to all my old (Saved) voicemails, first. (Most annoying). I often save old voicemail because it contains a phone number, directions, or other info that I will need at a later time, because I did not have a pen and paper handy when I received it.

I dont know why these idiots that provide the voicemail, can not play the NEW voicemail FIRST!!!!

[nospam]

visual voicemail.

most do.

[DerbyDad03]

On Wednesday, June 29, 2016 at 12:34:05 PM UTC-4, [e-mail] wro te:

-instructions/?_r=0

What carrier? Verizon lets you listen to new first, then saved. Heck, even my home answering machine plays the new ones first, as does my work voicema il. I've never heard of it being done any other way.

[Micky]

I don't get many phone calls but I think AT&T does play them first.

There's a way to get your voice mail from a real phone, you know, the one in your home, by dialing your cell number, and not answering or punching in a punch through number, and some password, but I never got straight what password was mine.

[Paintedcow]

I never knew about getting the voicemails on my home phone. I assume the password is the same I use on the cell. I'll have to try it.

I was told my Tracfone uses Verison around here. I am not 100% sure about that though.

[Micky]

That was a problem. I couldn't remember any password, and then I thought I changed it, and also I confused it with the password for my GoPhone account webpage, or maybe it was the same. I'm just so confused.

My bank every time I call wants to know my visual password, or something like that, and it's my mother's maiden name, which I'm sure I picked from a list of possible qustions and answers and the list never referred to a visual? password, but all the people who answer the phone for the bank call it a password and none know that on the web it was called something else.

[The Real Bev]

I have to turn my phone off, otherwise the call just goes to my phone and I have to refuse it blablabla. Call from the home phone, push * as soon as "she" answers and then feed in my password when asked. They're almost always spammers so I'm glad I didn't waste a dime (or whatever) using the cell to hear the message.

[Micky]

What phone company is this?

For me it's $2 each day I use the phone and the previous phone kept calilng in for messages even when I didn't tell it too, as soon as the phone got turned on.. It sure seemed that way. This one hasn't called in yet, and I left a message myself a few days ago.

OTOH, this new phone has the on/off on the side, right opposite the volumen buttons, and I have to learn not to push on one or both of them when I turn the phone on. The silicone cover makes it a little harder and longer to turn the phone on, I think.

[The Real Bev]

T-Mobile. I'd assume other providers offer a similar, if differently enabled, service.

If you don't normally expect phone calls, why not just turn the 'phone' part off until you actually want to use it? I only want to receive cell calls when I'm away from home. Anybody who calls me on the cell when they don't know I'm not home is by definition a spammer.

Curses. It's becoming less and less painful to use "they" as the third-person singular pronoun :-(

Likewise. I think I move my finger to the top and slide it down to the button. My silicone cover is day-glo green so it's easier to find and harder to stuff into/slip out of a pocket.

[DerbyDad03]

Would you mind explaining that statement?

[tlvp]

Sounds like what Page Plus has me do ... except it's not * but # , and the pass-PIN requested is also to be followed by a # .

T-Mobile *used* to use a universal 1-nnn-MESSAGE number, that would prompt you for your T-Mobile number and pass-PIN, and then read you your messages. And no, I don't remember what area code the "nnn" was.

Cheers, -- tlvp

[nospam]

they still do.

805

[Micky]

I still remember what the codes were to get the phone to ring back in

1962. Installers and repairmen used to to show that the phone was working, but sick or lazy people could use it to call downstairs or wherever there was an extension.

I spent years trying to find out what the code was after 1975.

But in the late 50's and 60's it was 1197 and sometimes 1191. At least in my part of the country.

[Micky]

I dind't know you could do that!

Could you also do it with Android 2.4.n?

Somehow my good friend's landlady (and friend) got my cell phone and left me a message that I didn't get for weeks. Now my message says, Hi, this is nnn-nnn-nnnn. I can go months without using my phone so don't leave a message unless you know I'm going to be checking.

I think that will work.

That is a problem. How do you feel about "he"?

This is a black phone that came with a black cover. How boring, and it will be hard to find some day. Plus it probably gets hot in the sunlight. I found another cover that also works as an easel in both portrait and landscape, but the current cover is rubbery enough that it works pretty well leaning against something.

[Micky]

I checked. Yes, it does. Then it offers to play the ones you just deleted. I ddint' have any old ones, ones I saved earlier, but I'm still sure it plays new ones first.

New ones since the last time I listened to them.

It might play the oldest of the new ones first. Is that what you meant??

Probably does. Otherwise it could be very confusing, but by playing the most recent ones last, the final thing you hear is what was said last on the topic.

**Is that what you meant?

[Micky]

Actually, I was mistaken, sort of. You can use the same procedure from any phone that's not your cell phone. Instructions for AT&T at the end.

I doubt it, but maybe. I don't have a password to get into my cell. I do have one to get into the webpage associated with my account, that says how much money is in it, and I was surprised tonight to find out that it uses the same password as retrieving messages. For 10 years or more, I've been wrestling between two numbers, thinking one was for one thing and one the other, but I never did both things in a row before!!

I find it had to believe I would have to use this same number for a third thing, as the password for my phone.

Only a few companies have their own towers and antennas. After that it's a hullabaloo.

Call voicemail from another phone to check messages

Before you begin Know your voicemail password

If you don?t know it, learn how to reset your voicemail password. Main steps Access voicemail from another phone Accessing your voicemail from another phone is handy when you don't have your wireless phone with you or when outside a coverage area.

[Or when you want to save money.]

To check your voicemail messages from another phone:

Call your 10-digit wireless number. When you hear your personal voicemail greeting, press the * key to interrupt it. If you reach the main voicemail system greeting, enter your

10-digit wireless phone number, then interrupt your greeting by pressing the * key. Enter your voicemail password when prompted. Follow the voice prompts to listen to your messages.

Additional steps View message playback options While listening to your messages, you have the following menu options:

To rewind 10 seconds, press 1. To rewind to beginning, press 11. To skip ahead 10 seconds, press 3. To skip to end of message, press 33. To delete message, press 7. Don?t hang up if you accidentally delete a message. To recover deleted messages, press 1, then press 9. To save message, press 9. To skip message, press #. To replay message, press 0, then press 4. To hear more options, press 0. To return to the Main menu, press *.

They don't mention the first 4 above on the phone, I don't think. And I think it's better to have them in this list than have to remember them on the fly.

This is AT&T, don't know about other companies. There should be federal regulation to make the command numbers the same so one can change cell phone providers easily.

That was humor.

[Micky]

I tried it last night and after it rang 4 times at my phone, the voicemail answered, I pushed * and it asked for my code, and then it gave me my messages.

There is one junk call which has called 3 times, and it even has a 410 area code. This time the message was blank, and the other two were test messages from me. I'm glad I didn't spend $2 to hear them.

I think this time I'll finally remembe how to do get my messages from another phone.

Next reply to this post is differnt.

[KenK]

Micky wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I seem to remember that you could call your own number long ago - 50s?

40s? -I seem to remember dialing it, then hanging up, and it would ring. But that may not be right, because I don't recall that we had dial phones then? Can't remember when dials started and too lazy to Google.