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Why doesn't Verizon Wireless allow me to turn off the user instructions that play after my voice mail greeting?

I am amazed and annoyed that Verizon Wireless still does not have a way for me to turn off the innocuous, unnecessary and ridiculous user instructions at the end of my mobile voice mail greeting. I just called customer service to ask, and the rep said it's not an option.

Is it a money grab to get millions of customers to pay for more minutes while the message plays? I can't imagine that it is because I NEVER exceed my voice mail minutes like I did in the "old days."

Why, for decades didn't the Bell systems, and GTE before Verizon not insist on playing post-greeting instructions when we used their in-house voice mail on POTS? WHY do you insist on keeping the stupid little instructional greeting for mobile customers? Do you want people to know that a particular phone number is a mobile number and not a land line? Do you think land line customers won't know how to leave a message on a mobile phone? Do you think mobile customers are less intelligent and therefore cannot be trusted to leave their own greetings?

It's stupid, and I'm still mad as hell about the pointless waste of time. It's MY freakin' greeting, dammit. And my mobile is now my ONLY phone, which is now the trend in phone service. I don't need anyone to tell my callers what to do when they call me. It's kind of my right, you know, to say whatever I want to people who dial my number and want to leave a message. Like it was when I had a cassette tape answering machine.

Join me in reviving David Pogue’s “Take Back the Beep” campaign.

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/the-mandatory-15-second-voicemail-instructions/

Comments

Patience_Gone

Dude...relax and chill out. Ever heard of Hullomail? Check it out. You don't like Verizon's voice mail, use another vm service. You have options. Call Forward Busy No Answer is on your phone free so that you can manage your own voicemail and have it go whereever you want.

rcschnoor

In more and more situations, society is doing things with the lowest common denominator in mind. This is no different.

This is being force fed by the government in many instances. In others, companies are simply trying to get ahead of government regulations requiring it to be the norm.

Altruistic_1

Yeah, I don't think it's a money issue...especially since their current plans include unlimited minute use. It may be more that that's just the way the system is set up and not everyone understands or knows how voicemail works. It could also be that you're one of very few complaining about it, hence the majority wins. It's never bothered me as it's always been there.

It's true that you don't have to use Verizon's voicemail service. I use Google Voice myself. It let's me create multiple greetings, even for specific people. It also allows you to choose an alternate number to reach your phone on case you have a situation where you don't want to give out your personal number. You should give it a shot. You can find out more about it at http://voice.google.com.

LCannon

I absolutely agree with you. I think if the phone owner needs to leave instructions for his callers, he can do that on his own time. My callers don't need to waste their time on instructions. They all have dealt with technology before. These Verizon instructions are especially tedious and long. I will look into Google Voice Mail

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