VZW insists on 10 rings before voicemail?

[MCL777]

I called customer service to change my new phone's number of rings before voicemail picks up.  Callers have to wait through ten rings before they can leave a message.  That's not right but VZW told me it cannot be changed.  I find that hard to believe.  I want to cut the number of rings from ten to five.  Ten is just too many.  Anyone else have this issue and was told the number of rings can't be changed?

[tikibar1 · Accepted solution]

It's set by the system at roughly 30 seconds.

[sprmankalel]

None of my callers has ever told me that the phone rings too many times before they can leave a message.

In fact, if they don't want to listen to the phone ring, they can just send me a text message.

There are more important things to worry about than how many times the phone rings before voicemail picks up.

Honestly, you can enable Do Not Disturb on any smartphone and calls will go right to VM and then they won't have to listen to it ring. Or is this all because you don't want to listen to it for 30 seconds before the VM answers?

[MCL777]

tikibar1 - yes, that's how the VZW rep described it.  30 seconds is too long but apparently it can't be changed.  That's what I was asking about.  Thank you.

sprmankalel - Landline callers cannot text.  As far as importance, that's your opinion.  Respond only to posts you deem important.  As for me not wanting to listen for 30 seconds until my voicemail picks up, I don't call myself and leave voicemails.  Do Not Disturb also unhelpful. Need at least a few rings to answer a call.

[SuzyQ]

I just called two of the cell phones on my account, deliberately not answering and allowing the calls to go to voicemail.  Calling one phone, I heard 5 ring sounds before the voicemail message began, the other I heard 5.5 (it cut in halfway through the 6th ring) from the callers side.  On the receiving phone, I have a ringtone that is a song, and it played the chorus one time before it stopped and the voicemail took over.  The other phone  I called it played the ringtone chime on the called phone 4 times before voicemail cut in on the calling phone.

I agree that ten seems excessive, and as a caller I would probably hang up if I got more than 7 or 8 ring sounds with no voicemail kicking in.  But I'm not seeing that  - the classic ring sound from the old landline days that you hear when calling someone only sounds 5 or 6 at the most for me.  Or perhaps you are speaking of the "rings" that you hear on YOUR end as the called party?  A different ringtone in this case might help.

In any case, the 30 seconds has been chosen by Verizon and is not adjustable.  Some, like you, feel it is too long before VM kicks in.  Others have asked that it be lengthened as it takes them longer to get to their phone.  I just accept it as is; people will either wait to leave me a voicemail, or they will contact me another way. 

[Weth]

MCL777 wrote:

Respond only to posts you deem important.

I also get 5.5 rings before voice mail answer - 30 seconds. It helps to not exaggerate the problem. Unfortunately it is set at that 30 second time frame and is not adjustable. There is nothing that can be done at this point except make the point you did.

This is an public forum and anyone is welcome to respond to any post. Please don't indicate who can and cannot respond to any post, that is not how it works. Otherwise you only get answers you want to hear, rather than the actual truth.