• Cut To The Chase - Getting To The Beep On Voicemail Immediately
Tuesday, November 13, 2007 at 08:00AM - WHAT: A way to save time, frustration and cell phone minutes
- WHY: Who wants to waste time or pay the carriers when you can easily bypass the system?
- COST: Zero - in fact, saves money for you and the people you call
I've spent a pretty good portion of my life working on things that involve standards. When I was CEO of the WAP Forum, for example, I traipsed around the world espousing the benefits of a standard that everyone would adhere to ultimately making it easier for people to access the Internet from their wireless devices. (Despite the bad rap that WAP - the Wireless Application Protocol - had for a while, it has served the industry well and provided a foundation for thousands of developers to help deliver content to cell phones around the world.) Think about standards for a simple thing like putting gas in your car - how cumbersome would it be if you need different gas stations for different brands of cars? Fords would need their own gas station, Chevys their own, BMWs their own, and so on. Not very conducive for creating a large market for cars in that scenario, is it?
Well, thankfully, there are standards in most things and we benefit from them every day. You can plug any kind of lamp, appliance, computer, recharger or anything else into a standard electrical outlet, for example, and they all work. The one place that standards don't seem to apply - and that drives me completely nuts - is in the world of voicemail.
Have you noticed that hardly any two voicemail systems work with the same key combinations? Some require you to press "3" to delete a message, some "7." Some want you to press "9" to save a message, others "3." Some let you delete a message before it plays completely through and others force you to fast-forward (using, of course, varying key combinations) before you can delete it. It's a shortcut-lovers nightmare and is designed, I'm convinced, to trap people into a comfort zone that makes changing their system undesirable.
This is particularly true of cell phone voice mail. All the systems work differently - Sprint uses different codes than Verizon, who uses different codes than AT&T, who uses different codes than T-Mobile. And the single most annoying part of these keystroke differences is the key required to skip immediately to the beep so that you can just leave a message instead of hearing someone's life story.
Now, don't get me wrong. I like hearing your voice instead of the robotic "You have reached the cell phone voicemail for 818.555.1212. Leave a message at the tone." What I don't like is being forced to listen to the same thing over and over again every time I get your voice mail. So I've done some investigating and have some tips and ideas for you if you're as neurotic as I am about these things.
The very first tip applies to all cell phone carriers: Do you really need to leave a voice mail at all?? At this point everyone knows that if they're phone is on and someone tries to call them without the phone being answered the "1 Missed Call" message appears on the screen and you can easily see who called. So why would anyone ever leave a message saying "Oh, hi, this is Scott. Please call me at 818.555.1212. Thanks."? This means that I have to spend time checking my voice mail, waste my cell phone minutes and take more time listening to a message that's telling me the same thing that I already know from the missed call list. Please, if you're calling me and you get my voice mail - just ignore it and hang up. I promise you'll get a call back from me.
Now that we've got my pet peeve out of the way, how do you "cut to the chase" (an old Hollywood term for getting to the most exciting part of the movie, or, more metaphorically, getting to the thing you want to see or hear most - very appropriate in this case) when you get someone's voice mail on their cell phone? It's pretty simple, actually... like a lot of things in life you just need to know what buttons to press.
Below are the codes that will skip all of the other pre-beep foo-rah and get you right to the point where you can leave your message. If you know some people who have phones from these carriers try this the next time you get their voicemail - once you have you'll never wait for their entire message again. If you've got other tips, corrections or additions, let me know.
- AT&T/Cingular - Press "1" (or "#", but I prefer "1" because it's consistent with many others) during the outgoing message (the part where the person you've called tells you to leave a message) to jump right to the beep.
- Verizon - Press "1" (or "*") to skip to the beep.
- Sprint - Press "1" to skip to the beep.
- T-Mobile - Press "#" to skip to the beep.
Finally, do your friends and business associates a favor - make your outgoing message brief and to the point. It shouldn't have to be any longer than five seconds. If it is, I suggest the following type of message:
"Hello. This is Scott Goldman. Press "1" at any time to jump directly to the beep.... Then blah blah blah..."
That way you've given people an exit strategy - they can listen to rest of your message, sales pitch, favorite song, children singing happy birthday to you or whatever - or choose to just do what they probably want to do, which is to just leave a message and hang up.
Reader Comments (13)
Can you tell me how I can avoid talking to someone and just go directly to their voicemail while their phone is on. I know people have done it, there phone never rings. It just beeps and says that they have a voicemail. I have verizon by the way.
Can you tell me how I can avoid talking to someone and just go directly to their voicemail while their phone is on. I know people have done it, there phone never rings. It just beeps and says that they have a voicemail. I have verizon by the way.
If you are a Verizon subscriber you can send a message to another Verizon subscriber by using the "Send Message" function in your voicemail. While you are listening to your voicemail you will have the opportunity to select other options such as administrative and "Messages." That is where you will find it - use that function to send a message or to create groups of people to whom you can send messages. The effect of this is like a text message - their phone doesn't ring, it just alerts them that a message has been dropped into their voicemail.
Hope this helps.
verizon wireless- bypass message with star * key. [1 is ineffective]
San Diego, for one, is not yet in sync with the entire verizon wireless subscriber system, certainly not with the SF bay area. Unable to reply to vm [8] received from San Diego area.
That really stinks. For a company that advertises nationwide coverage and the ability to take your phone anywhere you'd think that they would be consistent about their operations. There are some places (although it's rare) where AT&T has a similar problem, left as a legacy of the previous owner (McCaw, Dobson, etc.) but those are mostly in very rural areas. A market the size of San Diego should certainly be consistent with the rest of the country.
I agree with you, Scotty - nationwide coverage yes, all features - not so much.
What is the "Shortcut Key" for Virgin Mobile?
Can you be more specific? The key to do what? On what kind of phone from Virgin Mobile?
The secret keystroke to skip to the beep on Voicemail from Virgin Mobile.
Thanks - I understand what you're asking now. Virgin Mobile has their own voicemail system and I'm not a user on their system. It's a safe bet that either the star or pound key will interrupt the outgoing message (your voice or the robotic voice) and then you'll be asked for your password.
When I'm talking on my phone the person on the other end hears a "beep" about every 60-120 seconds. I never hear it. It happens no matter who I'm talking to. I already checked my minute reminder. Do you think my phone is tapped or something? BTW, I have Verizon.
I must say that this is very weird - I just went through a back-and-forth with another visitor to the site who had the identical complaint and couldn't figure out what it was. We went through a lot of discussion about it and determined that it was only happening when she was on the phone with other users of Verizon. Eventually it turned out that the beep was on the OTHER end and that it was the one-minute reminder that can be turned on optionally on a lot of phones. Many phones don't start the reminder until you're 3-5 minutes into the call, so that may account for them not hearing the tones with everyone that they speak to.
Is this the case with the people you're on the phone with? Are there other factors? I'll be happy to help if you can try to be as specific as possible.
Thanks - I always like a good challenge. :-)
Hi. I have a $10 Virgin Mobile phone (Kyocera, aka Marble) that often doesn't ring, but beeps after the call and tells me that I have a voicemail. I just bought a new one, same problem, probably isn't phone malf. Is this a scheme to get me to spend 22 cents a minute to get the message? It's almost as if the caller gets a recording first, asking to leave voicemail. Anyone else with the same problem? Thanks!