If you have tried to leave a voicemail for anyone lately you may have heard the following message before you were actually finished speaking:
"If you are finished recording, hang up or press the "#" key. To continue recording where you left off press "3". To erase and re-record... blah blah blah."
This seems to be a growing trend I have noticed. Infected service providers are At&t and Sprint that I know of. What happens is you will be leaving an important message and all of the sudden (mid sentence) you get cut off by the auto attendant asking you if you are finished and giving you a list of options. What happened to the good old-fashioned format of just HANGING UP when you are finished?!!!!!
It's not the ID10T error, its the service providers trying to cut costs by shortening messages that are unnecessarily long and therefore reducing data usage. Well... Who defines whether a message is unnecessary or IMPORTANT? Certainly not anyone with half a damn brain. For those non-believers here, consider these facts:
1. I am a LOUD and frequently obnoxious person. I have greater than average lung capacity and a hellacious voice that can carry through a concrete wall. So I am pretty sure that I am speaking loud enough into the microphone.
2. This is a continuing issue with multiple phones and service providers. I used to think this problem came from a weak microphone on the one particular phone I was using. Nope. This issue followed me from an LG Voyager with Verizon, LG Shine with At&t, HP Ipaq with At&t and now my Samsung Blackjack II with At&t. It's not a service or equipment problem.
3. I don't live on the bayou with uncle Lester. I live in a metro area, rarely dipping below 80% signal strength. This issue cannot possibly stem from my service quality because it's always great.
Its obvious that the voicemail system is poorly designed and implemented by a three year old. If you need to cut costs, save money, lower your overhead in the data center... fine. DO IT! But for HELL'S SAKE... FIX THE DAMN VOICEMAIL SYSTEM! There's often no easy way around the problem. I have to YELL into the mic on my phone and pray that I don't stop speaking for 1/4 of a second or the auto attendant may interrupt me and ask me if I am done! So now my important messages are 7 seconds long and it sounds like I am angry in every message. This surely isn't good for business and I don't even want to know what my friends think about these messages I leave. This isn't just a simple issue I can go into the admin menu on my voicemail and change... It's a system wide thing. Even if it was a menu option, I can't expect everyone with infected service to go in and make the change. This is a top level service issue and the only way to fix it is to initiate a war between the providers and consumers. Call them, email them, cancel service, BLOG about it... Do whatever you can! This "cost cutting" atrocity is eating away at our lives and culture! ACTION IS NEEDED NOW!!!!!!!
http://www.wireless.att.com/about/contact-us/contact-us.jsp
http://www.sprint.com/contactus/?id8=vanity:contact
