Did you know that every phone carrier has a way to bypass those long, annoying voicemail instructions we all have to sit through? I mean don’t we all know how to leave a voicemail by now? “When you finish your recording, simply hang up.” Really? Thank you, because I didn’t think that was the way to end this call…Is it a huge deal? No, but would it be fun to be able to just leave a message? YES! So why all these basic instructions that have become so familiar that we really never need to hear them again…ever?
Well according to David Pogue at the New York Times, its so the phone companies can make more money. Shocking right? Not really…
He calculated that the carriers earn over $850 million a year just by eating up our airtime. He used a calculation with Verizon as an example taking cents per minute and how many minutes those instructions take you on multiple calls. Pretty crazy.
So how can we bypass these and save us time and money? (and eye rolling as these instructions come on)?
Well looks like every carrier has their own bypass key that you can press to skip not only the instructions but the person’s voicemail itself (if that’s something you don’t need to hear again). And according to David, “to be as evil as possible, the carriers do not promote or tell you about the existence of this keystroke.”
Verizon hit *
Sprint hit 1
AT&T hit #
T Mobile hit #
Of course you have to know which carrier the person has to do this…who knows that?
So what you can do is just remember the sequence – 1 * #, one star pound. Wait a couple seconds between pressing each button. This way you can try each one and once you hit the right keystroke you will hear a beep and you are good to go!
Now you have an extra 15 seconds, what will you do with them?
