Take Back the Beep Seems to Be Working

As Pogue pointed out, calling voicemail isn't free. You get charged for it on your bill. That's besides the obvious annoyance of having to wait for a message to play, one that you've already probably heard before.

Of course, you can get around the message; the problem is that the way to get around it differs from carrier to carrier.

• Verizon: *
• AT&T and T-Mobile: #
• Sprint: 1

That only helps if you know the carrier of the person you're calling, but their canned messages differ as well, so you could memorize thse and use it as a reference.

• Sprint: “[Phone number] is not available right now. Please leave a detailed message after the tone. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press pound for more options.”

• Verizon: “At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press 1 for more options. To leave a callback number, press 5. (Beep)”

• AT&T: “To page this person, press five now. At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished, you may hang up, or press one for more options.”

• T-Mobile: “Record your message after the tone. To send a numeric page, press five. When you are finished recording, hang up, or for delivery options, press pound.”

His campaign included ways to submit "Take Back the Beep" complaints to the four major U.S. carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile). Here's where you can complain:

• Sprint already allows removing the message, so you can stop spamming them. It wasn't highly publicized before, but to do so, a customer must access their voicemail box, press 3 for personal options, press 2 for greetings, press 1, to change your personal greeting, press 3 to add or remove the caller instructions.


• Verizon: Post a complaint here: http://bit.ly/FJncH

• AT&T: Send e-mail to: customerissues@attnews.us

• T-Mobile: Post a complaint here: http://bit.ly/2rKy0u

And the latest "Take Back the Beep" update follows:

• Verizon: Verizon's PR contact, Tom Pica, hasn’t responded to Pogue's request for a progress report.

• AT&T: “We are going to make some changes.”

• T-Mobile: “This issue has our attention”

It's unfortunate that Verizon hasn't seen fit to respond, but Pogue believes it's because Pica is angry with him for basically calling him a liar.

Pica said on ABC News that customers can already turn off the instructions, but that's not true. Pica then responded by saying he was misquoted. What he said was that you can turn off voicemail altogether if you don’t like the 15-second instructions.

I'm sure that would be a real comfort for those who do not want voicemail at all. And those are, who?

Keep complaining, and perhaps we'll see some real change.