GregLedet.net Adventures in networking, security, and other things

Slipping past cell phone voice mail greetings

I hate people that put long drawn-out voice mail greetings on their cell phones.  In fact, very few things will cause me to just hang up the phone and not leave an important voice mail more than that.  That's why I've done a bunch of searches and decided to tell you guys (and leave it here for my future reference) just how to skip past the greetings.  I have a friend of mine, we'll call him "Mary" that has a greeting in which he'll tell you his life story, website, and read "War and Peace" before it ends.  I VERY rarely leave him a voice mail because I don't want to sit through that long ass greeting, not to mention eat up an extra minute on my cell phone. Now I don't have to!

Verizon: press *
Sprint: press 1
T-Mobile or AT&T: press #

Of course, you need to know what carrier the person you are calling is using.  The way I figure out is simply trial and error until I hit the right one.  I timed Mary's once (he's on Verizon) and if I would have left a message, I would have been into the 3rd minute of the call and eating up my shared minutes.  After his long ass greeting, Verizon gives all the options (including giving a fax options!) of crap you can do.  I'm not sitting through that crap.  Now as soon as I hear that voice mail pick up, I slam a * into the phone and I'm done.

What I would like to see is people to put this info at the beginning of the greeting. Something like "Hi, this is Greg. Please press * to skip this greeting".  That would go a long way and I'm willing to bet more people would be willing to leave voice mail for you if you did.