To arms! How to join David Pogue’s Take Back the Beep campaign

July 30, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments |
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davidpogueNew York Times gadget guy David Pogue has the sense to take on a problem smaller than global warming: He’s decided to call out wireless carriers on their time-wasting voicemail greetings. These messages, as anyone who follows the mobile industry knows, are there to run up the number of minutes used by customers who call in to leave or check messages, wasting their lives and running up their phone bills 15 seconds at a time. It’s the same reason voicemail systems are rigged to force you to listen to one message after another, running up more minutes, rather than skipping to the one you want.

In his Take Back the Beep campaign, Pogue has reported, for example, that T-Mobile deleted hundreds of posts from its online customer forums and then blocked posts containing the word “beep.”

Today, Pogue announced that leading blogs Engadget, Gizmodo and Consumerist have joined him in asking readers to tell America’s four biggest wireless carriers they’re sick of listening to inane talk like “Record your message after the tone.”

Here are the instructions Pogue and his cohorts are distributing. In all four cases, the carriers are changing their attitudes, from deleting posts to at least pretending to care.

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

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

Sprint: Post a complaint here: http://bit.ly/9CmrZ

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

[Image from Textually.org]

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About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • toomuchiphonegooglefacebook
    doesn't carrier charge you by minute as unit? so whether you use 15 seconds or 55 seconds, you pay the same thing?
  • ifij775
    huh? would it just beep instead of prompting you for a message?

    Chris
    http://worstiphoneapps.blogspot.com
  • This post may be having an effect... I just got this reply from my email to Verizon supporting the streamlining of VM:

    "Thank You for contacting Verizon Wireless!!  We welcome the opportunity to assist you. We are experiencing extremely high email volumes. We are making every effort to respond to your inquiry as quickly as possible."

    - Bob
  • Great move, David Pogue, I curse with impatience while waiting for the inane voicemail instructions to finish. In 2009, everybody knows what to do--the instructions are redundant and agonizingly annoying. Let's kill this time and money wasting ploy!! SS
  • petition @sprint to stop the 15-second voicemail instructions #TBTBC http://act.ly/cn retweet to sign
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