Skip the recording

Whether you have to listen to them at work or on your personal time, voicemail recordings can consume your time. Sometimes, it can be especially annoying if you call the same person over and over again. For example, let’s say you call your best buddy every day. (I personally don’t do that, but let’s just say you two are that close.) Your buddy decided one day that he would record a nice long recording:

“Hi, you’ve reached (Name here)! I am unable to get to the phone right now, but I would like to get back to you as soon as possible. So, please leave me a detail message with your name, phone number, and the best time to get back to you. Thank you!”

Okay, that took me approximately 13 second to read out load. If you had to listen to that every day, you’d waste 4745 seconds of your life every year. How much is 4745 seconds? Well, it’s about 79 minutes or 1.3 hours. That’s a lot of time listening to your buddy say the same thing.

If you’re like most people I know, that can be annoying. Of course, I do know a friend of mine who likes to “spaz out.” In that case, this could just be another reason to spaz out…

Anyways, wouldn’t it be nice and even more efficient to skip the recording and leave your message?

Where there is a will, there’s a way!

The cell phone carriers have already thought of it. For some, you may already know how, but for those who don’t, I’ve put together a list below. The list shows different major cell phone carriers and the button to press to skip straight to the beep.

1)      Verizon: (*)

2)      Sprint: (1)

3)      Cingular: (7)

4)      T-mobile: (#)

I’m sure other carriers offer the same service. If you know the buttons to skip on other services, please comment below. I will gladly add it to the list.

Side Note:

If your buddy left a nice recording like the one above, let him know how to skip recordings too. Then kindly recommend your buddy add, “To skip this recording press (Enter button from above here),” right before the normal recording. That way, all those other people who call will be able to skip the recording too. Share the love people!

It would look something like this:

“To skip this recording press (Enter button from above here). Hi, you’ve reached (Name here)! I am unable to get to the phone right now, but I would like to get back to you as soon as possible. So, please leave me a detail message with your name, phone number, and the best time to get back to you. Thank you!”

References

Consumer Media LLC . (2009, July 30). Skip Annoyingly Long Voicemail Instructions For Every Cellphone Company. Retrieved January 4, 2010, from The Consumerist: http://consumerist.com/2009/07/skip-annoyingly-long-voicemail-instructions-for-every-cellphone-company.html

Robbins, S. (2007, November 19). Skip the Greeting on Popular Voicemail Systems . Retrieved January 4, 2010, from Quick and Dirty Tips: http://getitdone.quickanddirtytips.com/GIDG-Voice-Mail-Systems.aspx

Trapani, G. (2006, June 2). Voicemail hack: Skip right to the beep. Retrieved January 4, 2010, from LifeHacker: http://lifehacker.com/177993/voicemail-hack–skip-right-to-the-beep