To get rid of VM notifications, I recorded 2 minute+ of silence as my VM greeting, zero VMs after that.
I would also like the ability to play a message, but then have no ability to leave a message.
The lame way to do this is to let your vm inbox fill up, and then everyone gets the "the person you called is too stupid to figure out voicemail" message.
What I would like is an option to play a message ("hi you've reached so and so and here is my email address and have a nice day!") and then ... no beep ... no message ... nothing. Maybe just pause a bit and then a fast-busy.[1]
How can I do things like this ? I've been meaning for years to self-provide my own dial tone in the same way I self-provide my own email, but I just don't have the time to get it all set up.
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Hi, this is Evan.
I will never ever ever ever listen to the voice mail you’re about to leave, because voice mail is a pain in the butt.
So if you actually want to reach me, you can either send me an SMS, send me e-mail, or try my home number.
Feel free to leave a voice message if you want, but remember, I will never ever listen to it. Have a nice day!
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I don't actually give them the email or home number details on the assumption that if they don't have those already, they are probably someone who's call I'm that stressed about receiving.
Generally I got positive feedback once people did get in contact with me.
I did have a similar one on message bank on the home number, which also mentioned that I keep turning message bank off, and the phone company kept turning it back on again.
I previously had a phone on Vodafone in the UK, and infuriatingly their voicemail system would not allow you to delete a message until you had listened to it for either 3 or 5 seconds, I can't remember.
Most of my messages were either spam calls I knew would have left a voicemail from when I rejected them, or my dad who has finally learned that I'm just as likely to call him back from seeing him in my missed calls list and therefore he no longer needs to leave a "Hey, it's me calling, feel free to call back or not" every single time. (It took several years of begging him to not leave a message unless he either a.) had a piece of information he wanted to give me in that message or b.) there was a time sensitivity beyond normal conversation.)
So for each message you wanted to delete, you had to listen to the robotic voice say "Caller, oh, eight, hundred, [pause], seven, etc etc etc, called, today, at, twelve, fifty, seven, PM, [pause]" then the message would start, you wait what you think is the right amount of time before pressing 3 to delete, and if you get it a fraction of a second too early, not only does it not delete it, but it tells you (in those slow, monotic, robot, words) "I'm sorry, but you cannot delete this message until you have listened to at least three seconds." AND THEN IT WOULD START AGAIN FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO WHAT FUCKING NUMBER HAD CALLED AT WHAT TIME.
Man, that's like therapy, writing that out. My mobile number was quite publicly available, included in press releases that were googleble, etc. so I got a fair few spammy voicemails. Thankfully, eventually either I discovered or their system added, the ability (bug) that if you press 3 (the delete button) almost immediately after the end of the robotic words "message deleted", you could time it so the system knew you had already deleted the last message, but hadn't reset the clock for how long you had to listen to the next message for, so once you knew the rhythm you could delete them in about 5 seconds each without being stuck listening.
@post_break: Don't know that I would characterise it as passive aggressive. It isn't meant to be, certainly not to the caller. As I said, most people who heard it found it amusing more than annoying. One even asked if they could steal the idea.
I used it for a while and the only con---and it is a major con for me---is that, like most innovative or unique MVNOs, it's riding on Sprint. And Sprint is really terrible, at least where I live, which made the service great, except that getting data to work often involved walking around in large circles til I was able to catch an LTE signal.
Related anecdote, I have a friend who lives in NYC who told me he recorded his voicemail to start with the beep (or beeps?) that sound like a network confirmation of a call hang up, and then his "Please leave me a message" message a couple of seconds later, so that automated dialers would be fooled into thinking the call was dead, and hang up rather than leave a message. I'm not familiar with American phone systems and am not sure if this is a story from the past (he's certainly been hacking systems for longer than I've been alive) or if it's still useful to this day (I'll pay attention if I ever call and get his voicemail, but we don't speak often).