Right now, I’m using a phone from Helio as my main phone. It’s no secret that we like what those guys are doing — they make full-featured phones for nerds; awesome! — but Helio’s voicemail system only allows for thirty messages.
I get many calls a day, pitches to hear about USB baby-rocking cradles, Firewire-bus-powered lighters, or solar-driven microwave ovens, whatever, it’s more than I can hold if I’m having a busy day, so I skip. No, wait, I always skip.
When your voicemail box is full, people can’t leave messages. I enjoy this, but I’m not the only one. In fact, our big man Michael Arrington points out in this story that it’s something of a guilty pleasure that people can’t leave him voicemail when his mailbox is full, and that gets me thinking: is voicemail dead?
It won’t go away entirely, of course, but when was the last time you listened to an entire message before deleting it? I can’t remember. Nor can I recall the last time I left a message and expected a prompt call back.
All of our cellphones broadcast the number we’re dialing from and they all also report the number coming in. If that number is in your phonebook, you can call back. Rad.
If things are important we text. That inbox is also ususally full, but you can at least glance at it and triage what’s important and kill the “OMG did you hear about danny and maria!?” stuff from last weekend.
My voicemail box is full, and I don’t care. I ask, do you?
My wife’s inbox has been full for over two years. It irritates people to no end, but she loves it.
She refuses to empty it. She was sick of people leaving her useless messages like, “Hi. It’s me. Call me back”. She’s a busy lady, and doesn’t have time to go through twenty of those, which are useless anyway.
If she sees that you called on caller ID. She’ll call you back. No VM necessary.
I’ll add, that I don’t care about VM either.
You can leave me a message if you want, but you’ll be wasting your time. I don’t listen to them anyway.
I just, occasionally, go in and clear out all of the messages. Why? I don’t know. For some reason it just bugs me to not have a clean inbox. I do the same garbage with my email.
Frankly, I’d prefer it if VM didn’t exist. Is it possible to cancel VM service?
All this really proves is that you and your wife aren’t particularly important, yet very self-absorbed people.
If you have a problem with people wasting your time, nip that right in the butt and perhaps change your outgoing message to sound more professional.It sounds like everyone here has a menial job and shallow friends. If I call someone it is not to jabber some small talk. Get down to business guys. A full inbox means you do not know how to delete messages or don’t work hard.
Well if one is job hunting, one absolutely needs voice mail.