5 ms·

People still use voice mail? I don't believe I've encountered one in at least a decade...

• thejosh 9y ago
  Where abouts are you? Here in AU, it seems everyone uses voicemail for their mobiles.
  • tjoff 9y ago
    Sweden. A text message is faster and infinitely more accessible for the recipient.
    • thaumasiotes 9y ago
      Heck, a voice message over the chat client of their choice is faster, infinitely more accessible, and still voice.
      • tjoff 9y ago
        Well, half of the point is that you don't want voice in the first place...
        • thaumasiotes 9y ago
          Voice is by far the least of the problems with voicemail. - If someone leaves you voicemail, you don't necessarily know that that happened. - Checking your voicemail is effortful. - Any random idiot can dial your phone number and leave you voicemail. - Voice is harder to process than text. Leaving someone a voice message doesn't help with #4, but that's a very minor issue. It solves all of the first three.
          • tjoff 9y ago
            I wholeheartedly agree with all your points (and that is exactly what I meant with accessible). But it being voice is also a major issue of its own. You can't check voice messages in many situations where you can read and possibly respond to a text. Also, if you listen to music/podcasts/whatever there will be an annoying interrupt.
            • thaumasiotes 9y ago
              I get an interrupt when I receive text messages too. I want it; it lets me know that someone sent me a message.
              • tjoff 9y ago
                Of course, but there is a huge difference. Read the text and then continue - total time is less than 5 seconds. Often you don't even miss a beat doing what you are doing anyway. Rather than having to stop what you are doing, check voice mail, and then continue. And in many situations you can't even do it (meeting, lecture, noisy environment etc.).
  • SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
    The question you're looking for is how old are you, for my generation(later mellenial) it's a minor faux paux to leave a voicemail instead of a text.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• elchief 9y ago
  I changed my message to say please don't leave me voicemail but they did anyways. So I got rid of it and I like not having it
  • semi-extrinsic 9y ago
    You can always set your voicemail number to something funny. I used to set it to a French ski resort automated weather report telephone - that's annoying and an expensive international call to boot, so people quickly stop trying (not that you'd notice if they didn't).
    • bluesign 9y ago
      AFAIK It is charged to you (to whom forwarding) not to the caller
  • su3aseuo9 9y ago
    It's like a computer dialog box. Just as users don't read dialog boxes, phone users don't listen to the message at all. They just wait until the beep and start talking. I used to have a home phone that had voice mail boxes and we had a message that said, "To leave a message for husband, press 1, to leave a message for wife press 2." It had a default mailbox if the user didn't press anything. 95% of calls went to the default mailbox. People are idiots.
• mavhc 9y ago
  I disabled my voicemail as I'm charged to call it, but not to receive calls normally