This makes sense. And so does this:
“No risk in listening to a voicemail,” depending on the phonemail system.
Where I work, it’s a five minute ordeal to listen to my voice mail. “You have… one… new message, received at… 12… 37, lasting… 2 minutes and… 43 seconds, from… 555-555-1212. If you want to change your profile, press 1; if you want to access voice press Star-V.” I press Star-8 ('TUV"), then, “Please listen for the following, since our options have changed recently [1998].”
Blah, blah, blah. Then I get to listen to the 25 second recording, followed by, “If you want to save the message, press 5 now; if you want to delete the message, press Star-D now; if …”
Well, my voicemail is full, and I forget the password, so I have no idea if they would leave a message or not.
When I had a functioning voicemail, I rarely bothered to listen to messages from an unknown number, unless I was expecting a call from an unknown number. As for friends, they all know to text me, because my voicemail doesn’t work. If they can’t text, they know to call twice in a row.
The exception is a local call, I will generally answer a local number. But calls from places I’ve never lived, or have family? No way. I ignore them.
This is my reason. I worked in Eastern Airlines reservations. I handled on average 150 phone calls per shift. I absolutely hate talking on the phone. I tense up just hearing the phone ring.
I use AT&T’s Visual Voicemail to do much the same thing; it’ll automatically transcribe the VM, and has a nifty little UI for reading and listening to the voicemails.
I rarely answer the phone for numbers I don’t recognize, but I’ll read the transcripts. And if it’s mostly gibberish, it’s more than likely an Indian recruiter cold-callling me for some crappy job in Kalamazoo, MI, so those get shit-canned right off the bat.
I don’t listen to voicemail. Want to leave a message? Then send me a text. If you can’t send a text because you’re not calling from a cell phone, then you are probably a telemarketer and I don’t care what you have to say.
Not to belabor… but what about the doctor’s office, the person who just found your lost dog, the garage where you left your car to be fixed, the person who just found your husband/wife/mother/child unconscious on the floor, the emergency room, for Christ’s sake? Are you so young that you can’t imagine any of these scenarios?
On Sunday morning really early (around 6:45 am), I was walking and saw a dog out running around who was clearly Someone’s Dog Having an Excellent Adventure. He came over to me, and I called the number on his collar and left a voicemail. A few minutes later a woman called me back, dismayed that her dog had gotten out of the yard. Her husband was out of town and she was at home with a sick baby. By now the dog had run off, but he came back to me and let me hold his collar as I walked toward her house. She met me in the middle of the street in her pajamas carrying a little girl.
But, hey! deleting your voicemails without listening-- no prob! No stranger could ever call you for any benevolent or useful reason, right? do you (all of you who do not listen to voicemails from unfamiliar numbers) live in a vacuum?
Note that I’m not talking about ANSWERING CALLS from unfamiliar numbers. I’m talking about a call from an unfamiliar number FOLLOWED BY A VOICEMAIL.
I still can’t believe people delete these without listening to at least a few seconds of them… 
Bumped.
Just left a (necessarily) somewhat lengthy voicemail for someone I’d never spoken to before. He called back within five minutes and said, “I saw you called me. Who is this?” He hadn’t listened to the voicemail, of course. So I had to repeat the message all over again. Grrrrrr.
If we were upstairs when the phone rang we had to take off running to get to it in the kitchen before the person hung up. Give it at least four rings for us to get downstairs, people!
Back in the day before answering machines, it was 10 or 12 rings. The phone bell was loud enough to hear from the back yard and she might be gardening or hanging laundry.
I couldn’t make it through all the responses, so if this has been said, you can ignore me.
Every response I DID read, and the OP’s opening salvo, all assume that it’s faster and easier and DOABLE to listen to the messages first, every time.
That’s not a valid assumption at all. Although I do try to listen to all the messages I get, there are often times as well, where it’s impractical to do so first, such as when I have time and locality restraints. Sometimes I can’t get through to my message server.
VERY often, the message left doesn’t even show up on my phone as available to listen to, for minutes, or even HOURS after they are left. This is due to the exact same reason I keep warning people NOT to take offense every time someone fails to answer a text message instantly: sometimes the server your message went to goes belly up just after your message gets there, and isn’t repaired until the next day.
Most of all, I want to point out how absolutely hypocritical it is to ASSUME that you know the exact circumstances that your target person is dealing with, and jump to the conclusion that THEY are being illogical or rude.
I delete voicemail without ever listening to it. That’s what SMS is for.
We figured it was hoity-toity people with more than one phone in their house who would hang up after two rings. 
I appreciate this post is 2 years old, but what the heck, I’ll respond to it.
I think this post illustrates LSLGuy’s comment that there is no consistent phone etiquette anymore.
In my experience, it’s certainly not true that people phone important news rather than text. There’s a generational gap here. As far as I can tell from talking with under-thirties, a cell is a texting device that happens to have voice capability. Texting is their primary means of communication.
As for me, i far prefer texts for important stuff. If I’m in a meeting, I don’t answer a phone call, unless it’s Mrs Piper or the Cub’s school. Anybody else goes to voice-mail until I’m out of the meeting.
But if someone texts, I can discreetly look at it without disturbing anyone else. If the text is important news, I’ll leave the meeting and start making calls.
And if I have some important news to share with people, texting to a group is way more efficient than phoning each one individually.
I think that depends to some extent on what kind of “important” you’re talking about.
I prefer texts for a lot of things, but not for the sort of things that are going to require a lot of back and forth or even just a lot of information. My husband is supposed to meet me somewhere and he’s going to be late- text. My sister wants to let me know that they’ve just called an ambulance for my mother- phone call. If I don’t answer, she might text me to call her immediately, but she wouldn’t text the information. Police or hospital are trying to contact me because my husband was in a accident- they aren’t going to text, and I really wouldn’t want them to.
Wow, this thread is two years old?? Time flies.
FTR: I hate to talk on the phone and I hate listening to voicemails. I would much rather get/send a text. I don’t answer calls from unfamiliar numbers.
This thread is about one particular instance, namely, seeing a “missed call” from an unfamiliar number followed by a voicemail. I asked, “Do you listen or delete without listening?”
To my amazement, some said they delete without listening apparently because they can’t imagine a circumstance where a call from an unknown number outside their circle of texting friends could be anything important. 
Robocalls won’t leave a vm, so no prob there. If you have hundreds of numbers in your contacts like I do, you’re not likely to get many missed calls from unfamiliar numbers. BUT the few calls you may get from unknown numbers where the caller bothers to leave a voicemail are likely-- not certainly, but likely-- to be important. To repeat earlier examples, someone found your dog, or your mother, lying in the road. Your bank or credit card company is calling. A friend, parent, child in dire need may be calling you from a borrowed phone. Your doctor, dentist, or vet is calling, but not from their main office number (the one that is in your phone).
I’m also annoyed when I leave a message for a business and I specifically
state my question, and then say if you get my machine, please leave a detailed
message that answers my question. Invariably, they’ll just leave their
name and number for me to call them back. :mad:
I certainly get voice-messages from robocallers, both at the office and at home.
That’s why you ring them back. But why hassle with some garbled, muffled, unclear voice mail when you can just ring them and talk to them.
Fair point.
For me, I want to know who/what it’s about, or at least who it’s from. It’s more of a hassle to call back than to listen to a vm. Maybe I don’t want to talk to this place.
I have several regular robocallers and those never leave vm.