A few people in this thread about caller-IDexpressed distaste with or dislike of voice mail. I found this curious, as I tend to think of VM as the greatest invention since caller ID, itself the greatest invention since cheese, itself the greatest invention the double-headed axe, itself…well, never mind. Would any of you VM-haters care to explain?
I don’t hate it, but I’d rather a text. Just laziness on my part, I guess. Having info transmitted to me in a written medium means I’m more likely to remember it, and if it’s a number or address it means I don’t have to write it down. Plus I can read a lot faster than you can speak, so the info gets to me faster as well. Also, you can read a text while in the middle of something else much more easily than you can listen to something.
Fortunately, in Japan emails/texts are the norm. I don’t even know if I have VM.
Oooohhh, I’m the exact opposite. I hate hate HATE text messaging. Everything about it. Especially doing it, punching the keys the right amount of times.
I’m not a Luddite by any means, but I do very much dislike the ‘instant’ part of cell phones and voicemails and texting. It wasn’t that long ago that if you called someone and they didn’t pick up, you hung up and called them back later. Wasn’t a big deal. Now people get irritated when you don’t respond to their voice message/text as quickly as they would like. It bugs me.
Well, yeah. But text messages take a lot more effort on the part of the sender, particularly if the she or he has a phone with a conventional keypad rather than a blackberry-style keyboard. If the sender is truly in a hurry, the VM is better.
I’m a fan of stealth-voicing, as my wife calls it; I’ll call the VM number rather than hers, choose the send message option, dictate my message, and then send it. This also lets me control when the message arrives, and I can easily send the exact same message to both Mrs. Rhymer and Cinderella the Rhymer.
I’m fine with leaving messages on voicemail, but hate to receive it. It just tends to be nasty customers, demanding coworkers, people who mistakenly think I owe them money, heck, even people I do owe money to. None of that is good. Just seeing the light or hearing the beep gives me a headache. In the rare case it’s someone I want to talk to, like if my husband is traveling and calls home, I’m bummed out that I missed his call. So, no love for voicemail from me.
Like Harriet the Spry, I don’t mind leaving voicemails, but I loathe receiving them. It just seems to take forever to navigate the audio menus just to find out that my sister says “hi” or that I’m receiving the second warning (again) that the factory warrantee on my car is about to expire. If the call is from someone I want to talk to, I’ll see that I have a missed call and call the person back. If the call is from someone I don’t want to talk to, a voicemail won’t change that fact. It is rare that I don’t see that I’ve missed a call or I don’t recognize who has called me.
I don’t like receiving (or making) phone calls at all. Not sure why; it’s just the form of communication which makes me least comfortable. I have no problem talking to people in person, or even speaking in front of large groups, but phone calls are uncomfortable for me. So I sometimes let calls go to voicemail even if I’m available to take the call. A form of procrastination, I suppose. I’m also hoping the person will decide to email instead of leaving a voicemail (it does happen sometimes). But if I do get a voicemail, then it’s sitting there, waiting to be dealt with, producing anxiety for me until I do. It seems silly, but it’s a very real source of stress for me. I put off dealing with it, but the fact that it’s waiting for me stresses me out. So I’m weird…
Since one of my home phones (land-line) has a built-in answering machine, I don’t need voice mail at home. I HATE it on my cellphone and have specifically requested that the service be turned off, because I only use my cellphone for emergencies. I don’t want people leaving a voice mail message because it may literally be weeks before I notice it; without voice mail, if someone calls my cell phone when I have the phone turned off, they’ll know right away that they haven’t managed to get in touch with me.
I generally hate getting and leaving voicemail.
If you just wanted to chat, I know that you called by the missed calls log and I’ll call you back if I want to chat.
If it’s an emergency you can text or email or even just show up at my house. A text is far less intrusive, almost everyone I contact has a phone that can text, and I don’t have to jump through hoops to listen to/receive it. I’m online a huge part of the day, so even that is preferable to leaving a message. In addition, a text or an email gives me something tangible I can integrate into my task list if there’s an action item associated with it. Unless you spring for something like visual voicemail or another service, it’s hard to send a voicemail message somewhere you can compile it into your task flow.
I hate that I have to go through prompt after stupid prompt to get to my messages. I routinely fail to check voice messages for days, sometimes weeks. I’m not a doctor and there is literally nothing that I would have to respond to that would mean the difference between life and death. Bad news will not be any less bad just because I didn’t hear it right away.
I also hate that I have to listen to the same stupid recorded instructions any time I leave a message. Like there’s a single person on the face of the planet these days that knows how to use a phone but doesn’t know how to leave a message? It’s just a ploy by the cell companies to eat away your minutes by making you sit through the spiel.
Edited to add: I only have a cell phone, no land line. Most people I communicate with regularly have the same setup.
I’ve asked this question of a bunch of people when they said, “Ooooh. I hate voice mail,” and found that many (most?) were actually talking about phone menuing systems (a.k.a… “automated attendants”), which I hate with a passion.
I think voice mail is great, but I could write a long rant about people who don’t understand what it’s for. The two worst:
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A particular person I call frequently for work. I’ll leave a detailed message stating why I’m calling and what information I require. She’ll look at the caller ID and call back without listening to the voice mail and without having any of the information I need ready for me.
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A different person who leaves messages without identifying himself. I don’t recognize the voices of everybody I know, especially when I’m listening to the voice mail in a crowded, noisy environment. Just start by saying your name. And just saying “Jim” isn’t good enough. I know about 8,302,129 Jims, of which about million leave me voice mail from time to time. When I’m listening to voice mail on the sidewalk in front of a bar and there’s traffic and music and people talking, you all sound alike.
I hate leaving voice mail because of the ~minute long messages I’m forced to listen to every time. I’ve left hundred if not thousands of messages; I don’t need to be reminded every time of the complete instructions for leaving voice mail. That wastes my time! This isn’t the fault of the person I’m calling, but rather the fault of the idiot people who design and run the voice mail systems.
Depends on where I am. I don’t mind messages on the answering machine at home at all - though they’re usually friends, and to the point (“hey, just calling, gimme a call back”).
I detest VM at work. It usually ends up being some long-winded multipoint thing that takes far too long to listen to and decipher. If it’s that long, send me an email. If it’s short, alphapage me.
The absolute worst, though? The VM to let me know you’ve sent me an email. :smack:
I hate the message, “Give me a call”.
If you’re going to leave a message, gimme some meat.
I don’t hate it, but I have disabled it on my cell. There’s no point in calling it to find either the person has hung up without leaving a message, or the message requires a response anyway. I have caller id so when I miss a call I just call them back when I’m ready.
Most of my voice mail comes from customers. They almost always give me some long drawn out explanation of there problem. Then quickly say there name and phone number faster than I can write it down. So I have to replay the entire message to finish writing the number. Please give your name and number slowly and clearly first. And then tell me how some kid broke your window.
Yeah you guys seem to have crap voice mail systems. Here’s how ours work, I ring Andy, the call is answered and I hear, “Hi you’ve called Andrew, I can’t take your call, you know what to do, do it after the beep.” Then I hear a beeep and I say, “Hi Andy it’s Ray, just calling about [subject], call me back at 0427 xxx xxx.” There is no menu to go through at all. On the receiving end I get a text message stating that I have voice mail, I ring the voice mail number and hear the following, “You have ONE new message, and TWO saved messages. Message received at ELEVEN FOURTEEN PEE EM.” Then it launches straight into playing the message, no need to navigate any menus at all. Finally I can hang up which automatically saves the message or I can press 5 to delete the message, I can do this at any time without listening to the instructions.
It’s slow. Now that the vmail messages show up in my Outlook inbox ,akes it better. most Chinese in China won’t leave a message, so it was always irritating to spend 5 minutes cycling through hang ups.
It’s a lot easie if it’s text or email. Can just copy paste or forward if some else should deal with it. Especially if i’m out and about.
I don’t mind personal vmail at home.
I hated hated hated the pre-email days of vmail. Dropping corporate bombs in the vmail “i waited until you left for lunch to drop this big turd of a hot potato roject that’s due tomorrow and i’m on a business trip and can’t be reached…”
So someone calls me on my cell phone. I miss the call. Their phone number gets registered on my missed call list and they leave a voice mail. When I flip open my phone, it tells me if I’ve missed any calls and directs me to the missed call list where I find the phone number and call it. So now I’ve talked to the person who’s call I missed and there’s no reason to waste my time listening to the voice mail. However, if this happens enough times, my voice mail box gets full. I couldn’t care less about a full mail box except now when people call me, they get the “Tr0p’s mail box is full” message and think I’m lazy, don’t care about them and/or am unable to do anything in case they left the voice mail because of an emergency. So I’m pretty much obliged to waste my time listening to their stupid messages and deleting them. To top things off, you can’t just delete the message until after you’ve listened to the WHOLE F’ING THING. It is a lose lose situation for me.
Yeah this is my problem.
If it didn’t take a half hour to retrieve my voice mails it wouldn’t be so bad. But instead I’m forced to listen to:
*Call… From… 2…1…4…5…5…5…5…5…5…5
At… 11…30…pm
March…20…7th*
And God forbid I should have five or more of them on there! You’d think at the very least these idiot programers would give me the option to skip over all that crap. Especialy since all that shit is already on my F’n phone!! Grrrr!!
All of the above reasons. It all boils down to time. Does anyone else’s phone do this? Mine only shows that I have a missed call, not that I have a missed call and that they left a VM. So, I call them back, and of course they ask “didn’t you get my voicemail?”. Grrrr, ummm not YET I didn’t, as soon as I hang up though, my phone will THEN show me I have a VM message waiting. sigh…technology is great but.