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To get rid of VM notifications, I recorded 2 minute+ of silence as my VM greeting, zero VMs after that.



Ok, that's sort of workable ... EDIT: ok, actually not so much - if you are out of coverage area and your phone rings zero times and goes right to voicemail (that's how it works with carriers in the US) then the caller calls you and goes right to silence, and presumably they retry 1-2-3x and get frustrated ... not even sure this is the right number, etc. Whereas if the phone just rang and rang and rang, at least it wouldn't be a bizarre outcome for them ...

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reorder_tone


Record two minutes of ringing, so that depending on the type you record and the phone of the caller they either think it's ringing normally or two minutes, or think it changed to a different sort of ringing and assume it's some weird technical thing.

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).


This was the message on my voice mail before I had switched to a carrier that made it easy to turn it off (that wasn't the reason I switched, that was a nice surprise):

---

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!

---

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.


@blisterpeanuts: Unfortunately, Google Voice isn't available in the Antipodes.

@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.


My friend has a passive aggressive voice mail message like this. So every time I get his voice mail I leave a long message which I know he has to listen to.


Did you know you can delete voicemails without listening to them?


I honestly can't believe how much I've written in this comment about such an insignificant annoyance from a few years. Consider it self-therapy that I accidentally left on HN.

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.


My solution was to switch to Google Voice for voicemail (on T-Mobile) which transcribes the recording into a passable text message.


You can use something like Vitelity vMobile which routes your cell phone as an extension to a PBX system/SIP server. This gives you total and complete control of what happens on incoming and outbound calls. For example, you could have your cell phone number give an IVR menu, ring forever, play hold music, you're only limited by your SIP server. This is the closest I've seen to providing your own dialtone.

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.


Well, maybe your voice mail message can be lots of ringing then.


Maybe record a message from a text-to-speech program that says "Voicemail service is currently unavailable for a week of planned maintenance. Please try another time." Then, the person listening might say, "Down? And wait a week? Nevermind..."


I once stuck a telco "This number is no longer in service" recording (w/ the "special information tone" preceding) and as much silence as the voicemail system would allow as my outgoing greeting. People _still_ left messages...


Wow. That's ridiculous. The human problem is really ubdermining my solution as usual.


Perhaps you could record two minutes of ringing.


My outgoing message is a close proximity iPhone recording of my 93 dodge dakota's door buzzer. Seems to also solve the VM problem, although the diligent VMers express confusion often. But those aren't VMs I'm interested in receiving, so it kinda works out.


My voicemail message is "Please hang up and email me" -- this unfortunately has not dissuaded as many people as I hoped.




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