Voicemail
Clean-up!
Welcome!
If you have ever wanted to remove the annoying pre-recorded “at the tone please leave your message…” you hear at the end of your cellular phone’s voicemail, you’re in luck! I’m going to tell you how!
First, lets discuss why this would be something you may want to do.
People who have limited minutes have to wait and listen to this recording. Removing it saves time, and minutes for them.
People who live out of your calling area and pay per minute for long distance can save a little when calling you for the same reason as the above.
Some people find it annoying to wait.
But wait! My cellular carrier said they can’t do this.
Well, they are right, and yet they are wrong. Allow me to explain. When you call Tech Support, the person who answers the phone does not have the ability to make this change, the other levels of support also do not. However there is a special department that does. When calling, please give the agent the following information.
This change requires
special attention from a special department ‘The Voicemail Team’
A ticket will need to be sent to this department with the following information:
The purpose of the ticket needs to say “Change prompting from full to none”
In addition to that, it may be helpful to have them write in a note in the ticket stating that you are referring to the “at the tone please record your message, when you’ve finished recording hang up or press 1 for more options” prompt at the end of your greeting.
Verify that your ticket was sent to ‘The Voicemail Team’ (this is important, as these are the people who can fix this for you, and they need to be the ones getting the message.)
Also, ask them for your ticket number in case you need to reference this later.
The ticket number should be a long number which will look something like this:
CM (your ticket will always start with ‘CM’) then followed by today’s date, an underscore, and then a 7-digit number.
For example: CM20140122_1234567 could be your ticket number if you called on January 22, 2014.
This change could take from an hour to 3 days to take effect, so don’t worry if it is not fixed the moment you hang up the phone. Be patient. I’d allow at least 3 days before calling back. You should not have a problem, but if a callback is needed, the ticket number is going to make it a lot easier for them to resume this request. So make sure you get it, and write it down!
Your customer service agent may tell you that this request can not be done. Don’t argue, be polite and explain the above info. This request is not very common with most tech support agents since most people have no idea this is even an option, and the agent has likely never done this before. It may also be helpful to refer them to this article so they can read this for themselves.
In my own personal
experience, I have been told that this can’t be done. However after explaining
this information to the agent my phone’s voicemail was updated successfully. I
have personally had this change made to 2 different cellular lines. My carrier
is AT&T, but this information should apply to other carriers as well. Be polite,
and be patient while they search their systems for the Voicemail Team. There is
a good chance that they will need a minute or two to locate this department in
their system. Give them time, be polite, and they will help you get this taken
care of.
If you are a telephone company employee who was referred to this page, please by all means feel free to copy this information and save it in your systems for future reference. This information is NOT copyrighted. You are free to copy, edit, and distribute this as much as you want. This non-copyrighted note applies to anyone else reading this as well.
Thank you for your time, and I hope you have found this information to be helpful.
Matthew Furman
The date of this article is January 22, 2014.
References I used:
&
My own personal experience.
While on the topic of voicemail, also check out my other website where I have archived hundreds of humorous novelty greeting for answering machines. Mostly from vintage cassette tape recordings from the 1980s and 1990s. www.noveltyansweringmachine.com They may not help with shortening your greeting playback time, but they are humorous and fun to listen to. J
Last Updated on Thursday, November 13, 2014 at 11:55 PM -0500