How to save money and time when leaving a voicemail

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/how-to-bypass-stupid-voicemail-instructions/

It turns out that each carrier offers a “bypass the instructions” keystroke that takes you directly to the beep. (It bypasses both the person’s own recorded greeting and the 15-second carrier nonsense.)

To be as evil as possible, the carriers do not promote or tell you about the existence of this keystroke. Furthermore, the key to press is different with each company:

* for Verizon

1 for Sprint

# for AT&T

# for T-Mobile

Every time you dial a number, you’d have to know which carrier that person uses. Which is, of course, impossible.

And you can’t just press *-1-# in a row, hoping to cover all bases—because if you press the wrong keystroke for the wrong carrier, you wind up boxed into that system’s voicemail menus.

If you’re clever, though, you can do the “one-star-pound” method recommend by this blogger:

STEP ONE. Press 1. If it’s Sprint, you get the beep, and you’re done. If you hear an error recording, go on:

STEP TWO. Press *. If it’s Verizon, you get the beep. If not:

STEP THREE: Push #. You get the beep for T-Mobile or Cingular.

You have to pause after each one, and you have to keep listening. But it’s one small way to fight back. Remember: One Star Pound.