Do you dislike the voicemail instructions?

Fusion Voice service, features and help.
8 posts Page 1 of 1
by tyrodom3 » Fri Feb 22, 2019 6:57 pm
Some Sonic telephone lines with voicemail play instructions to the
caller after the customer's greeting. (Their presence may depend on
how old the phone service is: older lines seem to be without the
instructions.) The instructions are similar to these:

AFTER THE TONE, PLEASE LEAVE A MESSAGE. WHEN YOU'RE
FINISHED, YOU MAY HANG UP OR PRESS 5 FOR MORE OPTIONS.

The beep follows the instructions.

Such instructions are profoundly unnecessary because there's no
one (over the age of 3) who needs to be told how to leave a voicemail
these days.

I called Sonic tech support to ask about these instructions. Their
quick take is that the instructions can't be removed. (I don't see the
option in my member tools, but mine is an older line that never had
instructions.)

My clients who have Sonic dislike the instructions.

Eventually, I may harangue Sonic's management to create the option
to remove the instructions (or perhaps persuade Sonic to remove
them for all users in one fell swoop).

What do you think of the voicemail instructions?
by joeuser » Fri Feb 22, 2019 9:50 pm
Have you seen a voicemail system (not an answering machine) that doesn't have the exact same instructions?
by frankbh » Mon Apr 01, 2019 8:46 am
I agree with tyrodom3 and would like the ability to turn off the instructions.
by dane » Mon Apr 01, 2019 9:07 am
frankbh wrote:I agree with tyrodom3 and would like the ability to turn off the instructions.
We’ve got our vendor working on this for us now.
Dane Jasper
Sonic
by dane » Thu Apr 11, 2019 10:21 am
News on this item: https://sonicstatus.com/2019/04/11/voice-mail-update/

Telephone companies receive settlement payment for terminating (receiving) incoming calls from other telephone companies. In other words, if an AT&T landline user calls a Sonic Fusion customer, we get tiny fractions of a cent for every tenth of a minute of call duration.

The post-greeting voicemail instructions were pioneered by cellular companies about two decades ago, with the idea that by adding ten to twelve seconds to many incoming calls that went to voicemail, they could bill additional terminating seconds to the caller’s telephone company.

This has always infuriated me, the hubris of carriers that ten seconds of your life is worth a tiny fraction of a penny of revenue for them.

So, realizing that our own voicemail platform for some of our members (Fiber and IP Broadband VoIP users) was continuing this typical industry practice was something I wanted to get corrected. That’s now being done.

Thanks for the feedback, and kudos to Brian on our team who wrangled our vendor for the custom modifications to make this change.
Dane Jasper
Sonic
by ankh » Thu Apr 11, 2019 2:50 pm
All it needs to say is: "It's 2019. You know what to do. BEEP"
by virtualmike » Thu Apr 11, 2019 10:21 pm
dane wrote:The post-greeting voicemail instructions were pioneered by cellular companies about two decades ago, with the idea that by adding ten to twelve seconds to many incoming calls that went to voicemail, they could bill additional terminating seconds to the caller’s telephone company.
Which is why the default outgoing message that starts with, "You have reached the voicemail for four... one... five... six... two... eight... nine... eight... seven... six..." is recited so slowly.

At least on most carriers, one can change the voice mail settings to turn the post-announcement instructions off. Thanks, Dane, for doing that on Sonic voice mail.
by frankbh » Thu Apr 18, 2019 9:58 am
Thank you!!!!
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