About a week ago NY Times columnist David Pogue has began a quest against all cell phone companies because when you call someone’s cell phone you get their personal message, then you hear about 15-20 seconds of carrier canned messages. From his July 30th Column:

• * Sprint: “[Phone number] is not available right now. Please leave a detailed message after the tone. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press pound for more options.”
• Verizon: “At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press 1 for mo re options. To leave a callback number, press 5. (Beep)”
• AT&T: “To page this person, press five now. At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished, you may hang up, or press one for more options.”
• T-Mobile: “Record your message after the tone. To send a numeric page, press five. When you are finished recording, hang up, or for delivery options, press pound.”
• (You hear a similar message when you call in to hear your own messages. “You. Have. 15. Messages. To listen to your messages, press 1.” WHY ELSE WOULD I BE CALLING?)

Read part 1 of his column

I am on board with him over this, I hate those messages, and by the way, the time we spend listening to that crap is taking away our minutes, so we are paying for it.

In part 2 of his column, he got a lot of responses and he has links to file complaints against the carriers themselves. I think everyone should jump on board and email their carriers and tell them they just want their message and the fracking beep, or there should be a way to turn it off.

Sprint already has this option, and iPhone users don’t have that issue when people call them probably because Apple and AT&T have some sort of deal in place.

If you want to bypass the canned messages altogether, right now here is the options for each carrier:

* for Verizon

1 for Sprint

#for AT&T

# for T-Mobile

So take back the beep and let your carrier know what you want.