I have a strong suspicion (strong enough that I'd bet a pint of Haagen Dasz) that there is an underhanded scam being perpetrated by our cell phone providers to shave a little more airtime into your calls than is actually necessary. Who hasn't been annoyed by the pre-recorded message that you get when you call someone and get their voice mail? It goes a little something like this..."To page this person, press #. At the tone please record your message. When you are finished recording your message, you may hang up or press 1 for more options. To leave a call-back number press the star key." This little song-and-dance takes about 10 seconds to listen to. If only a million people have to listen to this only once a day, at just $.01 per minute (rates will vary of course), that adds up to $1,666 and some change per day that they make off of us while we sit through this nonsense. And that's just a million people. Do you feel ripped off? Do you feel that you're paying for a valuable service listening to this menu of options every single time?
And another question - Here, in 2009, do we really need to be reminded that we begin our message after the tone, or that when we are done we may hang up? Is there still a large enough body of people out there that don't know what to do that it justifies making us all listen to these instructions?
Just curious...Your thoughts?
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