Take Back the Beep - Stop wasting money on voicemail instructions!

New York Times tech writer David Pogue has launched a grassroots campaign called Take Back the Beep to demand that cellphone carriers eliminate the time-and-money-wasting instructions you hear before leaving voicemails. These are the instructions that come after the personal greeting - the ones that tell you, oh so helpfully, that "the person you are trying to reach is not available," and "when you're finished, hang up" and give you useless options like "to leave a callback number, press 5" or "to send a numeric page (wtf?), press 7." These instructions are less than useless, they're insulting - and even worse, they're costing us money. I blogged about Pogue's initial discovery that these instructions are intended to cost users money, to increase overages and yield more profits for the carriers. Well, it's time to put a stop to this - and here's hoping that Pogue's campaign does the trick. To help, go here for his instructions on how to contact and complain to the various carriers. Take back the beep!!!