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posted by mrpg on Monday June 05 2017, @01:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the your-call-is-important-to-us dept.

Original URL

Frank Kemp was working on his computer when his cellphone let out the sound of Mario — from Super Mario Bros. — collecting a coin. That signaled he had a new voice mail message, yet his phone had never rung.

"At first, I thought I was crazy," said Mr. Kemp, a video editor in Dover, Del. "When I checked my voice mail, it made me really angry. It was literally a telemarketing voice mail to try to sell telemarketing systems."

Mr. Kemp had just experienced a technology gaining traction called ringless voice mail, the latest attempt by telemarketers and debt collectors to reach the masses. The calls are quietly deposited through a back door, directly into a voice mail box — to the surprise and (presumably) irritation of the recipient, who cannot do anything to block them.

Regulators are considering whether to ban these messages. They have been hearing from ringless voice mail providers and pro-business groups, which argue that these messages should not qualify as calls and, therefore, should be exempt from consumer protection laws that ban similar types of telephone marketing.

But consumer advocates, technology experts, people who have been inundated with these calls and the lawyers representing them say such an exemption would open the floodgates. Consumers' voice mail boxes would be clogged with automated messages, they say, making it challenging to unearth important calls, whether they are from an elderly mother's nursing home or a child's school.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday June 05 2017, @03:05PM (3 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Monday June 05 2017, @03:05PM (#520775) Journal

    Know what you mean. More and more, I don't like or want voicemail. Text is better. Is there cell phone service that doesn't come with voicemail? I have not found any.

    Can I opt out of voicemail? Not have the service? It seems not. Why not? I can think of one reason: $. Why else is the interface so damned slow? Burn up your minutes so you are more likely to go over. People who are on an unlimited plan get stuck with the same dog slow interface as everyone else, because it'd be too costly to differentiate there.

    In the days of landlines and answering machines with mini cassette tapes, only took one scumbag telemarketer to go on and on about some fantastic offer you can't afford to miss, to fill up your machine and make it unable to take any more messages, so that maybe you miss the real messages you can't afford to miss.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Monday June 05 2017, @04:07PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday June 05 2017, @04:07PM (#520812)

    Do you people not have visual voicemail? I haven't seen a modern smartphone without it. They'll even transcribe your mail into text (poorly), for an extra fee, but the free service works well usually and lets you skip all the overhead. It downloads the voicemails when you have data service and you can listen to it whenever. The only problem is that it's still voicemail, so it's still slow since it's just people flapping their lips which is much slower to listen to than it is to read text, but at least you can actually see the number they called from (and a name if it's in your contact list), the length of the message, you can skip around with the slider, you can immediately pause or delete, etc.

  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Monday June 05 2017, @09:55PM

    by edIII (791) on Monday June 05 2017, @09:55PM (#521006)

    Visual voicemail is just some patent encumbered crap that any moron with two brain cells would've found obvious. Just more USPTO bullshit that it was even approved as a patent.

    I have voicemail completely disabled on my cell phone so that I can properly use it as a endpoint in my Asterisk servers. The one thing Asterisk provides, is really good voicemail. You want to get rid of the envelope, meaning the number and person calling? Easy. You want to use your own email instead? Easy. My voicemail is blissfully simple. I check my inbox and can sort by automatically tagged "voice-emails". The recording is attached. If you go with an easier distro like FreePBX, they even have a UCP where you can login to control your phone and review voicemail directly in the browser. Kind of like visual voicemail, but not a phone ;)

    You CAN turn a cellular carrier into a dumb common carrier that does not provide any of those services anymore. It just requires setting up Asterisk, a DID or two, and configuring your phone for awhile. Then YOU are in control of your communications and voicemail, not the carrier. Don't like the carrier anymore? Fuck em. You can bail really easily and go the next carrier. If your life has WiFi all around you all the time? Don't even need a carrier, and Asterisk will always at least answer your phone, present your message or IVR, and take a message that somebody called while you were unavailable.

    I haven't had a cellular phone contract in several years now. Just pre-paid burners I attach to my system for awhile and then ditch. My service I provide myself is apparently blissful compared to wholly depending on a carrier.

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
  • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday June 05 2017, @11:23PM

    by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday June 05 2017, @11:23PM (#521038)

    Can I opt out of voicemail?

    Depends on your provider. I can, but without it I still get notifications that someone tried to reach me.

    --
    It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.