Small Business

Bypass Voicemail Instructions, Get On With Your Life

By Dave Johnson

Updated on: August 4, 2009 / 1:02 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

Have you noticed that David Pogue, of the New York Times fame, is on a rampage? He's declared war on cell phone carriers and, in particular, on the lengthy voice mail messages that you must wait through before getting to the beep. I don't blame him; in 2009, does anyone really need instructions on how to use voice mail?

David deserves a medal for articulating something we've all silently grumbled about 30 times a day. And there's an upside to all this attention voice mail instructions are getting: Turns out there are shortcuts to bypass them.

The key varies depending upon the carrier, but it's generally one of these:

For example, I have both an AT&T and a Sprint phone in my custody right now, and pressing 1 effectively skips the voicemail instructions on both. If you're calling a Verizon cell phone, though, 1 doesn't appear to do anything, but instead, * skips the message. Cingular uses a #.

Of course, you generally don't know what carrier you're calling, so you don't know to press the 1 or the * or the #. That's okay. I haven't been able to test all the combinations, but it looks like you can just press 'em all, in sequence, until one of them works.

Does anyone have any better data on the voicemail instruction skip? Or any other cell phone tips, tricks, or shortcuts? Shout it out in the comments.

Photo by KB35