Why are there TWO Greetings on my AT&T Voice Mail?
If you call an AT&T mobile phone and get their voice mail, have you ever noticed how there’s the regular voice mail greeting, then AT&T adds a SECOND voice mail greeting of their own? Well, David Pogue of the New York Times noticed this and it appears that all the mobile phone carriers are doing this to increase talk time.
For AT&T, Pogue says this feature is called “cut-through paging” and it needs to be turned off.
So, I tried to change this on my iPhone. No luck. Next, I called my voice mail from a landline phone. No luck. So, next I called AT&T support to turn this off. Unfortunately, I just spent the last 60 minutes with some guy in another country, and am no further on finding out how to disable this secondary voice mail greeting on my AT&T voice mail. This is all too frustrating.
It appears, that this option SHOULD be available to turn off, but it can’t be found. My AT&T support person claims after 60 minutes with no luck that this must be an Apple setting. After telling him I’m calling AT&T voice mail from a landline phone into an AT&T voice mail phone bank, he still thinks it’s Apple, and without my agreement, transfers me to Apple support. Gee, thanks.
So, if anyone out there know how to turn off this secondary voice mail greeting, please let me know. I use my mobile phone for work, and it’s very unprofessional sounding to have two voice mail greetings. Thanks.
References:
Engadget | Users can disable Voicemail Messages
This is a good reminder to see what your callers’ user experience feels like. If you’re using your mobile phone for business purposes (and who isn’t?), I would argue that it does appear unprofessional to have a second (AT&T) voicemail greeting presented to users.
And if you don’t call yourself once in a while to see how that user experience is, you may not know what they’re hearing.
If AT&T can’t (or more likely, won’t) turn it off, perhaps the answer is to switch to Google’s Voice service. There are a number of features that allow certain numbers to get certain voicemail greetings, etc. And with the Voice app now on the iPhone, why not give it a try?
Jeffrey Gifford
November 19, 2010 at 12:48 pm