Take Back the Beep

David Pogue writes of the nuisance voice mail prompts the cell phone companies have inflicted on us in order to increase airtime usage. I run into it most often calling my wife, who has a Sprint phone. Luckily they have posted how to disable the prompt I hear, thanks to Pogue’s campaign:

“To turn off caller instructions aka "TAKE BACK THE BEEP"

“Dial into your voicemail accout (sic), select 3 for personal options, select 2 for greetings, select 1 for main greeting, select 3 for add or remove caller instructions, then press 2 for do not play instructions.”

(Of note: Apple wouldn’t let AT&T inflict this on iPhone accounts.)

Pogue now has a followup to his first column.