Friday, July 06, 2007

I'm OK, You're OK

Nice to have one's paranoia confirmed, isn't it?

Courtesy of David Pogue and the Circuits newsletter of 5 July 2007:

As longtime Pogue's Posts readers know, my biggest cellular pet peeve is the endless recording you hear when you reach someone's voicemail: "To page this person, press 2 now. You may leave a message at the tone. When you finish recording, you may hang up. Or press 5 for more options"- and so on.

At the conference, I asked one cellular executive if that message is deliberately recorded slowly and with as many words as possible, to eat up your airtime and make more ARPU [Average Revenue Per User] for the cell carrier. I was half kidding - but he wasn't fooling around in his reply: "Yes." The secret's out.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Can't you just hit the * key to jump to message? Or is that like pressing the arrow buttons for an elevator or the thermostat in office buildings? Just there for show. A placebo or panacea?

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