Navigating the voicemail menu is really annoying

Is that not normal? Most people business wise I’ve contacted or even for medical stuff in Canada they do. Auto email response, change voicemail to contact X or the receptionist.

Your boss would be breaking the law in Australia, now explicitly under the new right to disconnect legislation, if they said anything about it.

(Though, could have probably been argued in the past also as unpaid overtime in the past)

Recently, I've been getting calls I'm pretty sure are spam. They are all from different numbers, but all of the area codes are from where I got my phone number, which is quite far from where I live now. Additionally, they all do leave voicemails, but each and every one is exactly thirty seconds of silence.

Spam or not, I can't figure out the point.

And I’m sure as fuck never going to pick up the phone for an unknown number.

You've gotta be diligent: if you do business with something, like a project or an appointment, you need to drop their number into your contact list. Every time. Yeah, it's neat if you need to reach out to them, which will be never because it's on the phone, but it's primarily so they can call you and not be unknown.

I'd love a QR code with the org's phone/mail/blah number on it at the front desk, because I do in-person a lot because fuck the phone.

Sometimes it’s fun, when you know it’s spam, to answer it while it’s ringing (which may let the operator know ‘hey, they answered, start talking’) and quickly hit Speaker and Mute and enjoy 5-10 sec of them being confused when they hear silence back.

Why I still end up listening to a voicemail after reading the transcription:

Edit: Image had a visible phone number in it. Wasn't mine (just grabbed from Google) but still probably not cool to spread that around. 😔

Some people just can't fathom communicating other than a voice call lol

In Colombia I get a shocking number of voice messages via WhatsApp. I got a 4-minute message from my landlord last week that had 20 seconds of actual information.

The transcribe option in the app is reasonably good, but it's not 100% accurate.

I used to troll with mine and spell out my name, phone number, email address, website, all twice.

Most voice-mails I got were like "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST WHY IS YOUR MESSAGE SO LONG"

top kek

This is the way.

Though, I have found that the default message of "pinball_wizard has not configured their voicemail" conveys the same message pretty effectively, too.

At least I can get a transcript and speed it up a bit

Most smartphones offer voicemail transcription now, I believe. Or at least Apple does. I don't have voicemail set up on my Android phone to check.

I used to use an app called Hullomail which brought them into an app as voice clips you can see the caller and play or export.

It also showed you missed calls while your phone was off since they can just flag when a call was redirected to them. Super useful.

IIRC they got acquired and removed the free tier but you might still find them useful.

huh? Android lets you pick from a menu.

It is ridiculous that in 2025 you still don’t have random access voicemail.

Life must really suck when you're too dumb to know how things work.

I've never had it enabled

I love that meme! I can see this one being real though

If I were you, I would save a copy of them somewhere safe. I wouldn't trust a phone company or my phone to hold on to voicemails forever.

That's a greater idea I'm doing that

Fizz had a visual voicemail app that lets you do that.

Can be a normal phone which is what I would do if I where a parent and my kid would have to bike 12 km to school every day.

I would totally understand if it was in a place where your kids can take a walk or public transport to school or other places on their own. I would also want them to have means to call you.

EDIT: my bad, I ignored the 'smart' bit there. I just meant any phone.

Whatever you say Grandpa

Which is kinda funny because they could save money by automating texting for some of the shit they have people call for.

Though on the other hand, if it's a legitimate business, you can stop the call spam easier, at least in places with enforced do not call lists.

I, for one, hate both equally. I want to READ my news, and I don't even care if it comes with static images.

You need to setup your phone to answer and then hang up automatically on the callers. On my Pixel I only get VMs from spam callers if I didn't have any signal at the time.