If you call someone on the Sprint network, you can press 1 to skip the voicemail greeting and get straight to leaving a message. They are even kind enough to tell you this during the extended “instructional” section of the greeting.
The inability to do this with my friends on Cingular has always annoyed me, and since switching to T-Mobile I have the same frustration with the T-Mobile voicemail as well.
After a bit of searching, I found this which claims that the # key is the magic button on these networks (of course, I also found this that claims it isn’t).
So I tried it out1, and here are the results. The magic button for skipping straight to leaving a voicemail message is:
- T-Mobile = #
- Cingular = #
- Sprint = 1
- Verizon2 = 1
Know the “magic button” for another carrier? Add it in the comments.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Michael Sica adds this Comment:
THANKS!
May 20th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Stephan adds this Comment:
Great info! Now, if we only had a way to store voicemails on the phone instead of on the network
May 20th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
shorty114 adds this Comment:
Anything for Verizon?
May 20th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
matt w. adds this Comment:
I *SO* hope one for Verizon turns up here. My best friend has Verizon server and damnit, I don’t ever see myself faxing his cell phone, I just want to leave a simple message.
I often txt him just so if he’s not available I won’t have do deal with his voicemail.
(In case you haven’t recently called a Verizon customer, you usually have to listen to the recording from the person you’re calling which is often followed by a 2 hour explanation by a Verizon auto-attendant of all the “neato” stuff you can do such as sending a fax, page, etc)
May 20th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
Nick adds this Comment:
Verizon = 1
May 20th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Weekly Highlights at mattwalters.net adds this Pingback:
[…] alexking.org: Blog > Skipping Voicemail Greetings […]
May 20th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Caroline :) adds this Comment:
wow. I’ve been needing this information for months but didn’t think to research it. thanks!
May 24th, 2006 at 12:55 am
PAL adds this Comment:
Nextel = # (at least in the Atlanta area)
May 31st, 2006 at 8:29 am
PAL adds this Comment:
…all of this assumes we know which cell provider our callee uses.
May 31st, 2006 at 8:31 am
pete adds this Comment:
Thank you, this is a service to humanity. I just updated my voice-mail message to say:
“Please leave a message. You may press pound to skip the rest of this at any time.”
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:40 am
Skip Voicemail Greetings at almost effortless adds this Pingback:
[…] Great tip for skipping over voicemail greetings on mobile phones (via): […]
June 2nd, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Affan adds this Comment:
But how do I know which service provider my friend uses?
August 8th, 2006 at 10:39 am
august adds this Comment:
you rock!!! thanks!
October 3rd, 2006 at 6:06 am
db adds this Comment:
this is information i wish i knew years ago!
October 19th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
Joey Hagedorn | dotcom » Back from San Francisco adds this Pingback:
[…] blog post more useful, I will disclose first tips for skipping voicemail greetings. According to a couple of websites, one may simply press the appropriate key (varying by carrier) during a voicemail […]
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:35 pm
jo adds this Comment:
very helpful info. i find it tough to remember in the split instant that the voicemail message plays, but it would be quite helpful to remember this. those messages waste half of my call time.
August 26th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Brad Nicholas adds this Comment:
In case you’re curious, it’s all about the operator and whether they bill you by the minute or not (mobile operators in the US do, most wireline operators today, at least in the US don’t. In some countries it’s illegal for the operator to charge subscribers airtime to retrieve their voicemail, and they need to warn guest callers about billing to give them a chance to hang up before being charged).
Clearly the operator’s interests in this case are misaligned with those of their subscribers and their guest callers - keep in mind that depending on the billing scheme it’s not the subscriber that gets billed, but rather the guest caller that tried to reach them.
Bottom line: if they can bill someone then they’ll drag out the menu a bit to extend the call. Since they round up the call time it doesn’t take much of a delay to make a voicemail call bill out at 2 minutes..
There’s a bit of history behind these different codes. Octel based voicemail systems (now offered by Alcatel-Lucent and Avaya) used “1″ to do the greeting bypass, # to skip the greeting and login as a subscriber, * to disconnect. Of course the original ATT/Lucent has a different incompatible sequence (* to skip the greeting, Sprint deployed different systems with a custom voicemail UI. Nextel used a different vendor (and so on).
Unfortunately there’s little financial incentive for most mobile operators to improve any of this. The industry’s still very fragmented on the supplier side as there are very few, very powerful) customers. So don’t expect innovation on the carrier side for voicemail - they make plenty of money with what they have in place, even if you don’t like it.
There are alot of cool services coming out now from outside of the carrier environment (check out SpinVox, Simulscribe and Jott for speech to text, Grand Central for really cool call forwarding and call control, CallWave for visual voicemail widgets…). The speech to text stuff may actually have a shot at being deployed by operators because they believe they can charge extra for it.
If you happen to be on a GSM based network you have options because you can change the forwarding rules for your phone number. For CDMA (especially Verizon in the US), you’re totally out of luck ). Verizon may have a great network but they’re completely locked down - you work with whatever service configuration they give you period.
October 17th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Brad Nicholas adds this Comment:
also check out this pretty amazing post in WikiPedia
http://en.wikipedia.[...]ki/Voicemail
October 17th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Skipping voicemail greetings adds this Pingback:
[…] annoyed me when leaving a voicemail for Amanda that I couldn’t skip her gretting. Thanks to this post, which I should have looked up before, I now know that I can press # to skip the greeting. I added […]
October 21st, 2007 at 11:19 am
vijay adds this Comment:
thanks
December 25th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Brett Walker adds this Comment:
Please consider updating at the top:
http://csharpcomputi[...]s/lookup.jsp
lets you lookup phone providers by number.
Other sites like fonefinder.net function, but if you’ve ported your number from one provider to another, they don’t get the update.
Given you are THE NUMBER ONE RESULT for my customized, FIND THE ANSWER query of
~skip OR ~bypass voicemail greeting at&t verizon sprint press 1,
…maybe you could update ‘Cingular’ to say AT&T.
And also update that dialing ‘1′ asks for a password (AT&T).
For Verizon, get to the password with a ‘#’
For GrandCentral (Level 3?), you can get to the password DURING THE RING portion with a ‘#’
Finally, for GrandCentral, bypass the Voicemail greeting with a ‘1′
Thank you very much!
January 29th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Russ adds this Comment:
If they are on Alltel, 1 will enter the calling number as a numeric page. Use 3 to record a voice message.
August 18th, 2008 at 10:13 am