Progress on “Take Back the Beep”

A campaign to eliminate the annoying instructions you hear before leaving a voicemail is making headway, according to the journalist spearheading it.

The New York Times’ David Pogue has posted a progress report, noting that all but one of the major four U.S. wireless carriers have responded in some way.

Pogue previously wrote that wireless carriers make millions of dollars per year off these unnecessarily long voicemail instructions, which tell you to leave a message after the tone and provide ludicrous options such as leaving a callback number. I’m skeptical of Pogue’s claim that Verizon Wireless made $620 million per year off the extra minutes used, but I still don’t like hearing those messages.

After two weeks of countless complaints on company forums and in e-mails, most of the carriers responded.

Sprint pointed out that it allows users to remove the automated greeting, by pressing “3,” then “1,” then “3,” then following the prompt. T-Mobile sent a canned PR statement saying that “this issue has our attention.”

The response from Verizon — or lack thereof — was not as encouraging. A spokesman, Tom Pica, noted that customers can get rid of the automated instructions by, no joke, turning voicemail off. Pogue said it best: “Isn’t that like saying, ‘My son bites his nails, so let’s chop off his hands’?”

The most encouraging response came from AT&T, whose spokesman said “we are going to make some changes.” Spokesman Mark Siegel pointed out that iPhone owners can use visual voicemail for listening to their own messages and said other phones will soon get this functionality. Finally, Siegel said AT&T is thinking of ways to shorten the canned instructions.

AT&T often gets a bad rap for its sub-par 3G coverage and the way it treats iPhone owners, so it’s good to see the company taking the lead on a customer service issue.

It’s important to note that none of the companies are committing to specific changes. Until we see some proof in the pudding, count the best responses as image control, and little more.