Verizon’s latest attempt to needle customers comes as a longer, inescapable greeting that subscribers must endure each time they check their voicemail. Reader Ben, one of Verizon’s unwilling test subjects, writes in to share the ‘new and improved’ script.
“You have one message whose retention time is about to expire. You have two new voice messages. You have nine saved voice messages. First voice message.”
That’s almost three times longer than the current greeting. If you try to escape to your messages by pressing “1,” you’re rewarded with a one second pause… and the greeting continues.
This is a good 25 seconds wasted every time I call to get voicemail. A year ago, you could just hit “1” as soon as you called and it would play. But not any more. And of course, multiply that 25 seconds times millions of customers and they are simply stealing. It was an intentional feature being disabled to increase profit. It’s just wrong.
Recordings of the new message, and Ben’s correspondence with Verizon, after the jump…
