Absolutely AMAZING Service and FANTASTIC above and beyond support, willing to figure it out, agree and had his turned off…so gets the frustration and promised to hand walk it through to resolution.

- Level 1 support call #1 transferred me to what sounded like Apple care, so I hung up and called back. Level 1 support call #2 told me to set an “extended absence greeting.” Wanting to humor him, I did. When it didn’t solve the problem, I called back. Call #3 level 1 tech said he “couldn’t find anything” so I told him I’ve done some research about this and I need to be directed to level 3 support. He said he couldn’t take me directly to level 3, but he could bump me up to level 2.
- Level 2 support said he was going to resolve the issue, but then he said it couldn’t be done because it’s a system standard, and his supervisor agreed. He also said level 3 support doesn’t exist (?) ***That’s when I referenced some of the case numbers on this website*** and said I know people who have done this, I know it’s possible and ***here are the case numbers where you’ve done this before***, and he finally agreed to open a ticket (and told me he “learned something today”).
- Today I got a call from the “technical support ticket team” where they sent it off to “the right team” (for some reason they don’t seem to want to tell you very much about their company infrastructure) and verified it goes straight to the beep. My message is now a grand total of about 2 seconds long.

My thoughts and hearts go out to everyone on here who, like me, has been driven crazy forever.

BUT: I am here to help: I have cracked the code that lets you bypass not just the carrier-added prompts but the callee’s own prompts as well.

With very rare exceptions, the following method eliminates this 15-second hell:

The moment a message starts, on any phone, hit 1.

One of these three things will happen: act accordingly.

1) If you are calling someone with Sprint or ATT, after you push 1, it goes right to the beep.

2) If the voicemail message continues as if you had pressed nothing at all, you are calling someone with Verizon.

In this case, push * , and it goes right to the beep.

3) If you hear a recording break off and say, “1 is not a valid selection,” you are calling someone with TMobile.

In this case, push # , and it goes right to the beep.

I know it doesn’t eliminate them — I only wish! — but at least you can bypass them. And, since pushing 1 bypasses the prompts on about half of all phones, the only thing you really have to remember is this:

Nothing? = Star
Not valid? = Pound

I tried calling AT&T once and that Tech was not even sure what I was talking about. Am going to try again later…

So, armed with this blog, I called back again, got a different rep, and he opened a ticket in five minutes. (We’ll see in a few days whether it actually worked, of course…)

Thanks all for the info and support.

TSG

Then I see this story floating around

AppleInsider is reporting that AT&T and Apple are discussing new features that could arrive exclusively on the iPhone “before year’s end.”
“other exclusive features will reportedly come in the form of a new voicemail setting that will allow users to disable the custom voicemail greeting and the AT&T voicemail introduction heard by other users. The feature, presumably to be pitched as a time saver, will also allow users to automatically bypass all greetings and instructions when placing calls to other AT&T customers.”

NOW just how is this going to work? This voice mail platform stuff is really deep ya think? Would some please explain what’s next?

This is ridiculous people!
September 2 2009