So Long Voicemail, Give My Regards To the Fax Machine 395
itwbennett writes: Yes, it was just a matter of time before voicemail, the old office relic, the technology The Guardian's Chitra Ramaswamy called "as pointless as a pigeon with a pager," finally followed the fax machine into obscurity. Last week JPMorgan Chase announced it was turning off voicemail service for tens of thousands of workers (a move that CocaCola made last December). And if Bloomberg's Ramy Inocencio has the numbers right, the cost savings are significant: JPMorgan, for example, will save $3.2 million by cutting voicemail for about 136,000. As great as this sounds, David Lazarus, writing in the LA Times, warns that customer service will suffer.
I stopped using it 5 years ago (Score:3, Interesting)
I turned off voicemail at my company 5 years ago, saving thousands per year, which i was able to move to the employee incentive program.
Nobody misses it at all.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I stopped using it 5 years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you prioritize an unknown caller over someone with whom you're already having a conversation? Just as interrupting a conversation is rude, call waiting should be banned (just as voicemail!) and emergency calls routed $SOMEWHERE that guarantees a live immediate response (or perhaps keep the sole instance of voicemail in organizations).
Re:I stopped using it 5 years ago (Score:4, Interesting)
Because prospective clients are harder and more expensive to attain than retaining current clients. Obviously, you're not in sales.
Re:I stopped using it 5 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
If I call to buy some product or service from you, and get voicemail... I don't leave a message, I just move on to your competitors.
Obviously, you're not in sales either.
Re:I stopped using it 5 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
GP seemed to be implying that the recipient of the call - who was w/o voicemail - was in sales, talking to one customer Charlie while the other customer Chris called (maybe returned a call). With voicemail, Chris just quickly tells him what he was calling about, and maybe when to get back to him.
If Chris gets a dead end - no voice mail, he'd indeed do what you mentioned - move on to the competitors.
Not everybody is an asshole - most people realize that when they call a person, that recipient may already be on another call, or in a meeting, or actually busy w/ something else, like lunch. Just having the ability to let him know that he called, about what and when to return the call is the minimum etiquette that can be expected. Or can't it?
Re: (Score:3)
Dinnertime calls ended years ago when Governement passed the Do-not-call list act making it illegal to call people on the official list.
I don't know what planet you live on, but I've been on the Do-not-call list since inception. Yes, the calls tailed off for a time, but as of late, my phone is ringing off the hook, including dinner time. Repeat callers get reported to the gov site.
It's not rude if everyone understands the protocol (Score:3)
Why would you prioritize an unknown caller over someone with whom you're already having a conversation?
Who says they are unknown? I have caller ID at work. If I'm talking with a co-worker and a customer calls the customer should take priority in most cases. I've done this hundreds of times and it is the proper behavior. It's not rude, it's prudent. Our collective jobs depend on being responsive to our customers and we don't let our egos interfere with that fact.
Just as interrupting a conversation is rude, call waiting should be banned (just as voicemail!) and emergency calls routed $SOMEWHERE that guarantees a live immediate response (or perhaps keep the sole instance of voicemail in organizations).
It's only rude if there isn't a clearly understood reason for interrupting the call. My company employs just a handful of people and if a custo
Re: (Score:2)
Who says they are unknown? I have caller ID at work. If I'm talking with a co-worker and a customer calls the customer should take priority in most cases. I've done this hundreds of times and it is the proper behavior. It's not rude, it's prudent. Our collective jobs depend on being responsive to our customers and we don't let our egos interfere with that fact.
What will you do if you're on the phone with a customer and another customer calls? Will your caller ID tell you if it is indeed a customer or maybe an unrelated (e.g. "wrong number") caller? How about the possibility of it being a new customer? (not sure if your org has a separate department to handle new signups).
It's only rude if there isn't a clearly understood reason for interrupting the call. My company employs just a handful of people and if a customer calls we need to have someone answer the phone. There is almost nothing I could be doing that would justify me ignoring a call from one of our customers during working hours. Anything I have to say to my coworker can probably wait a few minutes and we all understand that.
This is quite understandable. I was envisioning the above-mentioned scenario of two potentially-equal-priority callers in which case call waiting is a nuisance (that's what busy signals are for).
Re:It's not rude if everyone understands the proto (Score:5, Insightful)
Interruptions are not necessarily rude (Score:2)
What will you do if you're on the phone with a customer and another customer calls?
That's why we have voicemail and a rollover chain. If I cannot answer one of my coworkers does. I'm not the only person who works here but we always try to make sure our customers can reach someone live.
The point is that interrupting a call is not in principle rude. There can be very good reasons to interrupt a conversation. There also can be good reasons to ignore a potential interruption. If I see a telemarketer call I'm probably going to ignore that call if I'm talking with someone important.
Re: It's not rude if everyone understands the prot (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, because they cost so much less than voicemail.
Re: (Score:2)
Android is wonderful in that respect - prior call blockers required you to whitelist individual entries. Now they blacklist everything but your contacts. Really nice.
Re: (Score:2)
interrupting them in the middle of their calls (I'm assuming that they have call-waiting)
I do not think call waiting works the way you think it works.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
If your receiver beeps, interrupting the caller, then somebody did a lousy job setting up your Cisco phone system. They don't normally do that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But your call is very important to us! (crappy lo-fi music continues)
Re: (Score:3)
Me too. Work Phone: the red light lets me know the line is working. One day they reset my voicemail and the red light was off, and something felt wrong all day. Fortunately someone left a new voicemail towards the end the day and the reassuring glow that my phone works was back.
Android phone: the little icon of a cassette tape might be burned in to the top left of the screen for all I know; it has been lit for over a year.
Coming next ... Office desk telephones (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's pretty simple, really.
However, one thing I will NOT DO, is ever attach my own phone to an exchange server and allow it to have permission to control literally everything on my phone, from disabling wifi, access to the camera, to forcing a operating system reset. When I first got my phone and tha
Re:Coming next ... Office desk telephones (Score:4, Insightful)
I myself got 2 lines from Verizon. One I use exclusively for work related stuff. Other I use exclusively for family related stuff, such as FaceTime and WhatsApp. None of my family members know the first number, and none of my colleagues or clients or customers know the second. So any employer w/ a BYOD policy could take the first phone and do anything w/ it, and I'd be able to accommodate that.
I have always taken a dim view of people who use work equipment for personal stuff. Yesterday, I left my company, and I just cleanly handed over my laptop, w/o needing to change anything, since I did nothing personal there. Similarly, in a past job, I used my company provided cellphone ONLY for work related purposes. Never did any personal banking, for instance, on that phone.
From an ethical standpoint, if a company provides you w/ any equipment - be it a laptop, cellphone, printer, or whatever, they have the right to write the rules of its use however they like. One would also be stupid to use that for personal stuff just b'cos one is too cheap to buy a laptop/tablet/phone of their own. However, if the company has a BYOD policy, they don't have that right - you can use that phone for anything, and the day you leave, you take it w/ you, instead of handing it over. Which is why BYOD just makes no sense to me - not to mention the administrative nightmare in managing different company policies.
Re:Coming next ... Office desk telephones (Score:5, Informative)
You can totally fuck off the VoIP phones by misconfiguring the switches and routers in your network, no problem, and then their voices sounds as shitty as the software client. And you can install the software client correctly, and threat the VoIP packets accordingly also in the Desktop LAN, and suddenly the voice quality will be as good as with the hardware phones.
VOIP quality (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem comes when you talk about implementing it. Old fashioned phone switches--that was specialized hardware and the client would generally get what the implementer recommended. VOIP *should* use proper hardware as well--but all too often the client says, "It runs on computers? Great! We have a PC down the hall we're not using. We can put it on that."
Umm, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fax machines are still widely used. They are hardly obscure.
Re:Umm, what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Umm, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
An interesting side note to this. A buddy of mine in venture capital use a fax machines all of the time to send documents back and forth because email and any "store communications" they are required to keep copies of for regulators and other review. Since the fax machines don't "store" information, at least not long term enough to count, they are not required to keep copies of info sent or received over fax.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
The morgage company I went through in San Antonio used docusign for all but the final closing papers. And those I had to go in person and sign with my realator and morgage agent.
Re: (Score:3)
Between two hospitals and a medical school, we have > 300 fax machines on site. I'm pretty sure the mortgage industry has some help from their friendly doctors :)
Re: (Score:2)
Fax machines are "widely used" only in lines of business where they are legally required, like banking, law and real estate. Customers and workers hate them and with they could chuck the technology, but until a digital signature standard is legally accepted, we are stuck with them.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, they have a bunch of money, so the modern world has to put up with their nonsense.
Re: (Score:3)
Quick? Cheap? Legally required, yes, and that's the one and only reason why fax persists. Your customers hate you because when you send them a fax they have to go hunt up an office service company that will receive it for them for $1.50 a page. They take the document home, sign it, and then miss a second day of work to bring it back to the office service company to send back to you.
And after all that, what you have is not printed pages but pictures of printed pages. To integrating that into your office docu
Re: (Score:2)
Don't these theoretical people own printers? Just about every cheapo multifunction printer I've seen in the last decade can fax.
And before you say 'no one has a land line any more, lol' while it's true there are plenty of people without one, more homes have a landline than don't.
And even in the example you give, why on earth wouldn't they just sign it and fax it back immediately, rather than waiting a day and making another trip to the store?
Re: (Score:2)
Don't these theoretical people own printers?
Maybe. I don't. I don't print much at all these days. Most of the time, I'm working from my home office and a printer or phone isn't worth the desk space to me.
And before you say 'no one has a land line any more, lol' while it's true there are plenty of people without one, more homes have a landline than don't.
That "land line" will often be VoIP, because they got the service in a bundle rather than buying cable a la carte.
And even in the example you give, why on earth wouldn't they just sign it and fax it back immediately, rather than waiting a day and making another trip to the store?
You read before you sign, don't you? I certainly read my mortgage application and that took more than a few minutes. Luckily, everything but the final documents were signed with e-sig and those were printed by the title company.
Re: (Score:2)
The most significant loss (Score:5, Funny)
...will be when they realize not everyone tht spelz lyk dis is a teenager.
On the upside, they could use that as a way to lay off people too lazy to spell "what", "are", "you" and other amazingly difficult words.
"Dear Mr. Smith,
GTFO, lol.
kthxbai,
Management" ... I'm stuck on 2007, aren't I?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure it already exists, but an "electronic shorthand to English" translator would be great.
Re: (Score:2)
...will be when they realize not everyone tht spelz lyk dis is a teenager.
On the upside, they could use that as a way to lay off people too lazy to spell "what", "are", "you" and other amazingly difficult words.
"Dear Mr. Smith,
GTFO, lol.
kthxbai,
Management" ... I'm stuck on 2007, aren't I?
Oh I know a project manager who types exactly like that. He's in his 50's and I believe he does it to try and look like he is young and hip. To me he looks like he is trying to be a teenage girl. It drives me insane. Use complete words and proper spellings please.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The most significant loss (Score:5, Interesting)
Language bias disrupts actual communication.
So we just make shit up and demand everyone understand it.
Pointing out, or ripping on, language constructs that are not to your liking doesn't make you intelligent; it makes you a disruptive asshole.
Oh. Wow. Go back and re-read that until you understand the unintended consequence of your statment.
If you cannot get over the use or R U 31337 you need to know you are the problem, and not the writer. The intelligent people, or at least honest people, who want to engage in actual communication have more adaptive protocols and are more concerned with the content than the wrapper.
The use of various odd symbols or semi cryptic groups of letters such as AFAIAC as a communication language is not necessarily that difficult. But it has a few strikes going against it.
First, It doesn't enhance communication, it impedes it. A large part of the alternate spellings universe is based on trendiness, where one tries to place themselves with using a "new" version of the word they want to type. Fast evolving, yes, but never can make it into the lexicon, because that would be the ultimate disgrace for the trendsetters. The goal is to be different, not to conform to any standard.
Second, it is jarringly imprecise. Anything other than top level communications doesn't work. I had a new employees who tried to refuse to take telephone calls, saying he only responded to text - and he was so 1337. So after taking a log time and many texts to try to communicate, I eventually told him he had a choice. Pick up the telephone when I called him, or I would walk across the building and we would talk in person, with the understanding that I wasn't going to be happy at all about having to give him special treatment. He weighed th eoptions, and like any good millenial, he didn't like interfacing with people too much, so he took the phone calls from me.
Third - it ain't rocket science Spunky! I can easily understand or figure out what they are saying, even as words are mutated to keep up with trends. And as need be, I can write just like them - although I might be a mutation or two behind. But the converse is not necessarily true, and communication is very limited.
Know your audience, and communicate with them in the form they understand. And I'm gleefully thinking about some 1337 versions of mathematical formulae. Now there would be some precise communications.
TLDR: Grammar Nazi's please fuck off.
Says the guy who's demanding that everyone must accept the alternative universe of communications via rapidly mutating misspellings based upon the real words.
Tell me "Trend Nazi", after enough mutations, what will you do when the spelling returns to the original version? (4 b?@ What did I just write? I and translate, but you really should know and accept what I wrote, because it communicates, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)
Makes perfect sense to me. I talk to people on the phone all the time, but it seems rude to just call someone without first sending an instant message or text to ask if they're free. My usual response when someone IMs me asking if I'm free is to give them an estimate (usually 5-15 minutes) of how long I need to complete what I'm working on so that I'm free to talk. A phone ringing unexpectedly is an annoying interruption and listening to a voice mail is a nuisance.
Voice mails are very much needed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Also, maybe the only time I have to talk is on that hour long drive from location A to B. I can't text you as that would be unsafe, but I can call you. Without VM I can't leave a message so how long do I let it ring and how long do I wait before calling again? If I left a VM I'd wait for you to call me back.
Re: (Score:3)
I'd feel for your wife, but you clearly will never have one.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm the same way, only in reverse. I only respond to text messages and emails if they are pre-arranged and in my calendar.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
There's this amazing etiquette change going on in America today, the idea that you need to contact someone first before you can have a real-time interaction with them. You can't just show up at someone's door, you have to call first. You can't just call, you need to text first. Someday soon, it'll be rude to text without first checking someone's Weibo status or some damn thing. Our great-grandparents would be baffled.
Re: (Score:2)
I think I just hate the phone in general. I would much rather type everything.
So, I hate it when my phone rings. It's one of my coworkers interrupting me. But, my boss will send me an email and ask me to call her when I'm free. And then I'm wondering, "why can't you just call me? You're the damn boss!"
I think I just hate the phone.
Re: (Score:2)
> I think I just hate the phone in general. I would much rather type everything.
Oh hell that is SO EFFING SLOW. If I text someone more than 3 or 4 times in a row it's because one of us is unable to speak. I watch people have 10- to 15-minute-long texting sessions with one person that could be settled with 2 or 3 minutes of actually talking. It's painful to watch.
Re: (Score:3)
Texting is asynchronous. When my phone buzzes with a text its saying "Hey. When you have time there is a message here." much better.
Voicemail... Well, if voicemail worked like texting I wouldnt mind it. But no. Instead of just glancing at my phone to see the latest text on the screen I have to unlock my phone, press the
Re: (Score:2)
For me it isn't a matter of people must text before calling / leaving a voice mail, it is simply that how long and convenient to me it is to retrieve your message and process it in my idle cycles, the faster you will get a useful response.
I can glance at a text message and begin processing it in a small number of seconds, so when ever I next have 5 seconds free or need to glance at my phone lock screen for other info (aka what time is it), I'll also check your text.
But if you leave me a voice mail, that is
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, our great-grandparents often tended to be meticulous about sending (and acknowledging) invitations.
Re: (Score:3)
Removing voicemail, rather than addressing its misuse seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There seem to be multiple situations in which voicemail provides value, especially when people are regularly away from a desk. I use Hullomail on my personal phone and it makes voicemail something I'm happy to use. If someone phones
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone (relevant to this discussion) has email, though.
Re: (Score:3)
Fax machines are "obscure"? (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously, submitter doesn't work in healthcare or legal fields. As much as I'd like to see that antiquated technology finally die, it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
Fax Machines gone? (Score:5, Informative)
There are tens of thousands of fax machines and fax systems still in use today because, despite all of our technological advances, the fax machine is still the most secure way of delivering medical and legal documents between locations in a compact time frame.
E-mail? Right out unless you're configured for encryption and getting all the companies you deal with to agree on, utilize, and understand how the encrypt/decrypt works is ... beyond Herculean in scope. In the medical field alone that would require suppliers, doctor's offices, HME/DME companies, hospitals, hospices, quick care/walk-in style facilities, pharmacies, and so on to all have a system that worked easily that everyone agreed on. Of course, that doesn't begin to take into account the MILLIONS of patients that just might want to communicate with you via e-mail.
The legal field is just as bad - judges, courts, lawyers, public defenders, police departments, fire departments, etc, and clients of course.
So, yeah, technology that has supposedly died usually is alive and well and the people who think it has died just work somewhere they don't have to deal with it.
Re: (Score:2)
Healthcare providers could easily use secure websites for communication, and many of them already do. But doctor IT skills match their legendary investment skills.
Re: (Score:3)
There are tens of thousands of fax machines and fax systems still in use today because, despite all of our technological advances, the fax machine is still the most secure way of delivering medical and legal documents between locations, where one or both locations can't figure out anything more complicated than stick the papers in it and dial a phone number, in a compact time frame.
TFTFY
Internally, our company uses several different mechanisms for securely transferring sensitive documents, all of which are superior to fax in speed and reliability, but we interact with hundreds of other businesses that refuse to abandon this mid-last-century technology for the same job.
Re: (Score:3)
Lost in all this bitching and complaining and casting aspersions on those who still use faxes is the answer to one simple question - why should they switch?
Even though they're "last centuries technology", they're simple and s
Re: (Score:3)
Let's see. To intercept a fax or voicemail from the machine in my office, you need to be physically present there or next to outside phone lines every time. Hardware to do persistent remote wiretaps is expensive and not widely available. Chances of getting caught or leaving evidence of tampering are high and you only get my future communications, not the ones I already read and shredded.
With unlocked computer I get years of your e-mail so far and your IMAP password that I can use to spy on you from now on.
Cell phones (Score:4, Insightful)
Great job at drawing retarded conclusions guys.
Turning off desktop phone voicemail BECAUSE EVERYONE USES A CELL PHONE and has their office number forwarded to that anyway does not mean people aren't using voicemail.
But hey, don't take the extra three seconds to ask why they were not using it or anything.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Everyone forwards their work number to their personal mobile phone? I'd say that is a ludicrous assertion.
I work at a phone company. No one has a desk phone, we all have desk phone numbers, we just forward them to our cells. We provide specific features to our customers for having virtual office numbers that work with their cell phones in a nice way.
You also seem to fail to recognizes that a great many companies subsidize cell phones, and all the ones without office phones either provide a cell phone or subsidize the employees. Most just subsidizes the employee phones so that can get what they want.
I don't even believe our Cisco system is setup to allow forwarding.
So your c
Voicemail considered harmful (Score:2)
Recorded speech is slow, impossible to organize, and nearly unsearchable. If you're providing information to me verbally, you're wasting both my time and yours: just send me a copy of the data source you're reading from. If you're providing creative ideas, you should write those suckers down in an email or other document so they don't get forgotten or mis-attributed. If you're not calling to provide either information or creative ideas, you're not saying anything useful and I don't want to listen to your
Re:Voicemail considered harmful (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, real-time voice is great for back-and-forth. But you can't do that by voicemail. All you can do is send a "we need to talk about X" ping. You say you're doing that with a followup email and text, which means the voicemail is redundant: all it's doing is forcing me to listen to you stutter for several minutes, verbally repeating a message I got with a quick glance at my phone an hour ago.
Re: (Score:2)
However, if it is not urgent, I don't waste my time typing the message. I can leave a voicemail in much less time than I can send a typed message and even if I couldn't, I am already connected on the phone so taking the time to open an email or text message to the person is time I would rather not spend.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem isn't even the recorded speech, but the tiresome spiel you have to wait through before you can leave the message. Yes, I've heard that I can "...press 1 for more options" a million times before, so why do I have to sit through it every time. I wonder if anyone has ever tallied up the nationwide man-hours people have wasted listening to that standard intro.
Voicemail trasnscription (Score:2)
I'm loving voicemail now, I get the voicemail automatically transcribed and texted to me. I never have to call voicemail, and reading a text is super quick compared to listening to voicemail. Even google voicemail does this.
Re:Voicemail trasnscription (Score:5, Funny)
Except when the majority of people you get a voicemail from has a sufficiently thick accent that transcription leaves an indecipherable jumble of words.
"My car hill devil cream pewter shakes dawn under noticable with. Read line on palestine." is an actual transcription of a single sentence of a voicemail I received from a client. Allow me to relay what the customer actually said in the recording:
"My goddamn computer shut down without notice and there's a red light on the power brick." (This turned out to be from a short that developed in the client's $3 powered USB hub that he got off ebay, for those interested.)
My voicemail gets full of these types of transcriptions daily, and I frankly find them useless. Sometime's they'll be closer to where there's enough context that makes it through to decipher the message. Unfortunately, more often than not, the transcriptions are worse than the example I used. I've used both Sprint's offering for Visual Voicemail (on promo only...it wasn't worth paying for), and Google hangouts VV. Neither are worth having.
One thing I hate (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that voicemail is dead is asinine.
I only have your phone number, and you don't answer (yes, I'm over 25, I actually call people on the phone), now what?
Dumb fucking emo hipsters, the rest of the world doesn't live on Instagram.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Even though I know it's petty, I do the same.
Funny how those people are quick to escalate every fucking thing to the higher ups, though...
Re: (Score:3)
The idea that voicemail is dead is asinine.
I only have your phone number, and you don't answer (yes, I'm over 25, I actually call people on the phone), now what?
Dumb fucking emo hipsters, the rest of the world doesn't live on Instagram .
TFTFY
...and, no shit. Put down the iPhone, you little dorks and recognize that the world still communicates verbally, sometimes using a feature that your magic text box has actually had from the start. It's efficacy at communicating useful information larger than something like "lol" is unparalleled when compared to the other shitty input devices on mobile devices.
Re: (Score:2)
And how are you going to "send them a message" when all you have is their phone number?
You know that normal phones don't handle texts, right? So what then, write them a letter?
Re:Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't address his issue. Andy is in a meeting when he gets a call from a customer Barbie, who he cannot answer at the moment. His schedule is pretty packed, so he may not look at the phone for the next few hours. Barbie only has his phone number and NOTHING ELSE - and doesn't even know if it's a cellphone. Let's assume here that it ain't - it's his desk phone, and he won't be at his desk until 4pm. What is Barbie to do?
With Voice Mail, she just leaves him a message telling him what she called about, and maybe even giving him some time slots that he can call her back - after all, Barbie too probably has work other than getting her message to Andy.
But now, the company has decided to discontinue Voice Mail for whatever reason. What does Barbie do next? Remember, she has no other way of contacting him, and she too has a packed day. Maybe she can call Caitlyn and redirect her business her way, assuming that Caitlyn too hasn't done away w/ voice mail?
It's the interface, not the technology. (Score:5, Insightful)
Voicemail isn't really a problem. The problem is the traditional dial in interface for voicemail sucks sour frog ass. It's time consuming, irritating, badly designed and frankly from a bygone era. Dialing in to listen to a voicemail message is technology that we no longer need. Getting messages via voice is useful but the format and interface need to update to modern technology.
I've been using a pair of systems (Google voice and one at work) which transcribe the voicemail, send it to you in an email with a recording and you can manage the calls though your computer or cell phone. I pretty much never actually listen to the voicemail because what I really care about is who called and roughly the topic of their call. Occasionally I listen to the actual message because the transcriptions usually read like a Mad-Lib but I can usually figure out the gist of the message.
Fax machines on the other hand are just pointless. They need to go away. My company doesn't have one anymore and we don't miss it a bit.
Turning off voicemail is dumb (Score:2)
How do people get jobs if the
Re: (Score:3)
There's this wonderful new invention called E-mail, maybe you've heard of it?
Of course I have heard of it, but people who call looking for a rent house don't leave their e-mail, they leave their phone number.
Brand new IP phones (Score:2)
Just got a brand new Polycom IP phone system at work. It's fantastic. Web page setup and administration. Crystal-clear voice quality. All-digital hookup to the switch so voice quality is outstanding. Plus, in-network calls are handled by the VPN, so calls to any of our offices in the world are free, and dialing out to any phone number that's local to any office is a local call.
Unless you're usually out of the office, I'm not sure why you'd want to sign up for insane monthly fees and bi-yearly upgrade costs
...at your own peril. (Score:2)
It all depends on your company and how they communicate, but I just cancelled a policy with a AAA agent last month because his office was 0/3 in returning voicemails. I had my policy redone with another office, where I get much better customer service.
That being said, I deal exclusively with a troublesome student loans company by phone and voicemail - because by law I can record those conversations. Inflection, sarcasm, level of actual interest, country of origin of your telephone representative - all of
Yay! (Score:2)
I had to check the calendar, but no - it's not the first of April. M$ has flagged Ask as malware, and some journalist has noticed that voicemail is a waste of time. Yay! [OAP happy dance]
Two minutes to get through advertising and stupid menus to hear a distorted message from someone who's probably given up/trying to get through while you are trying to retrieve your voicemail, or woken up to the new thing called eeee-mail.
Am I the only one whose voicemail message says "My phone is either off or out of range
$3.2 mil in savings? For voicemail? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Fax machines are dead.... voice mail is dead.......
hmmm a lot of people didn't get the memo.
Yea, it was sent out via Fax. Didn't you get it?
Re:The Death Of Fax Machines Has Been Grossly... (Score:4, Informative)
The reason they don't tell you to scan and email it is that email is not considered a secure or verifiable method of communication.
The difference between fax's point-to-point nature and email's going over the public internet aside...
It's a lot easier to mistype an email address than misdial a fax machine (and actually get another fax machine). I get confidential real estate info in my email all the time. Usually headed with 'I know this said fax, but I'm emailing it instead!'
Yeah, and it's not for me. There's a real estate agent who has the same username at a different domain. So I wind up with all these legal forms from morons who not only decided to email what it says 'fax' on it - they emailed it to the wrong address.
I've never gotten a mis-sent fax to my personal fax machine. At the office once in a while, but even then it's for someone else in the company.
Re: (Score:2)
The reason they don't tell you to scan and email it is that email is not considered a secure or verifiable method of communication.
Neither is a fax.
Most faxes these days are actually emails going from one email server to another, with sometimes multiple complicated digital-to-analog and back again conversions. It is perverse.
Even IF you had the nearly impossible analog fax to fax, there is no way to prove in a court that the documents are valid. They can be easily manipulated before sending.
Re: (Score:3)
Paper (analog) to PDF (digital) via a scanner sent to user's workstation. PDF (digital) to fax server which places a FAX phone call using an analog audio modem signal (PSK). VOIP inherently converts the analog signal t
Re: (Score:2)
Your hate is righteous. Keep the faith.
There is NOTHING beneficial about a fax over a scanned and emailed document.