Voice Mail Systems

I have three phone systems to deal with: cell phone, home phone, and work phone. Each one has a voice mail system that uses completely different commands to operate. It drives me nuts.

To enter into voicemail on my home phone, I must hit * while my message is playing. My message is short, "I'm not home, leave a message," so I have to act quick. Otherwise, I have to hang-up and recall my home phone. If the next time you call me I have a 30 second greeting, I apologize. It's because of my voicemail system.

To enter into voicemail on my work phone, I must hit **. A single * exits the system. WTF? Then, to access my voicemail, I must enter my extension# and then my pin code. I have to enter my extension even if I direct-dialed my office.

And that is just to get into voice mail. Each system has a different command structure to access/replay/delete messages.

There is a solution, a simple one, even at that. There must be a standard. It's the only way. There are examples everywhere of standards being the key to survival... HDTV, next generation CD/DVD... well those are bad examples because there are competing standards fighting to be chosen. But look at USB computer interfaces, web pages (HTML, CSS), etc.

That really pushes my buttons.