Voicemail is Unusable

Why is it that the wireless carriers don’t understand how to do voice mail? I currently have Verizon as my wireless carrier, but they all seem to be about equal in user-unfriendliness. Am I the only one who can figure out that after the person I am calling doesn’t pick up, a pre-recorded message plays and I am supposed to leave a message? Do I really need to hear,

“To leave a voicemail, press 1, or just wait for the tone. To send a numeric page, press 2, now. (Pause) At the tone, please record your message. When u are finished recording, you may hang up, or press pound for more options.”

Every single time? Really?? Personal answering machines on land lines don’t even sound like that and haven’t in 20 years. A person who is taking a message down for someone who is unavailable just says “He’s not here, can I take a message?”.

I once heard that this was a clever ploy by the wireless cartels to force you to waste more precious minutes listening to as much excess crap as they think you can tolerate. Seriously, guys, get with the times and just play the prerecorded message, beep, and be done with it.

On a similar note, Verizon provides a similarly lovely system to listen to my own voice mail messages. This is a literal transcription:

“Please enter your password
(Type in password)
You have 2 unheard messages
Check unheard messages press 11
Main menu
To listen to your messages press 1
To send a message press 2
To change your personal options press 4
To restart the session, press 5
To check receipt of a message, press 7
To disconnect, press *”

What did they think I was calling my voice mail box for? After pressing 11, I hear

“The following message has not been heard. First unheard message.” (Message plays)

So, thats the second and third time they inform me that I have unheard messages. Great. My friend also has Verizon and he also hears this before the message plays:

“First new message from phone number 425-736-xxxx. Received at 12:13am.”

Unbelievable. I hope the iPhone and Google’s android initiative lead to a better voicemail system for all.

Lame launch, Pelago

So a coworker of mine used to work at this startup called Pelago.  He said they were doing some cool things, but that they just kept getting things wrong.  Though John Cooks venture blog, I read that they had launched.   I went to try out the site, but an aggressive login wall (signup + confirmation before letting you even see the site) deterred me.  Poof, they lost me.  But here’s the really lame part.  I had signed up on Pelago’s site to hear more about their products and launch, and only Monday did I receive this message

Thank you for expressing an interest in our progress here at Pelago. We’ve been keeping our work very quiet for a while and we appreciate your patience. We’re excited to announce the public availability of our first product, Whrrl.

http://www.whrrl.com

Whrrl is now available to the public and we’d like to invite you to join us. Go to http://www.whrrl.com to sign up.

Whrrl is a Web and mobile experience at the intersection of local discovery, social networking, and user-generated content. It allows you to personalize your world according to how you and your friends think about the places and events in it.

• Share real-world adventures and discover places, events, and people.
• Change how the world looks based on your network’s activities and opinions.
• Tell your friends where you are, post notes, share photos, and schedule meetups with them.    
• Use it on the Web or on your compatible mobile phone.

Read more about Whrrl in our Frequently Asked Questions (http://www.whrrl.com/faq.html) page.

Thank you again for expressing an interest in what we’re doing here at Pelago, and we look forward to seeing you on Whrrl!

Jon Landers
Senior Vice President of Marketing & Community

What gives?  I express interest in your site early (many, many months ago) and I don’t hear anything about the launch until nearly 2 weeks later?  Even TechCrunch covered the launch 3 days prior to their email to their ‘interested’ customers.  And yet, their site (and logo) says Beta. Why not include us in the loop earlier?  Take this a advice on how NOT to launch your startup.

Oh, and I never did get around to confirming an account on the site.   I wonder how many other people feel burdened by that constraint.