January 9, 2008 at 12:52 am · Authored by Ricky · Filed under Telephony

Spinvox recently put together a list of the top ten most annoying voicemails that people get. Its funny that most of these are common occurences, at least in my experience. Here’s the list:

1. The Marathon Message - The extremely long voicemail that never ends.
2. The Death March - Leaving a phone number at the end of a long voicemail. If you missed it, you now have to listen through the entire message just to get the phone number.
3. The Screaming Eagle - The voicemail left in a noisy bar or as a fire truck is passing by
4. The Drunken Dispatch - The classic drunk-dial voicemail
5. Voicemail Interrupted - As the person is leaving the voicemail, they stop in the middle to have a conversation with someone else or answer another call before they return to finish the message.
6. The Misguided Message - A person or telemarketer leaves a message for you that was actually intended for someone else.
7. Voicemail Incognito - The anonymous voicemail, where the caller assumes you can identify their voice
8. The Dehydrated Dispatch - Any voicemail left by someone with a bad hangover.
9. One Way Wonder - When the person thinks they are speaking to you when they are actually talking to your voicemail
10. The Pocket Dialer - The person that accidentally calls you because the phone is in their pocket or purse and isn’t key-locked, leading to an endless soundtrack of them walking down the street, driving, or having a conversation with someone else.

Surely you’ve encountered at least a few of these infamous voicemails. Personally, I actually disabled voicemail on my cellphone for the past few months, and it’s been phenomenal. I don’t have to bother dialling in to retrieve a message from someone saying “Hey, it’s John, call me when you get this” when I can just look at my caller ID to see that John called.