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I added the sound of a disconnected land line to the beginning, a short pause, and then my voicemail message. Has done a pretty decent job of weeding out spam, scams, and impatient idiots.

"Hello and thank you for calling. At the tone, please hang up and text me instead. Have a nice day."

I don't have voicemail set up. I haven't called myself in a long time to check but I don't get voicemail notifications on my phone. I hope its that way because I'll never check it anyway. I don't even know how.

I guess if I did do voicemail I'd make it sound like I answered the phone and can't hear well for as long as it would allow. I don't fully understand the telemarketing industry but an open call line is an open call line and I'll be happy to waste something of theirs if they want to waste my time.

Who still uses voicemail?
Who actually still records voicemail instead of hanging up immediately?

Hi, you've reached my voicemail. At the tone, please hang up and send me a text.

Do people still use voicemail? I mean for personal non-business reasons.
What would be the advantage compared to voice messages?

🎶 I must be out, or I'd pick up the phone, where could I be? 🎶

🎶 Believe it or not, I'm not home! 🎶

I've been meaning to record one that says, "Due to the high influx of fraudulent calls, I don't answer numbers that I don't have saved. If you fall into this category and would like me to respond, please leave a message or send a text."

Mine says it doesn't accept messages and to please text me if its important.

I had one client that caused that. He'd call after work hours and leave seemingly endless messages about nothing almost daily. So I let my mailbox fill up and changed my outgoing message. Its been close to 4 years and my mailbox is still full of his rambling.

my voicemail greeting is super fast, about 5 seconds. its just my first name and leave a message so the caller can actually leave one

I only have one recorded voicemail for my work mobile phone telling people I am on leave and call the support line.

Several customers got confused when I answered the support line.

Most calls I get are spam, fruad or potentially dangerous so I do record a voicemail but I mirror my carrier default, just "You have reached the voice mail of phone # . I am unable to answer your call right now, please leave your message.

Default. I'm looking for a job, if I can't answer when a recruiter calls, I don't want them to hear me being all cute.

It depends on if I owe anyone money or not.

I made mine short - first name. They know the number they called. I see no benefit in having the system tell people to leave a message, everyone knows how this works.

I think it's a mostly automated voice with me saying my first name at one point

That's if it's still even enabled, I should check that...

For a long time my voicemail was "Hello?" followed by about a 5 second pause, and then an actual "this is $name you've got my voicemail, leave a message thank you"

People. fucking. hated that voicemail with a passion. my own parents would get got by it, and then after not calling me for a few months get got by it all over again

I had recruiters suggest I change it because it was "unprofessional", which I didn't because if you can't laugh at a prank like that I wouldn't want to work for you I feel like there were more good-natured recruiters that found it funny, and I'd like to think it helped set the tone for the interaction better because of it

it also worked well to filter out spam calls, my speech-to-text voicemail app would out the bots when the text of the recording started mid-sentence and didn't stop the recorded spiel

more people than not enjoyed the mild prank, and I loved it as a conversation started when calling someone back

My voicemail automatically clears after 3 days. It's typically only spam bots that leave messages. But I do have a message telling them to text.

1. I'm voice-shy, don't wanna make something awkward, also I kinda cringe at my voice
2. I don't really want my voice cloned, especially if this stranger already knows my phone number

I just leave in the default "Please leave a message for [number] beep"

No, but I write my own out-of-office blah text.

Haven't checked my voicemail in ... 15 years or so. If people want to reach me they can text or call again.

I never listen to my voicemail, so I never bothered recording anything.

Yes, mostly for the sake of showing that the voicemail is in fact given some attention. I find it annoying that I get a voicemail, and all it is is the sound of someone hanging up because it's the default response ergo nobody will check it.

I don't really do phone calls these days, definitely not have VM greetings set up: My voicemails forward to another service, which then translates them to text and I can get the gist of the voicemail from that.

Everyone I know contacts me though texts, e-mail, or in person. If I get an actual phone call it's either a dire emergency or spam (it's almost always spam). Sometimes I'll forward sales calls to a bot designed to waste their time too (love you Lenny) but these days I don't even bother to screen or pick up most of the time.

Default nothing fancy, I don't give info to random phone calls

Mine says if you've reached this message it means you're not on my contacts list and you've been filtered. I'll get to you when I check the message.

But everyone gets the message if I miss their call. It definitely helps reduce spam.

My previous landline phone had a digital answerphone on it, and yes, there was a while where I took inspiration from the funny answerphone message lists that made it onto the early WWW from prior junk faxes and chain e-mails.

My current one - because I still get the occasional call on the landline number - might have a similar "record your own" feature, but I've never bothered. I use the prerecorded message that came with the base station phone.

As for my mobile... I don't actually remember what the message is that I have on there, but it won't be anything interesting. Also it costs money to check / make changes to it on my plan, so it won't be getting my attention any time soon.

I've never once checked my voicemail and I never will