I happened to read a great article by David Pogue in his Circuits column in the New York Times about cell phone voicemail and those annoying mandatory voicemail instructions you seemingly can't avoid.
Based on his math for Verizon's profits off of this and then accounting for the other three of the "big four" in cell phones (AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile) and then the other players, the industry, in the US alone, is raking in about $2 billion a year.
Now I'm all for making a buck and if there were an easy way to skip these, then I'd be all for it. If you're able to not pay for something and you do anyway, I can't feel too sorry for you. On the other hand, if you make someone pay for something they don't need or want in order to get to a basic function, then that's just not cricket.
So, I suggest the following. Unless you have something really important to say, don't leave a message. When (or even before...if they're going to pick up, it doesn't take seven rings) the voicemail picks up, hang up. The other person can see you called and they can call back. Easy as pie and pretty much what we did back in the dark ages of pagers.
Just my 2¢.
