Tuesday, August 17, 2010
quicko: riiiiiiiiing
I haven't been able to figure out why this is, but Sydneysider's phones must ring for an insanely long time before they ever switch to voicemail. I'm not sure if it's a bid to discourage messages (?), an odd default setting no one knows how to change or just the way they like it, but it drives me crazy. I hate having to wait for ages to leave a message, not knowing if the person is angrily willing me to just cut my losses and hang up (it's been 12 rings for goodness' sake!!) but still wanting to leave a message. Sometimes I stick it out; sometimes I give up in despair. Bye.
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6 comments:
As a person who professionally makes a lot of phone calls, I would say that the average American Mobile Ring time is 5-6 rings, averaging out to about 30 seconds. This, I'm sure is convenient for those who pay by the minute, as they can go through the entire ring cycle and be able to leave a brief message in right around one minute time.
In the past, landlines would ring 30 times before they'd cut out. This equated to about 1.5 minutes. Mobiles and call waiting are 15 rings.
Depending on the system, you can set most landlines with a built-in answering machine to different numbers of rings. Ours is 9 the 1st time, whereupon it switches to 6 (if you haven't retrieved messages or made a call in the meantime) because it assumes you're out or otherwise can't get to the phone.
This gives us enough time to get to the phone before it goes to the answering machine but is shorter than the time it takes to switch to Telstra's Message Bank (1-o-1 service). I expect that a lot of people just use the Telstra service.
15 rings!! That explains it!! I'm with Gina that American mobiles are about 6 rings, but at home it's 4 rings until the answering machine picks up, which still seems pretty normal to me.
Of course, the rings here are a lot shorter than the ones in the USA so you need more to get the same time.
The rings are shorter here? I never noticed! Maybe I've acclimatized!
When I visited Colorado in 1998, I noticed that instead of a quick "ring ring" one got a long "rrrriiiiiiiiinnnngggg".
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