Automatically discard short voicemail messages

[AZBean]

I am still plagued with three or four robocallers a day despite subscribing to the community blacklist and creating a growing personal blacklist. These callers inevitably ending up being routed to voicemail either because I didn't answer or because I pressed the "Send to VM" button on the HD2 handset. Most of the time the voicemail has nothing but a second or two of silence. I then have to go through the hassle of deleting them. It would be nice if the voicemail system would automatically discard voice mail messages that were shorter than three seconds or so.

[ooma_ftw]

+1

Had to delete 9 "empty" VMs today. All less than 2 seconds long.

[mike_b]

Good suggestion. Another +1.

[EX Bell]

Excellent suggestion! Before I had Ooma, my answering machines did not record a message if the person did not speak. Would really like to have that type of feature with the Telo.

In regard to the robo callers being routed to voicemail, why not just change your option to "Number Disconnected Message" ? When I first started using Ooma, I also had my personal blacklist set to "Send to Voicemail", but after having the same experience you are describing, I realized an important fact. Nobody on my personal blacklist is anyone I every want to hear from, so they should not receive confirmation that my number is still valid. Telemarketers, robo callers, spammers, scams, and telephone surveys now get a "Number Disconnected Message" when they call me and nothing more. This seems to have worked very well, because we now receive almost no telemarketing or robo calls.

[waynedunham]

Another +1 I get these all the time and they can be a pain if I'm not near the base unit to delete them. I'm not using an Ooma handset so deleting them from the handset can be a pain.

Having it automatically delete messages of 1-3 seconds would be great.

[Leeway]

Hey, if it's a vote, count me in. I think it is a fantastic idea too.

Donna

[lbmofo]

It would be nice if Ooma didn't even save/register empty voice messages.

Since wildcard blacklisting, I moved to "send to VM" treatment option and I get quite a few of these empty messages.

Hope discarding empty messages is an option with Ooma's VM platform. It is with my cell....example, I would hear "We did not get your message either because you weren't speaking or...." something like that and VM never gets left if one hangs up before speaking.

[kburgoyne]

Another vote for this feature. Perhaps let the user specify the cutoff length. The caller should still be logged, but the vmail discarded.

Please also add a separate filter for when notifications are sent to each destination. What I'd really like is to toss out 1-2 second vmails. I'd like all longer vmails to be emailed to me, but an SMS only sent for vmails longer than maybe 5 seconds.

What I'm describing is different levels of how much distraction during the user's day. 1-2 second vmails are spam hang-ups. 3-5 second vmails "might" possibly be something to be reviewed, but very unlikely to be something for which the user needs to receive an SMS notification for immediate attention. Over 5 seconds has a higher probability of being a legit vmail for which I'd like to receive an SMS notification.

[peabody]

Yet another vote for this feature. My old answering machine behaved this way - there had to be some voice activity before it would save the voicemail.

[Jerry_NA]

I also get these short, empty messages from spam robocallers. They are a pain and a waste of time. Please, Ooma, delete them for us.