Voicemail without allowing message to be left?

[nemo1966]

Hi does anyone know of a service or app that will allow me to refuse a call and forward the caller to a voicemail message that says something like "sorry the person you have called is busy, please try again later" and then hang up! e.g not letting them leave a message.

thanks

 

[lunatic59]

Nope. Voicemail is handled by your carrier, not your phone. Some carriers do offer call blocking, but I've not seen one that provides custom messages for specific numbers.

 

[nemo1966]

Yeah - many of the old landline voicemail machines used to have this function, however mobile providers seem to have missed it. I didn't want it for specific numbers... all of them.

Most mobile providers do allow you to leave a custom message but then they caller gets to leave a message.

Ah well thanks

 

[lunatic59]

With the old machines, you were the only one using the thing and they could build in some pretty granular features. With cell service, all customers are using the same system. trying to provide that extra functionality would be a nightmare for the carrier's tech team and cost them an arm and a leg to maintain.

 

[nemo1966]

So you can cal their call centre, go through 20 different menu's with voice recognition etc etc but they couldn't manage to add an extra ioption to voice mail that simply reads out a message and hangs up on the caller?

mmm sorry don't really buy that

It could actually be done with an app - as all it would be doing is answering the call, playing a message and then hanging up...?

 

[lunatic59]

they couldn't manage to add an extra option to voice mail that simply reads out a message and hangs up on the caller?

To be fair, you only asked about specific numbers to get the message and then being disconnected, not all callers. That one would be pretty straightforward.

It could actually be done with an app - as all it would be doing is answering the call, playing a message and then hanging up...?

Certainly is possible, but from just a breif review of what's available in the play store, the apps that offer this kind of feature also require you use their cloud-based voicemail. I'm sure some say it's free, but there's always a catch. Always.