I'm going to admit something that my family and friends have suspected for some time; I never check my voice mail. Not once in over a year now have I called in to listen to my messages or clear out my inbox. Whenever someone leaves me a message, I just call them back. I don't do this out of laziness, I do it because I can't stand to deal with the infuriating pre-recorded voicemail statement T-Mobile makes me wait through before I can check my messages.

Unless you're the kind of bizarre Luddite who doesn't own a mobile phone, you've had to deal with the aggravation of pre-recorded voicemail directions as well. You probably won't be surprised to hear that these pointless, slow-as-molasses readings are just a ploy by cell phone carriers to extend call times and widen their profit margins. What might surprise you is just how much money they're making off of it.

According to David Pogue it's around 620 million dollars every year, at least for Verizon. That's an obscene amount of profit to make off of forcing your callers to sit through additional, unneeded tedium. It's not fair for mobile carriers to gouge us like this, which is exactly why Mr. Pogue has launched the 'Take back the Beep!' campaign.

If you'd like to help stop this unethical and infuriating practice, post or email a complaint to your carrier at the addresses listed below. If enough customers bitch loudly enough, we're bound to make some sort of an impact on our carriers. Whether it'll be enough to get them to give up their favorite cash-cow remains to be seen. Anyway, here are the links, copied from Mr. Pogue's column.

* Verizon: Post a complaint here: http://bit.ly/FJncH.

* AT&T: Send e-mail to Mark Siegel, executive director of media relations: MS8460@att.com.

* Sprint: Post a complaint here: http://bit.ly/9CmrZ

* T-Mobile: Post a complaint here: http://bit.ly/2rKy0u

Viva la voice mail revolution!