My Panasonic Answerphone
It works. It records the increasingly frustrated attempts by my mother to contact me beautifully.

But, when someone's finished leaving a message, it says "Thanks for calling" in a chirpy voice that some talented v/o artist spent ages getting just right, an overworked coder expertly compressed into the tiny amount of on-board ROM and triggered to play when the message was complete.

And people complete their message how?
( chthonic, Thu 29 Sep 2011, 22:59, 5 replies)

Ah, I see the flaw there

(wehttamman via B3ta for microwave, Fri 30 Sep 2011, 4:24, closed)

BT machines do this, too.
I've often wondered why - probably because no one at BT understands anything about telephones.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 30 Sep 2011, 8:39, closed)

Funny things answerphones.
I had one in the 90's, and spent several hours recording a really clever message that had Go West playing in the background. It was timed so that as I finished saying 'leave a message after the bleep', the chorus would start . . . 'Call me . . da da da da da da, caaaaaaall meee-eee" and fade out.

Every single person who heard it made a point of either leaving a message or calling later to tell me how fucking annoying it was.
(username failed moderation, Fri 30 Sep 2011, 9:26, closed)

I would hazard a guess at pressing #. It might even say so in the manual :P
(Jester_, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 14:00, closed)

Also says it if you run out of time
So the caller knows their message has been truncated
( Cadmus has teh uplikn coeds at, Wed 5 Oct 2011, 23:21, closed)