There are certain people you would just rather not talk with. It would be fine for them to leave you a message, but having them call your home several times every day is not acceptable. One way to overcome this problem is to get an online voice mailbox.

There are several services offering online voice mailboxes. With this service, you simply sign up and are assigned a number. That number may be local or it can even be a toll free number. You give that number out, and when anyone calls, it goes directly to an online voice mailbox. The person is able to leave you a message and you are not bothered by a ringing phone.

You can set the system to send you an e-mail alert every time you get a new voice mail. Then all you have to do is long onto the site to retrieve your voice mail messages.

If you no longer have a landline, this can save you several minutes of cell phone use every day. Telemarketers can talk to the voice mail and not use up the minutes in your cell plan.

You might want to consider signing up for a voicemail box just to have a number for entering when registering on websites. Some sites require a number, but none of us want to have our dinner interrupted by a ringing phone from a telemarketer. Additionally, this will protect your privacy from those dreaded sites that sell your information to other businesses.

If you will be away from home, forward all calls to the online voice mailbox and check your messages on the computer. This can be used to save roaming minutes when using a cellphone to check messages. Any where you have access to a computer, you can easily check you phone voice mail messages. Think of the money you could save on your next vacation.

By using the voice email feature, you are able to receive messages via an online answering machine and have them delivered to your email inbox, where you can listen to them at your leisure.