Free voicemail: How to avoid paying to check your cell phone messages

In a recent post on WalletPop, Aaron Crowe warned us of five details wireless companies don't want you to know. The one that stood out to me was that most customers are paying an extra $2 to $3 a bill to listen to voicemail. Thanks to the decision of most cell phone carriers to include useless instructions and built in delays, checking voicemail is an infuriating and costly process; but there's an easy way to get free voicemail and avoid the time suck of dialing in to check your voicemail -- Google Voice.

If you don't want to listen to instructions that seem antiquated even to people who grew up without answering machines, and pay for that dis-service, then you can forward your missed calls to Google Voice. After someone leaves you a message on Google Voice you can listen online, read the transcribed text via e-mail or receive it as a text message.