voicemail trick

I wanted to provide a quick way to skip to message recording, instead of
listening to my long voicemail greeting. I found it: * (star)

I had called VZ tech support to ask how to do it. They checked which
voicemail system (of 5) I was on, and checked the "roadmap" of my features.
She said it could not be done. So, I experimented, to see what would break
through the greeting. * (star) caused it to skip directly to the record
beep. # (pound) put me into the voicemail system login process.

My message now begins with: "You can skip directly to voicemail by hitting
star..."

FYI