Sometimes we get voice mail messages on our cell phones we would like to keep. They may be messages from people that have died and they are the only voice recordings we have of them or they may be voice mails of messages that we need to keep for legal purposes.
ATT and Verizon say that you can contact them and pay them to transfer the recordings to CD and have sent to you. This may work for those but many of us are using pre-pay phone services such as StraightTalk and that ability is not there. Even I you use that method I would suggest making a recording as follows also, just in case they wipe it out by accident.
A method that worked well for me is take a digital pocket recorder and put the mic on it right by the ear piece on the cell phone with Record started on the digital recorder before you call the voice mail. The quality can be good if there is no background noise around you and by putting the recorder touching the phone. I would suggest also turning up the volume on the cell phone.
You could also connect the cell phone to the computer by using an audio cable and connecting from ear phone jack on cell phone to line in on the PC and using the recording software on the PC but it gets more complicated of having to call voice mail and quick connect the cable so just laying recorder by phone works. Check the recording and you may need to do a few tries.
Remember that voice mail only remains stored on eth cell phone system a limited time so record those priceless recordings before they disappear. The phone providers also occasionally upgrade and wipe out voice mail messages (both the greeting and left by callers).
It is interesting that although most of our smart phones and cameras can do video recordings there are not a many people making use of this feature so we very seldom have recordings of people voices after they die.