I do t disagree with you that answerinf your phone can be necessary, but most of your examples are cases where you are expecting a call - except your doctor/dentist. Why are they calling you and not you calling them to make appointments?

Semo-related but it's infuriating how many companies refuse to contact you by email. I'm currently remortgaging a flat, and I've told the broker repeatedly to contact me by email, and they still phone, leave a voicemail asking to be called back, and send an email saying they called.

A lot of the times when people make it a point to call you it is to avoid leaving an email trail. In litigious environments it serves a purpose. You may argue that calls may be recorded as well but it is far less likely and much harder to search through them the way you can do through email.

>Why are they calling you and not you calling them to make appointments?

Um.... they have to let you know that you need an appointment. "Your lab tests came back and we'd like to make a follow-up appointment."

My mortgage broker didn't mind emails.

Where I live, the doctor/dentist/optometrist never calls me first. They may call me back, but I always call them first. Recently I had some blood tests done and the doctor told me to give them a call in a week. I did, let the receptionist know I was calling about test results and she called me back after getting the details from my doctor. I’ve never got a call from any of them without expecting it because I’ve initiated it.

They sometimes call me to shift appointments. Either something came up for the doctor and they're moving the appointments away, or someone needs a longer very urgent procedure just before my appointment and I'm just going to be there for routine stuff.. things like that.

My spouse is a physician and makes these calls to patients all the time. Might be different in your area but it's been pretty common in the couple states we've lived in.

> Your lab tests came back and we'd like to make a follow-up appointment."

So you're expecting a call from them in this case?

That's typically how it works.

I don't think you expect a call from immigration when they are handling your application, they just call if they want to ask you why line # doesn't look the way they expect it to.

The broker thing has happened the same way with me, the last two times I've done so.

I'm starting to believe they don't want certain things in black and white so they would rather call you. It could just be policy though, who's to say.

I do still find it irritating that they insist. I'm much more likely to respond to an email quickly than to a phone call and I only answer phone calls from my family while I'm at work.

It also has to do with personality type. A sales type person is more likely a people's person that has more control over a voice communication than a typing conversation. They want to be able to directly counter your indecisiveness to land the sale, they can't do that in an email

That makes a lot of sense. I find it highly irritating though. I'm paying these people to do a job for me, I expect it done without further inconveniencing me. The last solicitor I instructed ended up leaving me with more work than had I not paid him to do anything.

Had an accountant that adopted some new platform and communication technique. Anytime I'd email, he would record a video and send back a link to a video. The videos weren't (easily) downloadable, and would expire pretty quickly. So... I never had anything useful to trace through history in. I switched accountants. New one is fine with answering basic questions about stuff via email. He will call sometimes, but it's not a requirement, and he certainly won't send videos.

Mind boggling. Clearly he was trying to stand out, with his video responses, but that's just irritating, you could click a short email and read it in seconds on your phone almost anywhere, or, you have to wait until a time suitable to watch with audio.

it seemed to be part of some larger 'communication and marketing' package he was subscribed to. I was getting monthly email updates, etc - ghostwritten by someone else. It wasn't bad, but video responses to everything was annoying. It felt like he was intentionally trying to hide something.

Virtually all of those will leave a message.

I have that disabled. Either they contact me via a more modern communication line, or I contact them when it suits me. If I need a doctor appointment, I phone my doctor (or well, his secretary).

Amending prior response: unless you've specifically removed the ability of that option.