Not everybody can use the phone, either because of long distance call costs or, like me, they are deaf. Email is a life saver for me compared with struggling with the phone, especially when number and dates are concerned. And as for Indian call centres....
Without wishing to get involved in this particular argument, an email address is similar to a phone number. If you have one then you should be prepared to answer it. If you don't want to then don't have one and everyone knows where they stand.
Looking at the other side of the coin, people don't always help themselves when sending emails. If I email Dave at ACTion I will put something like 'P94 Specification Query' as the subject matter so that when scanning through all the offers he gets from Nigeria he will recognise it as a genuine query. Much better than the non specific 'Can you help please?'.
The same applies on Mayhem. When I log in I call up the list of unread posts since my last visit and choose which ones I want to read on the basis of whether the subject matter indicates whether it is likely to be of interest to me. I mark the rest as read usually including the one that just says 'Noobie needs help'.
Colin
