Apologies for potentially inflamatory title here, but I feel truly frustrated. We seemingly now have the means to contact people in our lives in so many ways through our devices - email, text, messenger & WA, and yet it can be frustratingly difficult to get a reply out of people, or even to know whether they have seen the message in the first place.
For example:
On one occasion I needed to contact a client in order to cancel a meeting at short notice. I sent a text. She did not see the text and so turned up to my premises only to wonder why I wasn't there. She told me that she has turned off text notifications because she prefers to use WhatsApp. I wasn't aware of this, and yet I had seemingly let her down. I appreciate that I could have followed it up with a phone call when she didn't reply, but I thought that surely she would have seen my text.
On other occasions I have sent people WA messages asking for confirmation of appointments/play dates etc which we had previously agreed, yet there was no evidence that they had even seen my messages, although the double grey ticks indicated that they had been delivered. DH has suggested that they had 'fat-fingered' their devices so that their notifications were turned off. OK, I get that people can become overwhelmed with WA messages etc, but if they don't see & respond to messages within a reasonable time frame, then what to do?
I'm currently waiting on someone I WA-ed last night to find out if tomorrow's playdate is still on and feeling frustrated because I really do need to know now, so that if it isn't I have time to book a trip instead and help overcome DS's potential disappointment.
I'm not sure what I'm expecting by way of response from other Mumsnetters. Hopefully a bit of empathy. On the other hand, if you, dear Mumsnetter, have switched off notifications, have you ever missed out on important messages? Our devices are meant to be brilliant at delivering/receiving the message. But for me they just seem to be leading to greater frustration.