No I don't want to call you. I prefer to email.

[ViviPru]

I appreciate that some conversations require face-to-face meeting, and on occasion, some conversations are better over the phone than via email.

BUT, if I want to engage you as a service provider or supplier, I have contacted you in the first instance via email, then that means that I would prefer a response to my initial query via email. Not a reply from you saying 'please call me.' GAH. Perhaps I have not provided enough information for you to adequately respond, but if that is the case, let me know. Via EMAIL.

Jesus wept. Urgh - totally pointless AIBU but I feel better now.

I understand about the "turning off and on" but they could of just emailed saying, try this and if not send it back to...(which is what guy on phone said)

Vivi your error there is to have been shopping in Tesco!

YANBU about the e-mail thing.

I am totally with you on this one. I can respond to email in my own time, after work or when my boss isn't looking, I have time to think about what I want to say, I don't have to spend 30 minutes on hold to a premium rate number during working hours, and I have a record of the conversation in writing. What's not to like?

I also hate it when people phone me at work with a complicated enquiry - if I need to look the answer up then I will have to call them back anyway.

Vivi your error there is to have been shopping in Tesco! You might have a point there, but they also happen to be my biggest customer thus practically pay my mortgage so I'm inclined to succumb...

I have suppliers who prefer me to fax my orders. FAX!! Like it's 1985!! They seemed most put out when I explained my fax machine had broken, I wasn't planning on replacing it because it was, well, the 21st century, and I would be emailing my orders from now on.

YANBU!

Drives me potty. Glad to see I'm not the only one (thought it was me being a bit odd).

YANBU. I hate this too!

Emailed my bank recently with a simple question about something that needed to be sorted out. After 5 days I got a standard email with (you've guessed it) "please phone Customer Services".

No, I don't want to sit listening to muzak for 20 minutes before you take my call, why are you incapable of responding by email?

YANBU.

Especially when it's my bloody lettings agent, who are quite deliberately getting us to do it so we don't then have records in writing.

Bedhog, i told orange I needed to change my name, and they told me to fax my marriage cert!!
They're my fucking broadband/mobile/ipad provider and they dont have an email address?!

Although in my last job, I had to send timesheets by fax. In my first few weeks I spoke to them and got 90% changed to email. Seems it hadnt occured to anyone before me?!

Sorry to but in off topic but can I just ask re tesco fish was it because you got ungutted fish. I ordered two seabream online. They arrived having not been gutted I assumed a mistake but when I contacted customer services was told they don't gut them for online orders. Eh? Appreciate I should start my own aibu for this but just wondered!

LRD have you tried telling them you are recording all conversations with them "for your records"? It might make a difference - especially if you can actually do it.

You are all absolutely completely not being unreasonable, I hate the phone too.
I work with a bunch of dinosaurs who seem to be completely unable to use email. They say they prefer 'the personal touch' then they forget every smegging thing because they haven't got a record of it.

I don't buy fish from tesco - only because I went in recently, and, wandering up and down the aisles, could hear someone shouting/ranting. When I got to the end by the fish counter, I saw a fat fish-guy 'bantering' very loudly with someone on the 'deli', a bit further over. This ended with fat fish-guy sticking the middle finger up at the other person! In front of everyone shopping! I'm not prudish (but don't/never have stuck one finger up at anyone!) but i didn't think this was very professional....

He does seem to be a superviser-type, now I've noticed him.

YABU

I prefer phone calls which can be sorted out there and then, rather than tooing and froing with emails.

greeneyed, no it was there, in person, even worse because she questioned twice whether I definitely wanted them descaling, to which I replied "yes please" twice. She filleted them but it wasn't till I got home that I found they weren't descaled.

Had she said "I'm sorry I'm not confident/trained to do that" I have said fine, just gut them and I'll descale them at home. But no. She had to be a dickhead about it.

This is great to read, I thought I was the only one who preferred email so strongly. So many times I've sent emails to various companies and used the one that replies by email rather than telling me to call them.

And my no.1 hate: Barclays Business who will only take change orders by fax, and their fax machine only accepts faxes 9-5. Helpful.

blonder that's just nuts re: Barclays.

I've just sent my complaint email to Tesco. The filan line is

I would like to hear back from him/her regarding measures planned in this respect. I prefer all correspondence via email.

*final. Speedtype fail.

I came on here to disagree with you but you are absolutely right in the first instance.

But the bane of my life is people hiding behind email after initial contact or trading them back and forth and never answering the question because they don't like talking on the phone or are trying to dodge work.

If you have a phone on your desk that's a clue that you are meant to use it sometimes in the course of your work.

JamesBexleySpeed, I used to work somewhere like that. I mainly had internal callers so those doing this were often looking to palm off a job they wanted doing on anyone. A lot of my job was about writing job adverts for newspapers and online. I would E-mail copies to the appropriate person to approve and they would ring me about alterations they wanted to make. They expected me to stop what I was doing straight away, get their advert on my screen and go through it with them making the changes. Others would just send it back highlighted which was a much more appropriate medium considering the kind of document it was.

trading them back and forth and never answering the question Almost as annoying as phone-use insistence, is when people reply to your email but don't answer the one question which is the crux of what you initially wrote. AAARGHH!!!!

hiding behind email after initial contact

See, this is the bit I don't understand. Why the assumption that after "initial contact" the interaction should naturally move onto the phone? Sometimes, yes, phone is appropriate. Other times when things need to be recorded, or when queries are complex, phone is the last thing you should use.

Basically I think a lot of people are not comfortable with reading or writing, so can't use email effectively, and they should bloody learn IMnotsoHO. I've learnt never to make more than three (preferably related) points in an email because hardly anybody reads them to the end! It is shocking.

We had this trying to get estimates for gardening and laminate flooring. Every single response to our detailed queries via those websites was 'call me so we can discuss'. Um no, tell me what else you need, we'd put pictures and dimensions in the request, we just wanted to know what ballpark we were looking at!

YANBU - I hate phones, especially in an open plan office where every single person can hear your call, and you can hear theirs, even if you are all very polite and nice and are really trying not to.

I have to get in touch with a lot of farmers in my job, but wth non-urgent questions and I hate the fact thata whenever I do actually get through to them they are usually doing something quite important or having their tea - I LOVE those that have email as they can get back to me in their own time and I am not interrupting their day! (An awful lot of them seem to be stone deaf too, so I spend a lot of time treating the rest of the office to "Is that Home Farm... Yes, it's Goldrill - yes, GOLDRILL from wheregoldrillworks. Yes, WHEREGOLDRILLWORKS...." and so on at an ever increasing volume. I then have to explain what I'm after, which is quite obscure, and obtain their permission to do it. My poor colleagues!