I did that once for a click and collect order where they wanted a mobile number.
If they demand a real mobile number, but you don't expect to ever need it again, you could use one from somewhere like receive-smss.com.
The company sells call blocking devices, so this may be paid for from their marketing budget. You don't need to know who the company are to use this service, of course.
No, but we should absolutely publicly shame and avoid retailers who want to collect unnecessary data for scummy marketing or other tracking reasons.
Useful stuff that they happily send by email to me! I have no issue with it as an option for people who prefer the sms channel, but the field being required will instantly put me off a retailer, they don't need it
Hope you don't have to book a sleeper!
No, they don't need it, but they choose to offer a service that is the best fit for what their customers ask for and doesn't require them to run multiple contact channels. And anything they can do to reduce the number of calls they receive will be desirable, because that is an extremely expensive way of servicing demand.
That's fine. Those are all our choices to make and it would be daft to say there aren't consequences to our choices. If you don't want a mobile phone, or a smart phone - don't get one. Don't have a television, don't own a radio, don't own a car, don't own any shoes if you don't feel like it.
It depends on the retailer and the type of contact involved - but there are some (certainly any where the provision of the purchase may require rapid information) where SMS is simply better suited than email.
Same here, now that Virgin Mobile went with O2, and our 'notspot' mobile signal improved dramatically. However, when I asked Virgin Media to delete the landline option, they said that it would cost me more each month, as it was 'bundled' with their broadband service at a 'retention offer' discount, and breaking the bundle would remove that. They have also disabled the phone socket they (or rather, Telewest) installed in 2001 and now the phone plugs into their router, or would if we could be bothered (we can't). The only upshot seems to be a friend of my wife's who assumed she wasn't answering her voicemails (she had used the landline number in her address book). God alone knows what is on the voicemails/'after the tone' messages (poor deceased Mummy, probs, who passed 3 years ago aged 93), as we have not figured out how to access them from our O2 mobiles, or alter the outgoing message (me in a gruff voice from 15 years ago).
Sure - cases like Caledonian Sleeper where if there's a cancellation you need somewhere to sleep it makes sense to use SMS as a more urgent channel. But for normal retail (including railcards), I don't think there's a genuine reason to collect SMS instead of email
The company make a box that blocks "scam" callers, I assume the sales of that subsidise the 38 number https://www.truecall38.co.uk/
I got a reduction of £5 per month from BT for ceasing the landline.
Not really. If a business judges the cost of servicing a subset of customers is too high then it is perfectly logical to determine it doesn’t want to accommodate their needs.
There are plenty of people (probably particularly the older generation - but I don’t want to make seeeping judgments) for whom a mobile phone is something for them to use if they need to contact someone when away from home- not the other way around. My father is exactly like that…
I believe people should, in the vast majority of cases, be able to choose their preferred method of communication.
I started getting these a couple months ago from some drivers. It's really annoying, I've already got the helpful push notification it's 6/7 stops away. It means if there's a genuine reason the driver wants to contact me (eg can't find the house for whatever reason) I will ignore it because every previous time I've looked it's just a boilerplate message telling me to "secure" my non-existent pet - and the text doesn't even tell you the message, you have to open tap the link to read the message in Amazon's app!
Amazon Driver said:
A simple, but not equivalent example.
A business exists to sell goods or services to its customers, and it will achieve it by providing those customers with those goods or services at a price that (typically) allows them to make a profit. It is entirely logical for businesses to decline to serve customers who cost too much to service except on terms that are affordable to them.
