Why do companies take 5 days to reply to emails?

On a personal basis I can be slow to respond to private emails, mainly as my work emails get a high priority and there is an awful lot of them. I would expect any company which offered an email route to contact them to treat that communication as being as important as if I picked up the phone and called them.

So – why do companies still seem to think an email is less important than a phone call?

Would you accept picking up the phone and being told that it could take up to FIVE DAYS before you can speak to someone in the call centre?

Dear T-Mobile UK, I don’t expect to chase up a service fault with a local Wi-Fi point and then get a response telling me that it will take up to FIVE DAYS to just reply to my message – especially as the message I sent was a complaint that the local Wi-Fi point had been faulty for over a week. I would have phoned you, only I left my mobile phone at home, and noticing that you had an email contact service thought (naively) that it would be a suitable way of contacting you.

More fool me.

It is ironic that the Wi-Fi hotspot which is faulty happens to be inside a branch of Starbucks, who have a track record of replying to emails very quickly, usually within the hour – based on the two times I have messaged them over the past few years.

The coffee shop can respond swiftly, but the communications firm needs days to communicate with its customers

(and calms down)

update: The company has responded already, and while the response is not really conclusive, they did reply in a fairly tolerable timeframe. I am still spluttering at the idea that a company thinks it can get away with taking FIVE DAYS to reply to a customer email though.