Rules have not changed; you just were at an office that didn’t bother to read what you filled out!! We try to get our patients to sign up for our patient portal so we can send results that way and include a copy of the labs if they want. Save time for all playing telephone tag, and allows me to notify patients in the evening while in my pj’s, lounging on the sofa in front of the tv! 
alzheimers prevention plan- exercise and forming new brain pathways. best way to form them -learning new technology. age almost 60 here- I figure I have 30 more years I need to keep up with technology and communicate well with my kids. it just makes sense to me to keep up or be left behind.
My theory about this, and the long and involved prompt maze, is that it’s intentional. The more complicated and time-consuming and unpleasant they can make the phone experience, the more people will migrate to the website, which of course is good for their bottom line.
I feel so old when I say this, but this is one way that the world is deteriorating. All of you remember when you could get a live person immediately. That’s almost unheard of now, and I hate to think how many hours of my life I’ve spent going through layers and layers of prompts, for the privilege of getting into a prolonged queue. There are a couple of businesses I deal with where only one or two prompts are required to get a human, and the queue is non-existent or very very short. I always tell them how much I appreciate that.
And then there’s Comcast.
Comcast! With Comcast, you don’t get much help even if you get a live person. They train their front line to give cookie cutter answers. If your issue is not something that can be answered by FAQ you are out of luck. Never mind that you wouldn’t have called if it could be answered by FAQ. They are like robots. They just repeat irrelevant answers if you press since they don’t know what else to say. You have to threaten them that you are moving to Fios to get a real live person.
About voicemail, I use it if the answering machine kicks in. If you don’t check you voicemail, you should turn off the answering machine.
If you’re not going to check your voicemail, and prefer text or email, then your voicemail greeting should direct the caller to use those options.
my brother 63 has a phone with voice mail and text. I tried to text him about our mother which would make communication a lot better and prompt, but he does not look at or answer or know how to use text- not sure which.
I email him but he takes days to read it. If I call he rarely answers it. now that I am writing this -I think maybe he just does not want communication.
in general, I think I like text at this point for brief communication. Voice mail is cumbersome.
same experience with comcast but no other options here.
My husband takes weeks to answer email. Luckily his friends don’t mind. But it’s not instant. I have to delete a lot of spam in his email otherwise it gets overwhelmed. Then the real emails get lost.