It's odd that despite the author's hatred of phone calls, he doesn't do pretty basic things to avoid them. I've learned after a while that the first thing you should do when you set up any new account like a credit card, gym, health insurance, electric company, ISP, etc. is set up and link the online account to the real account. Yes it's super annoying that these are usually not the same thing, but once you know the routine it's not too complicated and you're way better off setting it up front.
In addition to potentially avoiding phone calls in the future, this also makes it more likely you'll actually be informed if you owe them money or otherwise need to respond. Otherwise, they don't have to make any effort to contact you over any medium other than paper mail (and if you're lucky phone), and if you happen to not read it or not answer the call, or maybe you've moved addresses and the forwarding period has ended, they can just send your account to collections. Only then, once your credit is sufficiently ruined, will the collections agency actually put some effort into getting a hold of you.
It's such a crazy system, there really needs to be some kind of national digital notification service to replace USPS for sending people legally binding notifications and bills.
In addition to potentially avoiding phone calls in the future, this also makes it more likely you'll actually be informed if you owe them money or otherwise need to respond. Otherwise, they don't have to make any effort to contact you over any medium other than paper mail (and if you're lucky phone), and if you happen to not read it or not answer the call, or maybe you've moved addresses and the forwarding period has ended, they can just send your account to collections. Only then, once your credit is sufficiently ruined, will the collections agency actually put some effort into getting a hold of you.
It's such a crazy system, there really needs to be some kind of national digital notification service to replace USPS for sending people legally binding notifications and bills.