Confirm or not to confirm, that is the question

We have all come to rely on Outlook or Google calendars to set-up meetings and appointments.  I’m not a big fan of the task function so have even started creating to-do lists in the calendar.

And depending on how you have it set-up, reminders can be set for as little as five minutes before and up to days in advance of a meeting.

I asked the question on Facebook how people handle confirmations.  I posed it for a couple reasons.  First, because my chiropractor has changed how she confirms my appointment.  For the longest time I’d get a call the day before reminding me of my appointment.  She has now automated it so I get a text message a couple days before.  Now, it is in my calendar, of course, but a reminder is always nice.

My dentist calls a week in advance and if you confirm, you get no more additional reminders.  But that is a change as they used to send a follow-up text the day before.  I had an appointment this week.  Since I was expecting the text reminder and didn’t get it, I thought I had my appointment wrong.  I called about 30 minutes before my scheduled time just to make sure.  I did have the time right.

What about work-related appointments?  Even if there is an Outlook (or comparable) calendar invite with a reminder, if I set-up the meeting, I try to send a reminder email.  There have been enough occasions where that reminder was needed as either the meeting didn’t make it to the recipient’s calendar or we needed to reschedule.

I guess I expect a similar outreach when I am the invitee.  But based on the Facebook responses, not everyone agrees with me.  Some say that if it is on the calendar and hasn’t been modified to consider it confirmed.

Perhaps, but to play it safe, I’ll continue to confirm.

Thoughts?