This is were I pontificate about a variety of topics, big and small - you decide which are which.
1. Email is a wonderful tool; however, email is not assured communication. The fact that you sent an email does not mean that it arrived at its intended destination. Even if got to the proper inbox, the target audience may not have opened and read it. If it is important, call with your message or at least ask for a read receipt for you email.
2. Corporate America abuses email. Far to many trival messages are sent to far too many receiptents. As Donald Rumsfeld said, "If you are working on your inbox, you are working on some one else's agenda." Working on one's inbox is a great excuse for procrasinating.
3. If one is going to invite emails from the public at large, one should be prepared to respond to every email received. The public at large numbers ~300 million people in the U.S. alone. That leads to a daunting possible number of emails at one per person. Responding to some and failure to respond others is rude. I mean a personal response to each not some autoreply which fails to address the writter's topic. If it is important enough to the author to write send it in response to your invitation, one should be prepared to be courteous enough to reply in a meanful fashion and in a timely manner. If one is going to invite emails, one must be prepare to answer those received with a passion equal to that of the sender. The public at large should consider offenders irrelevant and castigate them along with their goods and services.
Appointments
Appointments are typically made by two interested parties. Each commits to be at the designated place at the designated time prepared to dispatch the designated business. Lamentably, service professionals, i.e. Drs., lawyers, etc., have forgotten the importance of other people's time and the value of their word. They believe that it is alright for them to be delinquitant by an hour or more. Yet they are known to become angry if a client is late when they are available to see the client; many even want to charge a late or no-show fee. Those professionals bare the same responsibility for promptness that they expect of others.
Other people's time is as valuable to them as is the professional's. Honor appoints made. The practice of making more than one appointment for an individual's time is simply theft because there is no way that the service provider can see more than one appointment at a time. Being late for an appointment is stealing the other person's time.
The general public must fight this gross form of greed. Insist that the provider be on time. Hold the provider accountable for honoring the appointment. Stop using providers who are careless and steal your time for their personal financial gain.