It's even more annoying when you get an employee who acts clueless about why you are calling and seems confused and acts like you are just overly nervous and acts reassuring in a way that seems like you are crazy. Every time I do it, I say I'm going to skip that phone call in the future. But then I don't
I'm not sure what happens if you skip the call. There seems to be no downside, because it is not enforced. In searches on the forum, several situations have come up where the shopper did not make the mandatory (not enforced, I don't think) call and nothing happened to them. Except if they didn't do it right and then they didn't get paid. But doing it wrong would mean you don't get paid anyway, whether you made the pre-visit call or not. There's no penalty for not calling.