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If your company is a major retailer or part of a chain there's certain regulations they have to follow set by the head CEO and possibly the government. This may involve asking for references that include home phone and an address of some sort. E-Mail is optional in most cases iirc.
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That's a very fair point and worth me checking.
A phone may be trackable but a work email is just as useful. If anything, someone is more likely to reply to an email. If you miss a call from an unknown number, a lot of people simply wouldn't ring it back. In the case of a job like this too, where it's little more than a character reference, I honestly don't see the issue.
Your last sentence. I agree, and I decided it wasn't/isn't. I don't feel other people's private information should potentially be put at risk for the sake of 12 hours per week of manual slave labour.