@armoured Does frequent status inquiry delay the process?
I do not know for certain but I believe it's possible it could, particularly if written communications/webmail. On top of that, I personally don't think that frequent inquiries serve any purpose at all (and most of the time you will just get a generic 'processing we will contact you response.')
Note - I'm not saying that it will delay process because they're mad at you for inquiring (although I don't rule that out either). But written communications are logged, read later, have to be responded to, etc - it creates work.
And someone here (at some time, don't recall where specifically) mentioned that they cannot take 'next steps' if there is pending correspondence ie until that correspondence is 'dealt with' (any necessary actions taken). So hypothetically - let's say they are ready to take some step with your file, AND there are ten inquiries, most of which are generic but maybe in each one there is some tiny bit of new information (probably irrelevant but perhaps not); before the officer can do anything, he/she needs to go through all of that and deal with the system and possibly make system comments/changes, etc.
And it's four pm on a friday and that officer has to pick up the kids from school and has another file WITHOUT all of this extraneous stuff and can probably be 'done' in thirty minutes. Which file do you think is going to get picked up, and which is going to get moved to the "I'll get to that when I have a solid chunk of three-four hours to work uninterrupted?" (Does that chunk of uninterrupted time ever come? Now, or in a month or two?)
So my opinion only: limit direct communications to useful communication. General "what's up?" is not useful and is not going to get you a useful answer.
You can order gcms notes - that will not hurt your application, as it is done by a different unit/people entirely. You can inquire of your MP - and most Mp's offices will limit inquiries to once in [some period of time.]