Jacques has started working on this year's (2021) audit for one of his clients, QQQ Inc. As part of his preparation for the audit of receivables and the company's bank accounts, Jacques is reviewing the following notes he made after last year's audit. Notes on confirmations from the 2020 audit: 

1. Some confirmations were conducted by telephone due to the failure to respond to our written request. 

2. Spoke on the telephone with MMM Corp.'s accounts payable clerk to verify the account balance. The accounting supervisor was not available. Had to explain the importance of confirmations to the clerk. 

3. For the past 4 years, there has been either a receivable from DDD Inc. or a payable to DDD from the client. Both our client and DDD are owned by the same parent company. 

Required: 

a. How do each of the notes above affect the reliability of the evidence obtained by confirmation? 

b. List four items of information that can be obtained from a bank confirmation. Be very specific in explaining the WHAT and the WHY.