Microsoft offers human chat support for consumers, once you try their self-help tools: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/contactus?ContactUsExper...

Apple offers online, telephone, and of course in-person support for hardware and software: https://support.apple.com/?cid=mc-ols-general-homepage-marco...

Amazon offers online and telephone customer support on your “my orders” page.

Netflix offers phone and chat support: https://help.netflix.com/en/contactus

NONE of those is comparable size.

I was replying to this:

> the tech companies that are bigger haven't offered human support to anyone in decades.

>Apple offers online, telephone, and of course in-person support for hardware and software

The last time I waited on hold for Apple developer support, I got to enjoy two whole hours of free hold music. So they offer human support, just not very enthusiastically.

Most of the support is severely binned now to edge cases. You can't just make a genius bar appointment anymore like you used to. You get triaged and most of the flow punts you to some unhelpful support or even worse, apple discussion forums. You basically have to lie to get a genius bar appointment through the system. Once you have the appointment the worker doesn't care and gets right to work same as always, but feels like the writing is on the wall where the next CEO will probably cut genius bar entirely and be rewarded with a surge in share price for the lower overhead.

Funny how you danced around google too. They are easily the worst in terms of offering support. People online in all seriousness suggest getting a google business account for 1 month and cancelling afterwards to actually get tech support.

Where's Google's hotline?

...and Coinbase directs you to send a physical letter when their voice chatbot fails. Seriously. I had a login issue preventing me from accessing tax forms and the phone tree eventually got to the point where a sane provider would hand you over to human chat.

When the Coinbase voice agent gave me an address to mail a letter to and hung up, I was so shocked I had to call back and go through the process again. I was told to mail a letter describing my issue to an address on 5th Avenue in NYC.

The Coinbase letter thing is why I started Fiber — hold USDC yourself, email login, no seed, ACH out if you need dollars. https://fiber.so

> what was the future of the industry

If my experience is common, most health plans are moving to mail-order for routine, generic, recurring prescriptions. They only want you to visit a retail pharmacy for stuff that is urgently needed or strictly controlled.