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Re:Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds... by dcrazy on Monday August 10, 2026 @02:08PM (#49247417)
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

Re:Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds... by watwut on Monday August 10, 2026 @02:16PM (#49247531)
NONE of those is comparable size.
Re:Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds... by dcrazy on Monday August 10, 2026 @02:39PM (#49247857)
I was replying to this:

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

Re:Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds... by Dotnaught on Monday August 10, 2026 @04:53PM (#49249557)
>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.

Re:Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds... by asdff on Monday August 10, 2026 @05:00PM (#49249661)
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.

Re:Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds... by mancerayder on Monday August 10, 2026 @05:23PM (#49249949)
Where's Google's hotline?
Re:Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds... by fatnoah on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @11:38AM (#49260027)
...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.

Re:Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds... by theo44 on Thursday August 20, 2026 @06:41PM (#49381248)
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