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Comment by alibarber | Hacker News Reader

This seems to be the case for other embassies of other nations too (I am an expat). But I do get the feeling that if you have moved to another country then you probably are more able to access services online (buying the ticket to get there in the first place is a start) than some 90 year old 'back home' who's never left the village.

I guess the flipside is your needs may be more complex (passport / family / citizenship issues always are) so having someone competent to talk to on the phone is necessary.

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Landing in another country is one of the scenarios where you're most likely to be unable to access telecommunications. For example, you find your internet provider doesn't work internationally, you can't enable roaming without visiting their website, your phone isn't compatible with the local spectrum, your credit card gets fraud-flagged when you try to buy a local sim card because you forgot to tell Visa you'd be travelling, and you discover there's rules against paying in cash for a phone plan.

These are all just some of the things that can go wrong arriving in a foreign country!

Exactly. Otherwise what is the point of having an embassy if everything is to be done only online :)

Yes that is unfortunate - but all out of the remit of what an embassy will help you with. Maybe if things have gone so wrong for you that you throw loosing your passport into the mix, or being physically detained by the police in the host nation then perhaps they'll help out.

But, at least for my own country, they're definitely not there to help you with connectivity issues.

Yeah of course they're not. My post is about not being able to contact an embassy (or any other critical service) that offers only a web interface, when you have embassy-relevant business to discuss. It happens that the very time when you most might need the service of an embassy coincides with times when you are least likely to be able to access the internet: freshly arriving on foreign soil. The post is not about expecting the embassy to fix your internet connection, just to anticipate your lack of it.

Please keep in mind that some expats have been living overseas for 60+ years. They shouldn't be expected to know more about technology for any other senior citizen.

Very true. For 99% of cases I would guess they're dealing with expats who didn't get a check or have a question about medicare coverage.

The example they give of an emergency is "a 12 year old needs to have a social security number issued". I think social security numbers are issued at birth now, so I don't think it comes up often. (Coincidentally I did need to have mine issued very quickly at 12)

But, to OP's point, there are services that are indeed moving to "online only".

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