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Or customer service. My last few online store issues have been fully chatbot when they used to be half chatbot for intake and half person.

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Same, after a little back and forth it became obvious I was not talking to a real person.

I like to get the chatbot to promise me massive discounts just to get whoever is reading the logs to sweat a little.

I have survived until today using the shibboleth "let me speak to a human" [1] The day this doesn't work any more, is the day I stop paying for that service. We should make a list of companies that still have actual customer service.

1: https://xkcd.com/806/ - from an era when the worst that could happen was having to speak with incompetent, but still human, tech support.

It no longer works for virgin media (UK cable monopoly).

I got myself into a loop where no matter what I did, there was no human in the loop.

Even the "threaten to cancel" trick didn't work, still just chatbots / automated services.

Thankfully more and more of the UK is getting FTTH. Sadly for me I accidentally misunderstood the coverage checker when I last moved house.

> is the day I stop paying for that service.

You're acting like it's not the companies that are monopolies that implement these systems first.

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