From: malQassRimiMlation@gmail.com   
      
   On Thu, Mar 25, 2021 at 10:31:36AM -0400, Fred Goldstein wrote:   
   > Companies have been competing lately on who can deliver worse customer   
   > service, largely by putting up more impregnable IVR jails. Nowadays it's   
   > more like IVR fortresses. Comcast used to be reachable if you said   
   > "agent" enough times. Now that gets you to a recording that, if   
   > triggered, sends a text to your mobile phone which can activate their   
   > appydoodle on the phone which has a sort of dumb text chat, but no phone   
   > capability. Essentially useless.   
   >   
   > But I did find one way to get through which I suspect works with   
   > Verizon. Call from a phone number not theirs, so they don't recognize it   
   > and try to jail it. Then pretend you're a potential new customer and get   
   > connected to sales. Then demand that they transfer you to a real person,   
   > and stay on the line until a real person answers. That is apparently the   
   > only way to reach Comcast technical support now, which it seems is   
   > pretty much all in the Philippines. Not that they are likely to be able   
   > to fix much.   
      
   It was a wide-area outage. I don't know how wide, but my phone is   
   working today.   
      
   I will, however, keep your advice on hand for future use. I have a   
   VoIP phone on Callcentric, which works more reliably than Verizon   
   mobile.   
      
   Bill   
      
   --   
   Bill Horne   
   (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)