On 2/20/21 19:18, Mike Hammett wrote:

Leave aside any conversation about whether the business has the ability (or approval) to pay for it or not.

Is it appropriate for organizations that provide services to end-users to require that you are a paying customer to contact their support?

Is it appropriate to pretend to be your complaining customer to get support on network-level issues (IP Geolocation, false VPN notices, buffering, despite a clean path to their CDN, etc.)?

I'd argue, no... but then, the company does expend resources to deal with support queries. It won't scale well to use those resources on queries that do not contribute to that cost.

That said, the major content providers have found a way to provide support without actually speaking to warm bodies. While it doesn't work so well, it is better than nothing for queries that do not directly contribute to that cost.

Am I convinced there should be better way? Sure!

Do I know what that is? Not right now!

Mark.