Re: Why has it been made so difficult?
It seems to be axiomatic in beancounter lead businesses that the equation of providing goods and services in exchange for payment should, as much as they can make it so, become one sided, i.e. to not provide good or services, but still gain payment.
So having staff to help customers buy stuff is to be ruled out wherever possible. Instead they have websites to pretend to give all the information we might need, but which do not, and which make finding a phone number as close to impossible as they can manage. Dealing with customer complaints is taken one step further, creating a whole set of hurdles in the hope that the customers will just give up.
In either case the web site will have a generic help page for customer inquiries, which will have a link for "contact us" which will take you to a page of FAQs that answer questions no one has ever asked, which will have a link saying "Something else? Click here" which will take you back to the generic help page.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
