> Part of me thinks (perhaps naively) if I had the ability to speak with a real person over the phone, we could sort this out instead of constant emails or creating tickets that go into a black hole.

Honestly, yes, I do think you’re being naive.

Ask me about the time I tried to switch from a rented modem to one we own on COX phone support. They bounced me around through separate departments which gave contradicting information about how their own stuff worked, and when I finally gave up and just dumped them for a different ISP, tried to talk us into keeping them by offering a limited time offer for a cheaper price at half the speed (as if).

Or about trying to get payment stuff worked out with my bank. The most pleasant experience I’ve ever had with them on the phone is debit card activation and the occasional fraud prevention notice. Neither of which involve humans.

In short, if they need forced to offer phone support, it will suck. It’ll just be a poor sap sending the email for you anyway.