VISIBLE PHONE HELP PLEASE

[Wayne49]

Like a 300 baud modem with acoustic coupler.
An Atari 800 microcomputer saving data to an audio cassette tape.

[frater secessus]

They have to hold down costs to provide cheap service.  This is the price you pay.

Exactly so.  Since I rarely need support I choose low-cost services with minimal or arcane support.  I don't like to pay for services others consume.

I once had a feed from a low-key ISP run by alpha geeks.  There was (I shizz you not) a little quiz you had to pass before signing up.    Stuff like "what port does ssh run on by default?" and "which of these commands runs a process in the background?"  It weeded out high maintenance and/or incurious folks from the general population.  The resulting service was inexpensive, fast, and incredibly stable.   When something did fall over they were on it like a duck on a june bug.  They also informed the users of the issue and resolution with complete transparency.

I've started moving my bank accounts over to an online bank (Ally) for similar reasons.  I don't want to pay for buildings, humans, etc, that I will never need.  

Another analog is inexpensive electronic stuff from China.  It comes with Chinglish instructions (or none at all) but I am willing to do the googling and experimentation to figure it out.

[Gr8ful]

All that's great until you get a defective phone & no reply & agree to swap phones & no address or mailing labels as promosed twice. There's a difference between low cost support & NO support.

[Roadtripp]

So Verizon and google are experimenting with AI and you are the subjects of the experiment. A friend just dumped google Fi or whatever they call it. It was taking a lot of his time talking nonsense to a AI computer. 
 Im hoping to find a plan that doesn’t dent my budget like my current Verizon plan. But I use it for everything which isn’t good either as I’m getting too dependent on it. 
 Sorry, I don’t have a solution either.