Most of the support is severely binned now to edge cases. You can't just make a genius bar appointment anymore like you used to. You get triaged and most of the flow punts you to some unhelpful support or even worse, apple discussion forums. You basically have to lie to get a genius bar appointment through the system. Once you have the appointment the worker doesn't care and gets right to work same as always, but feels like the writing is on the wall where the next CEO will probably cut genius bar entirely and be rewarded with a surge in share price for the lower overhead.

Funny how you danced around google too. They are easily the worst in terms of offering support. People online in all seriousness suggest getting a google business account for 1 month and cancelling afterwards to actually get tech support.

>Apple offers online, telephone, and of course in-person support for hardware and software

The last time I waited on hold for Apple developer support, I got to enjoy two whole hours of free hold music. So they offer human support, just not very enthusiastically.

Where's Google's hotline?

NONE of those is comparable size.

...and Coinbase directs you to send a physical letter when their voice chatbot fails. Seriously. I had a login issue preventing me from accessing tax forms and the phone tree eventually got to the point where a sane provider would hand you over to human chat.

When the Coinbase voice agent gave me an address to mail a letter to and hung up, I was so shocked I had to call back and go through the process again. I was told to mail a letter describing my issue to an address on 5th Avenue in NYC.

Weakest negotiating position other than the customers.

The funny part is probably a majority of pharmacies are owned by CVS or Walgreens each of which are insurance companies in their own right, and often people with company health insurance will ONLY allow reimbursements through their company pharmacy.

Tbh, this is most industries. Very few have much of a moat and have some wedge/pressure from their suppliers (land/labor/capital), their clients and competition.

Insurance companies and PBMs would probably say the same they have competitors (ie:replaceable) and can’t just pay more for this or that, or reject any cost saving measure available.

and that was not due to answering phones .. adding a nondeterministic black box of bullshit will change nothing.

True all those yes. In fact the govt pays for the meds, I just pay an issuance fee of 2€ or so. You can get private health insurance but I didn't bother, the state one is fine.

And yes you need to be a licensed pharmacist obviously.

I think the pharmacists mainly make their money on value add stuff and non prescription drugs.

People here mainly pick their pharmacy by familiarity and service not price. They're all the same anyway. I've never been to the other ones close to my house :)

It's kinda weird there's so many but it works so why not. And it's nice that she knows my name and what I'm on in case of issues. I live only 5 doors down the street. I really like that about here.

> Deregulation at every level = small/low leverage players get squeeeeezed.

I love how stating a simple truth gets you downvoted. Deregulation doesn't mean "less regulation". Maybe in the abstract, but in practice after it passes through the political machine it means increasing regulation that entrenches a handful of large "private" businesses, while removing regulations that would constrain those businesses commensurate with their market power.

It's a plain fact - the players in the health care industry are closer to de facto governments rather than productive businesses in a competitive market. But yet they're allowed to squeeze pharmacy owners, patients, and anyone they can due to lack of effective regulation. That is why our small pharmacies are going away.

Note that I personally favor more market based reforms (eg the sheer majority of visits/procedures/medication should have up-front prices, and those prices should be uniform no matter who might be paying). But we've currently got the worst of both worlds and I would basically support any angle of reform as long as it actually reforms rather than resulting in more regulatory capture.

If you read the data you would have observed that a large chunk of those store closures were by the big retail pharmacy chains, which blows your central thesis out of the water.