My friend Sue came to my house to use my faster internet to plan a holiday in Peru. She was looking at a website for treking tours at Machu Pichu, but couldn’t find a price. “Is there a phone number?” I asked. “Yes”. “Well, it’s noon in Peru, let’s call them” and 5 minutes later she had all the information she needed and a little bit more she didn’t expect.

Then my son, Scott, was tasked with finding the right person to speak to at Apple’s headquarters in California.  After some web-searching, he couldn’t find anything helpful and at first put it to one side. Then he  thought, well, I could just phone the switchboard and ask. Within 2 minutes, he had the right person’s voicemail, and she called him back less than 5 minutes later. Easy!

Sue was worried what would happen if the person who answered spoke Spanish. Scott was little worried that Apple would be unwilling to give him the right person to speak to. Neither were true, and the problems were solved very quickly. It takes no time at all to phone someone and ask. If you don’t get what you want, you can carry on the other routes you want to try. But it’s worth calling and speaking to someone.