Get Help Quicker

[RoyB]

Wow, look at this:-

Took me about 8 false starts, and a bit of social engineering (AKA lying), but I actually got the Nowbot to hook me up with a real live person on Live Chat!

And then left her swinging in the wind…. Sorry, Aakanksha 😢

But it proves that contrary to all expectations, you can reach a live human via the Nowbot 😛

[adccl8z]

Have they recently made it harder? I dont recall having such difficulty last week

What options did you take as i can't get the choice in your screenshot

thanks!

[RoyB]

@adccl8z 

Made what harder?

I think Now plugged the loophole I found… 😢

[Maud]

Hi Roy - how did you do this? I bought a Mac mouse as you suggested and I STILL can't remove the pause/play button and the wind/rewind buttons from my screen if I expand the screen. It's pretty bleak watching something with these symbols right in the centre of my line of vision. If I could chat to someone directly maybe they'd have a solution???

[RoyB]

@Maud 

I’ve done some more work on this, particularly on my Mac, which is a 2016 iMac, running in Safari, and the thing that always works, if anything works, is to run the Firefox window full size, keep the mouse cursor on the video, and wait for a few seconds.

Then the pause/play and wind/rewind buttons should disappear.

They do not disappear when you move the cursor to the bottom of the Firefox window, below the video, though they usually disappear if you move the cursor to the top of the Firefox window, but it seems to take a little longer, and doesn’t always work.

Clicking the broken square to get fullscreen video seems always to work.

I have to say, though, that at one point, I did seem to get the gubbins refusing to disappear - though I don’t know what I did to provoke that - but minimising and then maximising the Firefox window again did seem to clear it.

You can talk to Now support via Live Chat - a little chat window - but you can’t talk to them over the phone. If the above still doesn’t work for you, it’s well worth reporting the problem that way, though, and seeing if they have any better advice to offer.

In the meantime, I will see if there are any Firefox or Mac settings that might make the gubbins persist, or vanish quicker, or vanish on keyboard command, and so on; have you got any Accessibility settings turned on, because those are the sort of settings that could affect this?

Live Chat can be a bit hard to find, but here’s the link:-

Chat online

Avoid ‘Get Help Quicker’ on this screen. This leads to the Nowbot, an AI bot that might well assist you in navigating the Help; but as you need to talk to Live Chat, you have already gone beyond that, and all the Nowbot can bring you is frustration.

[Maud]

Hi Roy

Thank you! I downloaded Firefox and used it instead of Safari - so far it seems to be working!!!!!

I also had some Live Chat - they said my ISP has a geo location outside UK and I was to contact them to have it changed. With sinking heart i thought I’d have to set off down that track - and then your message arrived and HOPEFULLY things are going to work now.

I am so grateful.

Thank you

Maud

[RoyB]

@Maud 

Glad that fixed it!

And now I have a confession to make - I was saying Firefox throughout that posting when of course I should have been saying Safari 😢

But if I accidentally got you onto Firefox, and that works, let’s not knock it 😛

But you might want to try it in Safari, if that is what you usually use, and see if it works there.

I never asked which version of iOS you are on, but I’m using 16.6, and I hope you are on one of the 16s.

Because Apple completely redid the video for version 16 and made it available as a system service, so possibly all the browsers use it.

So it might well work the same on Safari.

One thing I learned about Firefox (and yes I do mean Firefox here ☺️) is that F7 (fn+F7 on Macs) apparently toggles on the overlaid controls staying on the video screen. So don’t press that!

Anyway, time for another glass of the falling-down water to celebrate our mutual success, however incorrectly described 😂

[Maud]

Thanks Roy

I’ve saved all your messages with their helpful hints so if things go haywire again i can double check your suggestions.

I really appreciate all the time you’ve spent on this.

with gratitude

Maud