OP here, thank you aaupgrade for the links to the previous posts - I must have missed reading them them in real time and now fully up to speed. In the future, I will take the advice to call the Plat Res line and get transferred when I am looking for customer service.

polecat, although I left this out of my original post in the interest of brevity, I did say the word "representative" at least 5 times during my call. Thank you, though, for proving your own point by complaining about my complaint.

Sharon, thanks for your helpful comments!