I have found text chat in web browser to be very productive, you get a session ID number from the hosting management login, it is used for user validation.
It is good if the support person can address subscription and account issues as well as technical ones.
I am sure that the support person is dealing with a few clients at a time, this is OK as long as they remain responsive.
I can copy/paste things between my site and computer as can they.
For some time now WordPress has done auto updates, this is mostly a good thing, it should cover CORE only, themes and plugins should not auto update. On one occasion a theme failed when the javascript version updated, it broke the theme, it was unworkable, I had to turn off auto updates and revert to an earlier WP version until the theme was revised. This is much more likely with themes and plugins.
I believe WordPress only auto-updates on security-related releases. Otherwise you’ll see several nag notices to update.
A hosting company should never, EVER auto-update a customer’s web-facing filesystem without the customer’s approval to do so. The company can offer an application auto-update feature and allow the customer to opt-in. Note that I said opt-in — the company should not auto-update by default and force the customer to opt-out.
The above also applies to Gutenberg, but that’s another topic entirely. 🙂
