How to prevent a "pending auto close" ticket from escalating

[Gnorizo]

When a ticket is resolved, we set the ticket to "pending auto close+", e-mail the customer, and request confirmation that the issue was fixed. Conversely, when a ticket is missing information, we set the ticket to "pending auto close-", e-mail the customer, and request additional information. If the user doesn't respond, then the ticket automatically closes to the correct state.

However, when a ticket is in the "pending auto close" state, it can still escalate if it's not closed by the next SLA deadline. This creates a tremendous amount of noise on the dashboard.

Is there a way of preventing a ticket in the "pending auto close" state from escalating, or from accruing time against the SLA?

I can think of one kludgy way of doing this, by automatically changing the queue of the ticket when it's put into pending state (using a generic agent), and then putting it back into the original queue if the ticket goes back into the open state. But this is kludgy. Is there a better way of doing this? Tx

[crythias]

Perhaps don't use pending but reply with next state pending.