On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score • Hacker News Board

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#281

Post by anitil » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 1:43 AM UTC

dawnerd wrote: post #40

notyourday wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prefix it with the famous f word and become the next call answered.

Twitter too in some ways. Publicly say something negative about the company and if they have a reasonable support team you'll be helped instantly. Tmobile is really good about this, as is Delta and Chase. Also surprisingly enough got some good support from California DMV over twitter. Who would have guessed!

In a recent hellointernet episode, they talked about how companies have essentially trained them to do just that. If you have enough public clout it seems to be the easiest way to get a response.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#282

Post by anitil » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 1:44 AM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #46

notyourday wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prefix it with the famous f word and become the next call answered.

Once you get a real person, the word "chargeback" also can sometimes get them onto a different track.

I once said 'freedom of information' on a call with my bank, and magically all the insurmountable problems went away and I got a call back (a real call back!) within minutes.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#283

Post by sokoloff » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 1:52 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #239

jimbokun wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I feel like there are also nearly equivalent succinct arguments for how terrible government services are for certain groups of people (particularly poor people and minorities)." Is that argument coming from the poor and the minorities, or from you?

I'm not making any such arguments from my personal experiences or from experiences that other people have relayed to me. But there is no shortage of studies showing vast outcome inequalities in government services. Two very obvious ones are education and the justice system. The quickest study I could find from a Google search: https://www.frbsf.org/community-development/files/CI_Summer2...

I can't imagine how a government education program could hope to achieve equality in outcome in the face of education-aware and education-prioritizing parents spending far more time and working with their children outside of school on enrichment activities that improve educational outcomes.

I've done some volunteer work at the Cambridge, MA public schools where my kids attend. The vast majority of any achievement gap that exists is not under the control of the school for any practical purposes, IMO.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#284

Post by mindslight » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 1:52 AM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #210

njarboe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you aren't in the top tier, fly Southwest as much as you can. I do. All the same seats with minor differentiation possible. There are many reasons they have been the only airline to be profitable for decades, but having good service for everyone is definitelty one of the reasons.

Strongly disagree. Southwest is hugely overrated imo. It’s one of those companies that maybe used to be better or something, so they have a whole class of fans who are blind to how lame they currently are. I’m probably that way about Apple :) Not that any of the other major carriers is much better. But I don’t love the lining up and then hoping for a good seat, they’re often not the cheapest, and letting everyone che…

Southwest, at least as of 2 years ago when I stopped flying. Of course being partial to them just means I'd check their prices first, before Matrix.

1. Experienced pilots on all legs, rather than eg Corporate Liability Shield #73 dba United Express.

2. No change fees. Sure, fellating surveillance programs on other airlines can probably get you this too, but why bother?

3. As you've referenced, two free bags. Most of the time "unbundling" means paying the same fare plus the fees.

4. Hot chocolate (yes, this really deserves its own bullet point).

If any airline actually stopped enabling the blue shirted molesters, I would switch in a heartbeat. Until then, they're really all just cattle cars.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#285

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 1:56 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #283

baddox wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not making any such arguments from my personal experiences or from experiences that other people have relayed to me. But there is no shortage of studies showing vast outcome inequalities in government services. Two very obvious ones are education and the justice system. The quickest study I could find from a Google search: https://www.frbsf.org/community-development/files/CI_Summer2...

I can't imagine how a government education program could hope to achieve equality in outcome in the face of education-aware and education-prioritizing parents spending far more time and working with their children outside of school on enrichment activities that improve educational outcomes. I've done some volunteer work at the Cambridge, MA public schools where my kids attend. The vast majority of any achievement gap…

> I can't imagine how a government education program could hope to achieve equality in outcome in the face of education-aware and education-prioritizing parents spending far more time and working with their children outside of school on enrichment activities that improve educational outcomes.

Identify children without such parents and provide them and their parents with additional support; it's expensive, but it's the obvious and likely only way to narrow the gap more than trivially, and probably better than many things that schools are fruitlessly expending resources on.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#286

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 2:00 AM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #88

kenneth wrote: post #57

The most obvious example of this in daily life is through airlines, where the difference is pretty transparent and you get night-and-day better service by being a loyal customer. With top status with AA and UA (EXP and 1K), you connected to U.S.-based very senior phone agents right away, who always make sure to take care of any issue that arises. 50min delay on your AA flight? No problem, sir, we are rebooking you on…

> The cheap seats have very low margins, oftentimes negative… so it just infeasible economically to give everyone good service. An empty seat costs the airline more than a paid ticket. They can’t exactly fly just 189/233rds of the plane.

I once flew on a 767 with 6 passengers. The flight had been canceled due to snow but was able to make it out and obviously the airline wanted the plane at its destination for the next day.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#287

Post by mindslight » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #177

forapurpose wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Incognito mode solve this problem? I thought it mostly prevented data from being stored on your local computer; I did not think it was effective against tracking.

It improves tracking by fisabling your ad blocker.

As someone who has used chromium incognito as a crutch, 100% this.

Browsers need to be seriously redesigned with privacy (aka security) in mind. The javascript execution environment needs to be gutted to remove security leaks like screen/window size. And incompetently (/maliciously) designed APIs like websockets need to be thrown right out.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#288

Post by batiudrami » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 2:10 AM UTC

bdamm wrote: post #133

njarboe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you aren't in the top tier, fly Southwest as much as you can. I do. All the same seats with minor differentiation possible. There are many reasons they have been the only airline to be profitable for decades, but having good service for everyone is definitelty one of the reasons.

Also, Southwest's no-questions-asked-no-limits policy on cancelling and rebooking tickets makes them my favorite. They recently put a limit of one year on the rebooked ticket, however. You can do this right up until boarding has already begun and there are no penalties. Nobody else does this. They're polite, they're generally well run, seats are reasonable, maintenance seems to be good, they have good routes, cheap t…

As a "normal" flyer, Southwest was the only airline I flew with in the US which didn't seem to make it its MO to have me be as miserable as possible through the entire experience. The budget pay-extra-for-everything airlines in Australia and SEA consistently provide a better experience than what I got from Delta, United or American.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#289

Post by sbr464 » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 2:19 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #255

wpietri wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent: Are there other people here who just refuse to sign up for any of these programs? I have family members who are super into frequent flyer programs, credit card points, etc, etc. But I don't like the cognitive load they introduce, and I don't like having to figure out how much I'm being manipulated in any given interaction. I get that I'm missing out on goodies, but they're paying for those goodies somehow, s…

I'm the same. I've skipped out on maybe a dozen flights of points. I don't have an account. I just don't want to be bothered. I have plenty of wealth and don't need your point system. I extend this everywhere. I don't have enough a single points card anywhere. The only thing I use is Canadian Tire money because it's fun and stupid but they're even replacing that with a stupid points card.

This is my logic. I don’t feel like wasting my single life reading blogs and watching YouTube videos about points/benefits. Would much rather buy out directly. I also value not dealing with the frustrations/loopholes/asterisks that come with these programs.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#290

Post by wenc » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 2:24 AM UTC

technofiend wrote: post #134

arebop wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: does anyone see these programs and think wow, this airline UX is so awful I want to show them my loyalty so that eventually they'll stop trying so hard to make me unhappy? I'm pretty convinced this all boils down to a sort of low-grade white collar corruption: people who travel a lot for business sometimes can get away with favoring one airline over another, where this decision costs the shareholders a little b…

>I'm pretty convinced this all boils down to a sort of low-grade white collar corruption: people who travel a lot for business sometimes can get away with favoring one airline over another, I suppose it depends on the business but at my Fortune 50 we're required to use "lowest logical airfare". You can force a choice of Southwest over United by choosing one airport over another, and there's enough wiggle room to let…

> But unless you're a highly placed executive no one travels on the company dime often enough to bother with air miles anyway

This isn't really a true statement. Marketing and enterprise sales folks travel a lot on the company dime. I'm on the engineering and consulting staff in my company, and I travel a decent amount, mostly domestic. Most of our engineers do frequent on-sites. One might not be able to get status, but the air miles definitely add up. I've been able to get more than a few free flights and upgrades. I would say it's worth bothering about.