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

#431

Post by wpietri » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 3:27 PM UTC

closetohome wrote: post #403

clubm8 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. You can't handle the cognitive load of attaching a unique identifier to your account? You don't need to pick an airline or game credit cards - just sign up next time you book a…

Acquiring points is simple. Redeeming them requires a non-trivial amount of work.

Personally, I wouldn't even call acquiring points simple. Right now when I fly it's complicated enough to pick a flight. But one of the points of a frequent flyer program from an airline's perspective is to encourage me to fly their airline more often. So if I belonged to one of the programs, I'd also have to be doing the calculation of, "Oh, if I fly X instead of Y, I'd get enough miles to level up in status and/or get a free goodie." Which means having to learn and keep up with the rules, balances, and rewards of the various programs.

Do not want.

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

#432

Post by anitil » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 4:15 AM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #389

anitil wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Simply stating that you are considering contacting your attorney will ring the same alarm bell a little more reliably. A bank employee might not know - but should know - that literally nothing the bank handles is subject to FOIA, but they're trained to treat a threat of litigation seriously.

Yeah the funny thing is I was actually idly talking to myself while the person was busy typing something - 'Does FOI work with private organisations? Oh no of course not' then all hell broke loose on the other end.

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

#433

Post by Vraxx » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #408

Vraxx wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We're still losing the distinction between privatizing more things and privatizing everything. I'm not aware of any federal-level US politicians who want to privatize, say, the military. That's because we've already privatized the profitable bits of the military in the Defense Industry. There's a phrase I've heard that goes something like "Privatize the profits and socialize the losses". Human life loss is extremely…

> corporate accountability is only effective at keeping leadership accountable to profits not to morals and profits don't care one bit about whats right or wrong. Absolutely, and political accountability is only effective at keeping elected officials accountable to elections, not to morals. And that's only the aspects of government that are even supposedly accountable to the electorate (a huge amount of government is…

Yeah, that's a fair point. This gets at why I think that we should separate money and elections as much as possible. Ideally if the only people who want to run are people who believe in their solutions to public problems, then elected officials can actually argue about the problem. I don't see that happening when money helps politicians get elected and corporations have plenty of money to spend on campaigns in "exchange" for favorable legislation (it's not a direct exchange obviously since that's illegal, but it's pretty close).

My point in all of this is that the government is far from perfect, but I prefer it to corporations when profit and citizen's interests diverge (healthcare is a prime example).