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FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

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Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people are the problem, they can be tricked in to giving access to the wrong person. That's why I'm suggesting some kind of identify verification service is the only safe way. It is not reasonable to have every service have it's own identity verification venue in every city so it would have to be centralized some how.

That puts all the power in the hands of this identity verification system. They could ban a product or person with no recourse, and be even more centralized (monopolistic).

Which is why such a service should never be both centralized and private. The post office probably isn't going to ban you. For banks, there's many to choose from.

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#182
post #12

Before going to extremes, many hacking victims try the usual routes to get customer service but quickly find out it seems impossible to reach someone at Facebook to help fix the problem. Same story with AI lockouts at Google. Even if you do have access to "someone at Google" good luck getting a clear answer of what happened or how to fix the issue.

The utter lack of customer service options at Google is just one of the reasons to avoid EVER having ANYTHING important to your or your business dependent on them. Maybe they lock you out, maybe they discontinue the service, there's nothing you can do to be sure that won't happen.

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#183

FB had an internal help system called "Oops". It was meant for employees to get help for friends they knew in real life. It was discontinued not long ago (EDIT: maybe not according to a child comment). There were just too many requests for help. Facebook has a corporate structure that simply will not prioritize any effort longer than 6 months unless a senior company executive (Mark, Sheryl) supports it. Even if it af…

Can confirm. We were a corporate account spending large 6 digit sums every month on Facebook Business Manager and Facebook randomly stopped campaigns due to intransparent and inaccessible credit line configurations, hurting not just our bottom line but theirs as well, with nobody to turn to in general FBM support.

After lots of escalation through some personal contacts we fortunately had, they switched to a system where they're apparently now using "AI" to determine the credit line every client has dynamically, which doesn't work for us as our campaigns are very big and very short (products that are only relevant for a couple of weeks, but benign, nonpolitical content if you want to ask).

Still nobody can tell us how big the AI thinks our credit limit will be at any given point in time. Finding out who is responsible for anything is a hot mess, and by now we're spending seven digits per month.

But to me, the cream of the crop is how many times we had to escalate to FB to literally beg them to be able to spend our money with them. It's ridiculous.

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for a cold calling service that lets me look up emails and phone numbers for many professionals of import. These days customer service gets two shots to get it right before I start calling the personal cell phone numbers of the C-suite, board of directors and everyone with the word director in their title. I'm absolutely over shitty customer service and it's not fair to subject customer service representatives…

Is there a techbro version of "Karen" because this is that. I mean, seriously... buying people's personal contact details??

I mean, seriously... wasting the time, patience and goodwill of your paying customers by under-investing in quality customer support and driving down defects??

I know it's popular to diss the "karens" of the world, but a lot of them keep in check businesses that will abuse their customers if they can get away with it. They can be a useful corrective force just like class action lawsuits can be.

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#187
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any new account can use Facebook for 24 hours before email verification becomes required . This is a huge issue for any email address not linked to a Facebook account. Facebook will happily leak the social graph of that address's shadow profile (e.g. in the "suggested friends" list), and let anyone impersonate it, for 24h. It happened to me. Those 24h were no fun.

Wow, incredible footgun you got there, Facebook

Footguns are OK as long as they're pointed at other people's feet.

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#188

There's a bit of a story behind this. Oculus is owned by Facebook, but the Facebook website and the Oculus headsets/software are by different teams working in different states. When Facebook bought Oculus, they decided to get rid of the Oculus-specific account system and use only Facebook accounts. The Facebook account requirement took effect with the launch of the Oculus Quest 2, which launched in October 2020. Octo…

I pay for a cold calling service that lets me look up emails and phone numbers for many professionals of import. These days customer service gets two shots to get it right before I start calling the personal cell phone numbers of the C-suite, board of directors and everyone with the word director in their title. I'm absolutely over shitty customer service and it's not fair to subject customer service representatives…

What is the name of the cold calling service, for research purposes.

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for a cold calling service that lets me look up emails and phone numbers for many professionals of import. These days customer service gets two shots to get it right before I start calling the personal cell phone numbers of the C-suite, board of directors and everyone with the word director in their title. I'm absolutely over shitty customer service and it's not fair to subject customer service representatives…

I’ve run support teams, even ones that are well taken care of, and there is no situation where your approach doesn’t hurt the support team and teach the executive nothing. I’m happy to go into more detail, and/or offer advice on better approaches if you sincerely want it.

I'm all ears (sincerely), but any solution you offer needs to be effective at resolving the problems a company has created for me. I'm also happy to try other less-nuclear options first before I bust out the big guns. As I said, I don't start with this approach. In fact, I resorted to it out of necessity as the clerical mistake of one fortune 500 company was going to personally cost me more than $275k over 30 years. I spent several months and dozens of hours trying to resolve the issue. That one company burnt out all the patience I had for a lifetime. Necessity was the mother of this invention.

I give companies a fair chance to do things right. I said two shots, but my actual heuristic is when a problem starts costing me 4 figures if I were billing for my time instead. Usually that's about two significantly frustrating customer service interactions with long wait times.

Just today I had to call customer service for an airline and the wait times were over 4 hours! I ended up getting around the wait time by calling their customer support number in another language I speak and being able to resolve the problem without hassle. But there is no planet where 4 hours wait times are acceptable and I feel bad for those whose only option was to call their English-only customer support number.

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