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Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

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Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#141

Post by granshaw »

forgotpwd16 wrote: post #114
cyberpunk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes. Have you ever really tried to speak to someone at google? It's an educational experience, it teaches you the value of patience, the impermanence of everything. It's a bit like what I imagine being inside the total perspective vortex is like. > The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. > Trin Tragula – for that was his name – was a dreamer, a thinker, a spec…

>Have you ever really tried to speak to someone at google? Thought such thing wasn't even possible.

It’s very easy if you’re a Google Ads customer. Really underscores the “you’re not the customer, you’re the product” saying

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#142

Post by carapace »

> Voting with our dollars doesn't work when these companies are so integrated with our lives.

Do you actually think that forming a political bloc and pressuring these companies with (more) regulation is easier than just disentangling them from your life? It seems like so much more work to me. Especially since there are plenty of companies that are eager to take your money and give you great service, e.g.:I pay for sr.ht for dev support and ddevault is literally an IRC comment away. I pay for Podia for a web store and when I wanted a different font on my (sub-)site they implemented it an hour. I pay for Tarsnap for encrypted backups and cperciva's customer support is stellar. I can't say enough about how good my experience with Tarsnap has been.

I'm not against (or for) regulation on principle, but it seems to me that you're proposing to work hard, unpaid, to improve these companies, "against their will" as it were, through an indirect and unreliable method, rather than switching to a company that's already great.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#143

Post by majani »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #66
granshaw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aka the Google model

Yeah, but, probably you're not Google's customer; you're their product.

Most people who complain about Google are either paying for G suite or ad partners in the Adsense program. Those are Google customers and partners

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#144

Post by bryan_w »

dforrestwilson wrote: post #18

This week we had a disgruntled employee leave a 1-star Google review of our shop. They have never been a customer... I reported it as a Conflict of Interest PER GOOGLE'S OWN STATED POLICY and it was rejected almost immediately. Google could find nothing wrong with the review. We have no recourse to escalate. No way to even interact with a human about it. It's absolutely ridiculous. I have plenty of documentation and…

If it's so important to you, why not just sue the former employee? That's how libel is handled in the real world.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#145

Post by madphilosopher »

ironmagma wrote: post #32
ss108 wrote: post #4

I agree. You mentioned email, but to me the main issue is when one calls a support number. I absolutely despise calling a customer support number and having to listen to the "automated" response that gives one menu options that one navigates via numbers on the telephone (it's only automated for them, not the for the end-user, who has to manually chug through this process, with menu items that don't even necessarily c…

The sheer cardinality of ways they mess it up is impressive. 1. Long intro message with hours, location, website intro, email address and to hang up and call 911 if it’s an emergency 2. “Our menu items have recently changed” years after changing them 3. “We are currently experiencing higher than normal call volume” 100% of the time 4. No “other” option 5. Listing options 2, 3, 4, 5 and then the most common option “1,…

"Our call volume is currently very high and the wait time is X minutes. Please press 1 if you would like to be put in the queue and have an agent call you."

I wish more companies did this so that I can actually get on with my day without spending it on hold.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#146

Post by k8sToGo »

dforrestwilson wrote: post #18

This week we had a disgruntled employee leave a 1-star Google review of our shop. They have never been a customer... I reported it as a Conflict of Interest PER GOOGLE'S OWN STATED POLICY and it was rejected almost immediately. Google could find nothing wrong with the review. We have no recourse to escalate. No way to even interact with a human about it. It's absolutely ridiculous. I have plenty of documentation and…

I posted a few legit (longish reviews) 1-3 star reviews, but they all disappeared from Google Maps.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#147

Post by drivebycomment »

oldsecondhand wrote: post #110
_3u10 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation doesn’t make unprofitable businesses exist. If the business model is unviable with support those businesses will simply not exist or cost an amount of money that is unappealing.

It's your baseless assumption that people are unwilling to pay money for these services.

It's not whether there are people who are willing to pay, but whether there are enough such people so that mandating this would not lead to substantially less number of services provided by companies such that society collectively will be worse off. I.e. a regulation like this proposal will raise the cost of business which ultimately consumers have to bear, and the question is how much cost it will increase overall and if the consequence of that increase is actually acceptable for the society. I don't know anybody knows the answer for sure - it's possible the cost increase is marginal and can be easily absorbed, but maybe not.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#148

Post by mindslight »

radarsat1 wrote: post #53

I recently had the experience of trying to do a banking operation that required an in-person visit. For some reason this bank required me to do this operation at the branch that I originally opened the account, which is not where I live anymore, and it's very inconvenient for me to go there. So, while I was in another city of that country, I decided to try and handle that problem. I went to a branch and asked them to…

> just keep in mind that even if you talk to a human, your millage may vary greatly depending on who you speak to and what side of the bed they got up on.

It goes even deeper than this. Often times when you "speak to a human", the capabilities of that human are essentially limited to just putting things into an internal ticket system. A lot of companies set up their systems this way - front end support who talks to customers and really isn't empowered to do anything, and a back office that acts on those requests (iff a request is well-formed).

Even traditional businesses like brick and mortar banks can operate this way, with your local rep at a desk calling into a call center to straighten out account issues. Regional banks seem to be the worst offenders here, having gotten large enough to implement a system but not large enough to address it's failings. So don't think that simply talking to a "person" will save you!

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#149

Post by majani »

radarsat1 wrote: post #53

I recently had the experience of trying to do a banking operation that required an in-person visit. For some reason this bank required me to do this operation at the branch that I originally opened the account, which is not where I live anymore, and it's very inconvenient for me to go there. So, while I was in another city of that country, I decided to try and handle that problem. I went to a branch and asked them to…

I used to judge banks until now I run a company that handles deposits. On the third day of launch I ran into a small bug that allowed some rogue users to drain all the money in our account at the time (which was about $400 only at least). Right then and there I fully understood why an organization dealing with money needs red tape as more of a safety harness than anything

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#150

Post by BoppreH »

ChefboyOG wrote: post #127
coldtea wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think its important to recognise that quite a lot of modern web based companies are running their business on the 0 cents model. That is they take the marginal cost of a customer and push it down to zero and rely on scale to make a profit from it. Well, that's their problem. There should absolutely be a "right to speak with a human", like a restaurant must pass health inspections, and other such things. If they c…

A "right to speak with a human" makes sense to me on an industry-by-industry basis, in the same way that construction companies and restaurants have different regulatory agencies and checks. Applying it to all businesses sounds like a bad idea, however. Financial institutions? Certainly. Healthcare companies? Makes all kinds of sense. But I don't see an ethical imperative for, say, Giphy (pre-acquisition) to provide…

> But I don't see an ethical imperative for, say, Giphy (pre-acquisition) to provide that kind of support.

Giphy hosts user-generated content and encourages sharing.

Imagine someone uploads a gif of you and fake subtitles of racial slurs and calls to violence.

It starts trending. Your friends and families are asking you about it. You've submitted a request to remove it, but got no response yet. You can't get hold of any human at Giphy. You get a call from your company's HR.

Giphy definitely needs human customer support.

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