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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”

#271

Post by kansface »

Lets start with the federal government! I recently had the experience of the IRS sending me progressively angrier letters via an obviously automated process claiming I didn't pay taxes last year. As it turns out, they had record of receiving the payment in the exact dollar amount, and had record of us filing in the exact dollar amount, but they did not apply the payment to the debt in question. We wrote several letters (which we know they received) and tried calling, but its not possible for citizens to actually talk to a human, via any channel, even when the IRS is imminently threatening to put a lien on your house! Of course, the IRS actually staffs a number specifically for attorneys! It cost us $980 to pay an attorney to call the number, conspicuously ~$20 shy of the retainer to convince the IRS to move the bits from one row to another. Naturally, we did not find that out until we had paid the retainer!

TLDR: send payments to the IRS under the primary's SSN (first listed) when filing jointly

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

#272

Post by irvingprime »

alecco wrote: post #28

An elderly relative keeps calling the mobile company about her line not working. We explained to her it was the charger. She keeps calling them. Same for her ISP. Same for the bank. Same for anything tech related. She won't budge. This costs a lot of money to companies and government offices. I think there should be different set of companies with support catered to this growing age group who struggle with new techno…

I used to work support desk. I hate to have to tell you this but it's not just old people who can't handle tech. Stupidity is an epidemic!

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

#274

Post by vdqtp3 »

bobabob wrote: post #188
rmellow wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My partner bought some clothing in Brazil and wanted to exchange it at the store for something else. Unfortunately she lost the receipt, and the alternative which is providing your SSN is not available to her (not a citizen). The exchange was denied. We walked into another store location. They were sympathetic to the foreigner situation, and made an exception. Takeaway: Computers can't see that a process is flawed an…

There is no SSN in Brazil.

I'd expect he's referring to the Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas, just doing so by a more recognizable term.

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

#276

Post by sillystuff »

joshuamorton wrote: post #262
sillystuff wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A heuristic such as, right to speak with a human, if a) Customer pays for the service b) Service stores any data of the customer's (e.g., email provider, cloud storage provider, facebook, youtube, instagram, etc., but would need a threshold i.e., a simple throwaway comment would not have enough value to trigger, but an article, photo, or document would). c) Service acts as IdP where being locked out might result in b…

What does speaking to a human accomplish? Your ticket was probably reviewed by a real person. If you called instead of ticketing, you'd talk to the same person, which now means responses would be slower because phone calls take more time than ticket handling. The phone person won't be any more empowered than the ticket person, so you'll still not have the issue resolved. The only difference is that there's a human to…

Personally, I want a "human" option to be on the first menu of every phone robot menu. A site that only supports a web-based chat option would have to have humans at the other side rather than some crappy chatbot. 'Contact Us' pages should include email addresses that are monitored by humans. It would be a huge improvement if contact a human via any means was available at every company.

But, having the last resort option to speak to a human even when there is the ability to reach a human via other modalities can be useful.

There is a large "enterprise" company where the support folks always ignore everything I submit to the ticket, and then ask for all the things already provided. The only way to make progress with them is to get on a call. You are correct, it shouldn't be necessary-- but it is. And, if you do not have that last resort method, good luck. You may be stuck having to reply with the same information to a series of support folks without making progress on the case for weeks.

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

#277

Post by PhileasNietzche »

fourseventy wrote: post #183
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, this is how the system is set up for at the moment, because if one company doesn't cut costs, someone else (with a lot of investor money) will come in and undercut the market. Because when it comes down to it, people don't care about speaking to a human when they can get a product or service for less than the competition. Both corporations and consumers min/max their expenses, at the cost of service or hu…

So you think communism will out perform capitalism? History has proven this to not be true. Once you take away the drive to make profits you take away all drive for innovation or to make quality products.

[dead]

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

#278

Post by DiggyJohnson »

sillystuff wrote: post #276
joshuamorton wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does speaking to a human accomplish? Your ticket was probably reviewed by a real person. If you called instead of ticketing, you'd talk to the same person, which now means responses would be slower because phone calls take more time than ticket handling. The phone person won't be any more empowered than the ticket person, so you'll still not have the issue resolved. The only difference is that there's a human to…

Personally, I want a "human" option to be on the first menu of every phone robot menu. A site that only supports a web-based chat option would have to have humans at the other side rather than some crappy chatbot. 'Contact Us' pages should include email addresses that are monitored by humans. It would be a huge improvement if contact a human via any means was available at every company. But, having the last resort op…

Extending your point: the status quo probably leads to more lawsuits because there’s no way or working with the company directly (between customer support ticks) and a lawsuit. Twitter? Lol

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

#279

Post by DiggyJohnson »

dmd wrote: post #208
pempem wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you slap together 50 lines of code, can you attempt a valuation and get funding for it? :shrug: Are you 'side hustling' to make money and thus having customers?

What's a customer? I don't charge money, but neither does Google. Where is the line drawn?

ooo good point. Like if you have Google ads running on your page generating trivial income, yes it would become more challenging to define a customer.

I think this would probably be addressed in a minimum size (headcount) before the regulation is required, which makes sense because the problem is businesses scaling their customer base and scope beyond their physical resources.

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

#280

Post by DiggyJohnson »

dmd wrote: post #233
rkangel wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not providing a service though are you? You're providing intellectual property for people to do things with.

And if I throw an instance of it up on my web server that runs on a raspberry pi next to the cat litter in my basement? Now do I need to provide phone support to the world?

Minimum headcount requirement would render this irrelevant, and make sense in the spirit of the regulation.
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