Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human” • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by thfuran » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #266

rkangel wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The varying answers to this are effectively political positions. I would suggest that in this case (like in several others) competition is insufficient to guarantee that I have that choice. If I have a GSuite account, but I think that Google's support is rubbish who else can I go to that provides a similar level of service? To use another example - there are various consumer protection laws in the UK and EU. They cov…

If no one offers GSuite or a similar competitor to you under terms that you find acceptable, do you have a right to demand that they offer “just like GSuite, only with an additional telephone hotline”? For me, that answer is a clear no, in that you are not (and should not be) guaranteed that the market provides you such a choice nor does it offer you the choice to deny others the freedom to choose GSuite as it sits t…

Should we have minimum wage, FDA certification, or workplace safety requirements or should we let the market sort all that out too?

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

#302

Post by rmbyrro » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 10:26 PM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #201

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bet 99.99% of people who complain about not having a human to talk don't want to pay a single dollar for that human. Guaranteed. Would the people championing this idea be willing to pay $10/month for their Hacker News account because the company was obligated to provide real human support to everyone? Or $10/month to GitHub just to be able to have a GitHub account? Or if you plan to start a website or internet co…

I feel like this was solved decades ago with toll-numbers (vs. the 800-* toll-free numbers). Want to call? it costs $2.00 per minute.

I agree, just charge whoever needs the service. People won't pay premium for support as an insurance. When something go wrong, they'll happily pay.

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

#303

Post by thfuran » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #252

fao_ wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they can't afford it as a basic cost of doing business, they can always close. This 100%. It reminds me of the similar issue of zero-hour contracts and living wages. One person I know complained that putting restrictions on zero hour contacts, and upping the amount that he would have to pay workers, would mean he couldn't hire any (for his extremely early-stage startup with no investment(!)). In a similar vein,…

But you can comply with ethical business practices without hiring employees to deal with hundreds of thousands of callers. Automated moderation is a thing, and actually responding to support tickets instead of ignoring them is also a thing. I think you underestimate how many services you rely on that wouldn't be able to survive with a legal requirement that they were required to take calls from any human that wanted…

>the $50-100/month for each service that would likely be required if every single one had to support a fully-staffed call center

You're estimating what, that every customer would on average spend at at least an hour a month on the phone with each and every service they do business with?

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

#304

Post by thfuran » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #261

BizarroLand wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all of the recent stories of people being locked out of their Google Accounts with no recourse, it would be great if Google offered one-time customer support for, say, $50 that would work with you to restore access to your accounts. They may not make money hand-over-fist but I bet there's enough need for the service that it would be self-supporting.

If there ever was a shortfall in a given quarter, maybe companies could now dial up the strictness on suspicious account suspensions?

And when they dial it up a bit too much and people start moving to some new platform in frustration, they can just use those service fees to buy that!

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

#305

Post by thfuran » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

beamatronic wrote: post #116

rmbyrro wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet 99.99% of people who complain about not having a human to talk don't want to pay a single dollar for that human.

Once one realizes this, one sees the value of paying for goods and services. Being the customer and not the product. The next step is seeking out the best service providers and rewarding them with dollars.

It's pretty hard to avoid being the product regardless of whether you're the customer.

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

#306

Post by pdonis » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

ironmagma wrote: post #300

pdonis wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm saying sometimes we don't need to accept tradeoffs. Sometimes, sure. But we're not discussing "sometimes" in the abstract. We're discussing a particular kind of situation. > The fact we don't have this right is a problem The fact that we don't have what right? The right to demand support from businesses that say up front that they don't provide it? No, I don't agree that we should have that right. As others hav…

> As others have said, all that will do is make it much harder to start a business. And as I said, this rule would only apply to companies of a certain size and revenue. > The actual rights embodied in our Constitution and laws are not rights to demand that other people do things for you Not true. First amendment guaranteeing right to exercise your religious choice is useless if nobody is out there enforcing that rig…

> Not true.

Your reasoning is specious. The government is only obligated to protect particular rights under the Constitution, not any "right" you dream up. A grand jury is not serving you; it's serving the government, in the course of the government protecting your rights. If we want the government to protect our rights, of course we have a duty to do things like serve on grand juries. But that is not a service to the individual defendants; it's a service to us as a society, through the government.

> Monopolies are bad for consumers because no one can compete with them effectively.

If no one can compete with them because no one can offer the same products and services at an equally low price and in equally large quantities, that's not bad for consumers. That's good. What's bad is when the government steps in at the behest of the failed competitors to break up the monopolies, raising prices, lowering supply, and making things worse for consumers, as in the historical examples I gave.

If no one can compete with them effectively because they've bought special privileges from the government (which is often the case--for example, that's how railroad barons in the US in the late 19th century avoided competition, by getting the government to give them exclusive rights over particular routes), that's a reason to have less government regulation, not more.

If no one can compete with them effectively because no one is even trying, then someone should try. For example, if having guaranteed human phone support is something valuable to customers, then customers will pay for it. So there's an obvious business opportunity (and all the startup entrepreneurs you refer to on this site should be champing at the bit to take it). If it's not valuable enough to customers for them to pay for it, then why should the law step in and require it?

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

#307

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 10:45 PM UTC

thfuran wrote: post #301

sokoloff wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If no one offers GSuite or a similar competitor to you under terms that you find acceptable, do you have a right to demand that they offer “just like GSuite, only with an additional telephone hotline”? For me, that answer is a clear no, in that you are not (and should not be) guaranteed that the market provides you such a choice nor does it offer you the choice to deny others the freedom to choose GSuite as it sits t…

Should we have minimum wage, FDA certification, or workplace safety requirements or should we let the market sort all that out too?

Now that you’ve brought them in: I don’t think it should illegal to contract for work however you like and think that cannabis being an FDA Schedule 1 drug is a ludicrous overreach far out of proportion to the facts or what I think the proper mandate of government is, so yeah, I do think the individuals in a market often have a better answer than government bans on individual freedoms.

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

#308

Post by faangiq » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 10:52 PM UTC

Yes this would also help solve some of the tech displacement problem. But in clown world if this ever happened it would just be the subject of corporate capture.

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

#309

Post by ironmagma » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 11:17 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #306

ironmagma wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As others have said, all that will do is make it much harder to start a business. And as I said, this rule would only apply to companies of a certain size and revenue. > The actual rights embodied in our Constitution and laws are not rights to demand that other people do things for you Not true. First amendment guaranteeing right to exercise your religious choice is useless if nobody is out there enforcing that rig…

> Not true. Your reasoning is specious. The government is only obligated to protect particular rights under the Constitution, not any "right" you dream up. A grand jury is not serving you; it's serving the government, in the course of the government protecting your rights. If we want the government to protect our rights, of course we have a duty to do things like serve on grand juries. But that is not a service to th…

There is a wide category of things afforded to ordinary citizens categorized as "rights" which aren't in the constitution. [1]

> A grand jury is not serving you; it's serving the government ... it's a service to us as a society

These are contradictory. If it's a service to the society, it's a service to me as well, as I am part of the society. True, not "just" me, but I also never advocated for any right that applied to just me. The discussion was always about creating a right for everyone to discuss with (reasonably sized, reasonably financed) companies, their reasonably-chosen concerns.

> If no one can compete with them [...] that's not bad for consumers. That's good.

Yes, individual transactions become cheaper when the business is large. However, choice is greater when the business is small, because then there are more competitors. We can agree that it would not be efficient for the economy for every establishment to be its own business, meaning that every hardware store and every restaurant was its own corporation. However can we not agree that it is also not efficient when a very large business goes bankrupt and we either have to urgently reshuffle the economy and/or bail them out?

And additionally, do you not think predatory pricing is a thing? This is something recognized to be used by institutions such as Wal-mart and Amazon.

> if having guaranteed human phone support is something valuable to customers, then customers will pay for it.

How would I even tell the company I want this feature, if I can't get through to them on the phone in the first place? How would they know it's wanted, if they never hear from anybody? And if they can't even answer to people who have paid them for their core product, why would they to anyone else?

[1] https://www.hg.org/consume.html

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

#310

Post by unsupp0rted » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 11:27 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #290

unsupp0rted wrote: post #117

This would not help, since humans are trained to respond like robots. They vaguely understand your support request and then copy-paste a knowledge base support blog post at you. Even by phone, they do this exact same thing. At least my bank does, until you get escalated to a supervisor, who is permitted to go off-script for a minute. You explain you've read the support info and it doesn't apply to your case, at which…

The worst here is that there is no single person on this Earth - except you - that cares about this outcome and would do something to fix it. Support does not care - their job is to copy-paste answers from script. Finance does not care - they have millions of clients, it's much easier to let one go than to start making exceptions. Software devs don't care - they have hundreds of bugs, what's one more? They are paid t…

The only time it matters is if you get enough traction on social media. That's when the cost of losing you ($100, i.e. a number approaching $0) gets multiplied by the millions in revenue they might lose from bad publicity.