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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”

#321

Post by drstewart »

pempem wrote: post #209
Maxburn wrote: post #158

You don't have the right to tell others how to run their business. You do have the right to take your business elsewhere. In a free market people vote with their wallet and there's plenty out there that accept the zero support model with a lower price, whether they understand what they are getting or not. That's assuming they even bother to ask about support options up front.

I'm not sure I understand this comment. We do have the right to tell others how to run their businesses. Get food poisoning at a restaurant (btw, also a low margin business) there's protocol. Get in a taxi and it goes somewhere it shouldn't? protocol. Hotel spying on you? or maybe not having fire safety rules? or not having running water? We regulate where businesses go, how they operate, how big they can get and ple…

Exactly, this is why we need Comcast to have a monopoly in municipal broadband or a limited number of taxi medallions in cities. To prevent bloodshed.

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

#322

Post by drstewart »

dagurp wrote: post #20
brap wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. People cost a LOT.

You can hire a lot of people for a small portion of a CEO's salary

Really? How many people can I hire for 10% of Google's CEO salary (= $200,000)? Will that satisfy you for Google's support needs?

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

#323

Post by drstewart »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #319
brap wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you going to enforce that? Are you going to force them to pay from their own salaries and dividends, by law? Well, they'll just bump up the salaries/dividends to offset the cost. The money is coming from customers. Either way, customers are the ones paying for support. Many companies let customers directly pay for support, if they want. No one's forcing you to buy from companies that don't offer this.

Get rid of the monopoly. The reason they can have such bad CR is because their marketshare is leaps and bounds beyond the competition so they CAN. They provided an amazing product until they hit monopoly status then started cutting quality.. Oldest trick in the book. Some solutions are to remove whatever government policies are giving them an advantage, or break up the monopoly via government, or provide government h…

>Get rid of the monopoly.

Which monopoly?

>The reason they can have such bad CR is because their marketshare is leaps and bounds beyond the competition so they CAN.

Defining monopolies by "has bad customer service" is certainly a unique and interesting take. Almost borders on the "no true scotsman" fallacy.

Of course, the real irony that you don't understand is that this would entrench monopolies: they're the ones with the resources to hire peons in third world countries to provide bare minimum support. Forcing startups to do the same kills them right out the gate.

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

#324

Post by pdonis »

ironmagma wrote: post #312
pdonis wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's a service to the society, it's a service to me as well, as I am part of the society. You're quibbling. The grand jury has to do its duty regardless of how the defendant has behaved. A business does not have to give you what you want regardless of how you behave. These two things are not in the same category, no matter how you try to twist words. > The discussion was always about creating a right Yes, "creat…

> That's not how rights work. For every right, before it was created, it didn't exist. This seems tautological. Why would it have been created if it already effectively existed? The whole idea of rights is that it legally enforces something that wasn't any kind of guarantee before, and its absence caused all kinds of problems. > No, I don't agree to that. [...] What size of business is most "efficient" in our current…

> For every right, before it was created, it didn't exist.

What if people's basic rights weren't "created" by anyone? What if they just have always existed? Or at least have existed at least as long as human societies have?

This is pretty much the view the Founders of the US had. They did not view the Constitution as creating rights but as acknowledging that people already have certain rights and requiring the government to respect them.

> This seems tautological.

I think you need to expand your thinking. See above.

I don't have anything further of substance to add to the discussion at this point.

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

#325

Post by blindseer »

Have people here used Chewy? I’m kind of amazed at their customer service. It’s SO good. You can reach a person via phone or chat, they are all technically savvy and extremely helpful. And fast. I’ve never spent more than a few minutes on the phone with them and have always been thoroughly satisfied.

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

#326

Post by ironmagma »

pdonis wrote: post #324
ironmagma wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not how rights work. For every right, before it was created, it didn't exist. This seems tautological. Why would it have been created if it already effectively existed? The whole idea of rights is that it legally enforces something that wasn't any kind of guarantee before, and its absence caused all kinds of problems. > No, I don't agree to that. [...] What size of business is most "efficient" in our current…

> For every right, before it was created, it didn't exist. What if people's basic rights weren't "created" by anyone? What if they just have always existed? Or at least have existed at least as long as human societies have? This is pretty much the view the Founders of the US had. They did not view the Constitution as creating rights but as acknowledging that people already have certain rights and requiring the govern…

The constitution was the result of several heated debates (conventions) and versions of it were rejected. If the rights already existed, people would not have had to fight about what they should be. It would also mean we would have the exact same rights as are had in any other country, and it’s clear that this is not true.

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

#327

Post by pempem »

drstewart wrote: post #321
pempem wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand this comment. We do have the right to tell others how to run their businesses. Get food poisoning at a restaurant (btw, also a low margin business) there's protocol. Get in a taxi and it goes somewhere it shouldn't? protocol. Hotel spying on you? or maybe not having fire safety rules? or not having running water? We regulate where businesses go, how they operate, how big they can get and ple…

Exactly, this is why we need Comcast to have a monopoly in municipal broadband or a limited number of taxi medallions in cities. To prevent bloodshed.

Sure, I heard the sarcasm and agree. We have rules, they aren't well implemented.

My response was to a comment that indicated there should be none.

Additionally, here are the cases where taxis, unregulated, led to bloodshed. The policy is old but the fact that it was in response to violence is a repeating pattern: 1. Medallions introduced: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/11/nyregion/medallion-limits...

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

#328

Post by DJHenk »

joshuamorton wrote: post #299
sillystuff wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This doesn't address the question I asked. What does speaking to a human accomplish? Why does that solve your problem in a way that a ticket doesn't? You seem to be implicitly assuming that the human on the phone has more power than the one behind a ticket system, but there's no reason to believe that. If the rule is that you need to provide specific information to recover your account, speaking to a human won't fix…

> You seem to be implicitly assuming that the human on the phone has more power than the one behind a ticket system, but there's no reason to believe that.

It is not necessarily about power, it is about judgement. However clever or 'smart' the systems we design, there is still a vast gap between what automation can understand and what a human can understand. There are countless examples of a system only doing what it was told to do, where any human with an IQ higher than 80 would immediately recognize that the system is being incredibly dumb and wrong in this particular case.

There needs to be some last resort for the victims of those errors when there are real consequences to these mistakes.

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

#329

Post by bufferoverflow »

I disagree. As far as possible new rights go, this would be pretty low on my scale.

Right to (somewhat) clean water - sure.

Right to be safe in a prison - probably, maybe.

You're asking for a universal requirement for all corporations to provide human call centers. That's pretty radical.

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

#330

Post by brap »

drstewart wrote: post #323
edmcnulty101 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get rid of the monopoly. The reason they can have such bad CR is because their marketshare is leaps and bounds beyond the competition so they CAN. They provided an amazing product until they hit monopoly status then started cutting quality.. Oldest trick in the book. Some solutions are to remove whatever government policies are giving them an advantage, or break up the monopoly via government, or provide government h…

>Get rid of the monopoly. Which monopoly? >The reason they can have such bad CR is because their marketshare is leaps and bounds beyond the competition so they CAN. Defining monopolies by "has bad customer service" is certainly a unique and interesting take. Almost borders on the "no true scotsman" fallacy. Of course, the real irony that you don't understand is that this would entrench monopolies: they're the ones wi…

Agree, and to add to that:

> provide government help to the competition

This is just paying for CR with extra steps.

> remove whatever government policies are giving them an advantage

At least we can agree on something :)

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