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Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

bc.ctvnews.ca

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Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#81

Post by somerandomqaguy »

bakkerthehacker wrote: post #43
anamexis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a S company?

Samsung I've also had to deal with their lack of Canadian RMA for 2 SSDs. Had to go back and forth with them and trying to convince Amazon and the Amazon seller to replace the defective drives. Not buying any more Samsung memory products due to their essential non existent warranty in Canada

Buy through Memory Express if you've got a store nearby, just need to keep the receipt for the warranty period. They have a price matching policy for items that have the same SKU as well.

MemEx is an authorized dealer so they'll take it back and send it back to Samsung for warranty work if you buy from them.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#82

Post by londons_explore »

kube-system wrote: post #78
choilive wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - my house (was) full of Samsung appliances - Stove, Fridge, Microwave, Washer, Dryer. All garbage. They are all falling apart now or became became uneconomically repairable within 5 years. Every single appliance repair businesses I called flat out wouldn't touch the fridge for example.. Apparently they don't provide service information or parts to 3rd parties (at least for the fridge). I have moved onto a differ…

I also have had the same experience with my Samsung appliances. I paid top dollar for a nice looking set of laundry machines only to find out that they have garbage components inside of them that are bad by design. I had a squeaking drier fixed under warranty, only to have the same issue reoccur multiple times, because the rollers are just junk. It needs a new set like clockwork every year and a half or so, I have th…

> yet, the body of the unit is rusting out

Happened to my ~2016 Samsung. Turns out a hose clamp wasn't properly installed and water was dripping onto the steel floorpan and rusting everything nearby.

Fixed it and all rusting halted.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#83

Post by j7ake »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #58
apapapa wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In their defense, I never seen an airline company caring about their customers... Otherwise they wouldn't be late 25% of the time.

Not necessarily so. A couple weeks ago Oman Air cancelled the return leg of a long distance flight due to a change in schedule. They offered to reroute me with the Qataris via Doha. I preferred to cancel the (in principle non-refundable) flight and make different arrangements. The money,~2'500$, was credited to my card 4 days later. Including fees paid for preferred seats. It's a shame that they stopped service to my…

My experience with United emirates was similar. Extremely generous refund policies and fast action.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#84

Post by hamandcheese »

guardiangod wrote: post #36

I just want to give a shoutout to BC's Civil Resolution Tribunal. They take their job seriously, and make it as easy as possible for plaintiff to submit a complaint. I once had the misfortune of generating a batch of defective enterprise-grade SSD from a S company. That S company requires all RMA to go through the sales channel you bought the SSD from, but the sales company we used was out of business. S has refused…

Can we please name the company rather than make people guess?

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#85

Post by dannyw »

julianlam wrote: post #8
lokar wrote: post #3

The penalty for arguing they are not responsible for the “magic chatbot” telling lies to customers should be much more severe.

It would've been if it were a lawsuit, but this was a tribunal hearing and recompense is limited to damages, that is, the amount the claimant was out of pocket. I'd love to stick it to Air Canada too, but Canada is (hopefully) less litigious than the US.

You should have a little deterrent for “remarkable” cases like this. Say, double damages capped at $300.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#86

Post by Scoundreller »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #32
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #13

Yo what was air Canada thinking here... 1 week after the flight, and he even provided the death certificate? How'd anyone let this go to 'court' (I'm not Canadian, it's a tribunal idk what that is) for $600. And I'm guessing it's Canadian so it's more like $400 US. What kind of point were they trying to prove here. I legitimately think you could talk amazon support into giving you that over a broken product.

The civil resolution tribunal is kind of a hybrid small claims court and arbitrator. It was originally started about a decade ago with limited scope over condo/HOA disputes and small claims, but has been expanded. They have legal authority, but you can always appeal to the provincial courts (which almost never works out, I think they agree with CRT decisions in 95% of cases) Air Canada baffles me. Their front line em…

Same here. Came across something that was broken on a plane that wasn’t serious in any way and I wasn’t even mad about. But I don’t bother going through “feedback” or “comment” because I figure they never action on those.

So I submit my “complaint”.

A few months later, I get a response clearly showing that they didn’t read what I wrote, and almost certainly didn’t put in any plan to fix it; but they gave me a $400 credit.

I wasn’t even angry in my “complaint”. Maybe I need to be nicer in my actual complaints in general in the future.

Thought it was a scam when I got the response but I’ll take it.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#87

Post by CogitoCogito »

EZ-E wrote: post #74
janalsncm wrote: post #30

Good. Company outsources customer “service” to a completely unreliable piece of software, which goes to show how much they care about their customers. And then they argue in court that customers shouldn’t even trust their own software! So essentially they have increased profits by cutting customer service jobs, replaced humans with a stochastic parrot, and now don’t want to be responsible for the drawbacks of this de…

Most likely they will just add to the chat bot answers a "Please make sure to double check our policy at $URL - Only our policy applies".

I really hope that wouldn’t get them out of it. In that case, Air Canada would still be misrepresenting their policies. Misrepresenting Air Canada policies to induce a purchase of a ticket may not legally be fraud, but it certainly feels like it should be. It’s also hard for me to see how that argument would square with this reasoning from the article:

> "While Air Canada argues Mr. Moffatt could find the correct information on another part of its website, it does not explain why the webpage titled 'Bereavement travel' was inherently more trustworthy than its chatbot. It also does not explain why customers should have to double-check information found in one part of its website on another part of its website," he wrote.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#88

Post by johnwalkr »

seattle_spring wrote: post #73
johnwalkr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of living is often not lower in Canada. Average housing cost is now significantly higher in Canada and for those Canadians with an easy path to move to the US (like SW developer, engineer or doctor), the numbers I am recently seeing are salary of 2-3x in the US, housing cost 0.5 to 0.7x, and other cost of living a bit less.

Where are comparable locations half as expensive in the US? I agree that Canadian salaries trend much lower.

"Comparable locations" is very subjective, but Vancouver vs Denver is one I've heard of that seemed convincing to me. Then again, I've never been to Denver.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#89

Post by CogitoCogito »

cperciva wrote: post #47
MichaelZuo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were they ever practically compensated in the end?

Yes, the government gave airlines a bailout conditional on them issuing refunds.

I don’t know anything about the details of that bailout, but I feel the only reasonable and fair approach would be to (1) require that customers were refunded unconditionally and the (2) be forced to pay statutory damages. Then _if_ Air Canada couldn’t do that without a bailout, the government should have bailed them out while taking equity for the value of the bailout.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#90

Post by csomar »

rowyourboat wrote: post #75
CaptainZapp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily so. A couple weeks ago Oman Air cancelled the return leg of a long distance flight due to a change in schedule. They offered to reroute me with the Qataris via Doha. I preferred to cancel the (in principle non-refundable) flight and make different arrangements. The money,~2'500$, was credited to my card 4 days later. Including fees paid for preferred seats. It's a shame that they stopped service to my…

Those are your basic rights: You entered into a contract with the airline, and the airline failed to deliver. Of course you get your money back if the alternative solution is not satisfactory - whether or not the ticket was refundable doesn't even enter into it, as it was the airline that failed to deliver in the first place. That's not stellar service, that's just fulfilling their legal obligations.

I am not sure which airline represent your average experience; but in my experience, almost all airlines will fight to "your death" not to give you anything back. In the times they do (especially European), it's because there is a law that requires them to.

What happened to the OP is, therefore, unusual.

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