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Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

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Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#2
> Hundreds of thousands of people also turn to their state Attorney General’s office as some state AGs have made requests on users’ behalf — on Reddit, this is known as the “AG method.” But attorneys general across the country have been so inundated with these requests they formally asked Meta to fix their customer service, too. “We refuse to operate as the customer service representatives of your company,” a coalition of 41 state AGs wrote in a letter to the company earlier this year.

Hundreds of thousands of people contacting the AG offices... over a particular site/app... customer service issues?

I would've guessed 1/1000th of that.

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#5
post #2

> Hundreds of thousands of people also turn to their state Attorney General’s office as some state AGs have made requests on users’ behalf — on Reddit, this is known as the “AG method.” But attorneys general across the country have been so inundated with these requests they formally asked Meta to fix their customer service, too. “We refuse to operate as the customer service representatives of your company,” a coaliti…

That's because any time people reach a terminus like this and ask social media for help, somebody always chimes in with "report to your state AG". I've seen the answer come up numerous times on reddit as the top voted solution for many different things. I'm guessing the hundreds of thousands is a combination of all states and requests over many years as well.

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#6
post #3

Sounds like dealing with these suits and various AsG is still cheaper than building a support organization.

Until hopefully this becomes more common and more people win suits like this. Then maybe Meta will finally fix their problems.

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#7
The idea that customer service can be 'automated away' is dangerous, and has been proven wrong again and again. And soon, LLMs will be used to attempt to solve this problem again, and they will fail again.

It is easy to look at the historical information in a ticketing system and make the conclusion that the vast majority of the issues can be solved by pointing the user to frequently-encountered solutions. However, the issues that are easily solved are also typically the least impactful. It is the long-tail of this problem that is difficult to solve, and is infinite in length; there will always be exceptions that automation cannot handle.

Completely neglecting these issues should be prohibited for consumer commercial services.

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#9
post #4

It's ridiculous that this is necessary but I salute people for using the legal system instead of just feeling helpless.

My parents had to resort to this to break out of their contract with AT&T when mobile service went to absolute shit following the 4g rollout. Repeated trips to the local store were met with them waving vaguely at the service map and refusing to do a site survey, calls to corporate were stonewalled. After 6 months of this, they called the AG. It was resolved within a week and AT&T let them out of the contract without penalties.

It is a damn shame that people have to go nuclear like this, but sometimes it is the only option.

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#10
post #8

I guess small claims court is one way to force a real person to respond. Seems like a class-action opportunity is lurking here for an enterprising/clever attorney

I wouldn't be surprised if they use AI to determine which small claim court cases are worth getting involved in VS getting a default judgment against them, so maybe not even there.
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