Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 314 posts

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

#51

Post by nradov »

kube-system wrote: post #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, t…

How has this been proven wrong? Meta is enormously profitable despite this tiny number of small claims lawsuits. If anything they have proven that customer service is a waste of money.

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

#52

Post by [deleted] »

ceejayoz wrote: post #46
seydor wrote: post #32

In case someone from Meta is reading this, sharing posts through facebook JS API is broken since yesterday, it redirects to https://www.facebook.com/share_channel/

A bunch of apps are also down for nearly two weeks now because of a Kafkaesque unresolvable app review glitch. https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/8259332257... I'm told by an internal contact there's a "SEV ticket", but who knows? No public acknowledgement or updates.

[deleted]

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

#53

Post by sharkweek »

kube-system wrote: post #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, t…

Agreed - I've almost never called [Insert Service Provider Here] and had one of their automated responses be helpful in any meaningful way. I'm calling because I have what seems like an exception to deal with.

I learned pretty quickly as a young man that the fastest way to get my problems solved was to hit 0 on my phone as many times as it took to get that sweet, sweet "Okay, I'll transfer you to a live representative" response.

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

#54

Post by gbnvc »

kube-system wrote: post #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, t…

[dead]

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

#55

Post by krisoft »

ceejayoz wrote: post #29
jeremyjh wrote: post #17

I don’t know if it is still the case, but at one time you had to pay something like $50 to talk to a 3rd party customer service agent for the government agency that issues US Passports. The reason was because they hadn’t had a funding increase (and couldn’t legally raise prices) in 30 years and had to choose between making passports and answering questions about when the passports will be made. So they decided to mak…

I wish I could put down a $10k "yes, I'm sure this is a tech issue, not user error" deposit that'd be refunded if a senior-level support person agrees and escalates to internal teams.

And what would you do when they automate the "senior-level support person agreeing" part with a script which just rejects all (or almost all) queries incoming and the corporation pockets the money?

Much simpler to do, and doesn't cost them anything. In fact you just gave them 10k reasons to do that.

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

#56

Post by kube-system »

theGnuMe wrote: post #44
atum47 wrote: post #28

Instagram is full of scam ads. If you report them, they answer you telling that they aren't violating the terms so there's nothing they can do about it. Scammers be selling fake starlink equipment and plans left and right. They are clever about it, they clone the website and offer a realistic good deal (not too good that would make you doubt it).

Same thing happens on Google.. The worst are the companies/people imitating US government services like post office mail holds and passports. Search google for "us passport" and check out the sponsored links "owners" of the ad.. they look like phishing scams! We need laws outlawing the misrepresentation of legitimate government services. Until then ad-block is the only solution if Google won't act appropriately. I ca…

> We need laws outlawing the misrepresentation of legitimate government services.

We have some, which should probably be broadened:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/701

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1017

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/712

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/709

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

#57

Post by nradov »

photonthug wrote: post #40
wmf wrote: post #4

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

Just to actually say what is probably obvious.. this means that corporations have found a way to outsource the costs of providing customer support to the tax paying general public, including those who are not even using their services and never heard of the company. Ag’s should not be requesting that this is fixed, but requiring it in no uncertain terms, and giving out massive penalties for every single time it’s all…

AGs aren't dictators. They have no direct power to levy penalties. Which specific law do you think Meta is breaking here? Please to provide an exact citation.

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

#58

Post by ceejayoz »

krisoft wrote: post #55
ceejayoz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could put down a $10k "yes, I'm sure this is a tech issue, not user error" deposit that'd be refunded if a senior-level support person agrees and escalates to internal teams.

And what would you do when they automate the "senior-level support person agreeing" part with a script which just rejects all (or almost all) queries incoming and the corporation pockets the money? Much simpler to do, and doesn't cost them anything. In fact you just gave them 10k reasons to do that.

People would rapidly stop using it. This is obviously not a tactic I'd employ trying to resolve an issue with some shady overseas cryptocurrency exchange. It's a "I promise I'm not some fuckwit wasting your time" deposit.

(You could also have the next step be arbitration if I disagree with the determination.)

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

#59

Post by exe34 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #31

Consumer rights have taken such a beating in the internet age. If you look at pre-internet product categories there are all kind of protections on the books like minimum warranty lengths, lemon laws, etc. Meanwhile, with software products - even very expensive ones - you're at the mercy of the vendor and their ToS. The fact that you can't even get refunds (e.g. within 15 days or something) for most software is ridicu…

don't buy them!

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

#60

Post by ceejayoz »

nradov wrote: post #57
photonthug wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to actually say what is probably obvious.. this means that corporations have found a way to outsource the costs of providing customer support to the tax paying general public, including those who are not even using their services and never heard of the company. Ag’s should not be requesting that this is fixed, but requiring it in no uncertain terms, and giving out massive penalties for every single time it’s all…

AGs aren't dictators. They have no direct power to levy penalties. Which specific law do you think Meta is breaking here? Please to provide an exact citation.

> AGs aren't dictators. They have no direct power to levy penalties.

They can make life fairly miserable for you, though. (I'm sure there's various consumer protection laws they can leverage in these sorts of cases that vary from state to state.)

If the people they represent continue to feel unheard, you get things like the GDPR. "Everything we're doing is legal!" as a response to shitty behavior is a good way to get new law written.

Post reply on HN