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I've been waiting over a month for Anthropic to respond to my billing issue

nickvecchioni.github.io

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Re: I've been waiting over a month for Anthropic to respond to my billing issue

#131

Post by stavros »

ValentineC wrote: post #129
stavros wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a few customers like that. They sign up, forget about it, then they see it on their statement and issue a chargeback. Not only do they get their $20 back (that they very willingly signed up for), but I have to pay another $35 to Stripe for the privilege of having a forgetful customer who couldn't even be bothered to email me for a refund.

> I have to pay another $35 to Stripe for the privilege of having a forgetful customer who couldn't even be bothered to email me for a refund. I've seen some businesses send a pre-billing email telling customers that they'll be charged on a certain date, so that customers have time to cancel if they want. Cloudflare does that for domain renewals, sending out emails 30 and 60 days before. Of course, there are also som…

Mine is a one-off payment :( They just forget they paid for it, plus the company name isn't the same as the app name, so they just go "welp, someone must be stealing from me!" and request a chargeback.

Re: I've been waiting over a month for Anthropic to respond to my billing issue

#132

Post by Theodores »

ttoinou wrote: post #77
CharlieDigital wrote: post #57

> Anthropic is an AI company that builds one of the most capable AI assistants in the world. Their support system is a Fin AI chatbot that can’t actually help you. This really cuts to the reality of AI hype: no, agents are not nearly as capable as OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. need you (or rather your C-suite, itching to fire you) to believe. They really, really need you to believe the hype. How can you tell? Cases like th…

What if they built their company with poor support, so they don’t have to hold up to any standard ? But others companies have historically good reputation for good customer support, and maybe AI can help them automate easily 80% of easiest requests

Clearly they have sales and other teams as the important people within the company, with customer services being down the pecking order.

They don't need AI to automate their customer service requests, they just need decent forms with a standard issue helpdesk system. It takes some work to get right, but anyone with experience of building customer support services will be able to do that, to put most of the customer service team out of work!!!

The problem is that the Law of The Instrument applies:

It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

So we have some AI 'hammer' going on here, and it is the wrong tool.

At a guess, 80% of the customer service requests are going to be billing related, with some need to provide refunds or free credits. Get the form right so it shows the right boxes and these 'easy wins' can show up as a big list that a customer service person has to glance over before hitting the 'refund everyone' button. You need the human there to take responsibility, plus they can work on the 20% of other tickets, once they have spent ten minutes clearing down the refunds/extra credits requests.

Google don't sell much to end customers, therefore no support. If I search Google for how to remove fonts from my computer that are not latin, and their AI bot gives me an answer that zaps my whole computer, I can't complain and ask for a refund because I never paid anything in the first place. Google do not need to speak to a single customer.

Meanwhile, Arsthropic have a commercial product with billing. They prefer not to do customer service, but they are stupid. Every contact with customers and friendly customer service is an opportunity to sell more to customers or to not have them hate you. This is why companies should do customer service, however, they also need to put CS at the heart of the org chart and acknowledge that a well run CS department raises revenue and is not a cost.

Re: I've been waiting over a month for Anthropic to respond to my billing issue

#133

Post by malfist »

nitwit005 wrote: post #92
MostlyStable wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to remember that a chargeback should be considered the nuclear option, and, when using it, one should be comfortable with the possibility that one might never do business with this company again, since it could result in being blacklisted (even if one is, in fact, in the right). I'm not saying not to do it, but one should keep in mind the potential repercussions.

This is, yes you were robbed, but what if you want to partner with the bandit later? They'll just rob you in your future interactions too.

But what if the robber becomes a monopoly and you have to partner with them in the future? Who's gonna save you? Government?

Re: I've been waiting over a month for Anthropic to respond to my billing issue

#134

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

stavros wrote: post #131
ValentineC wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to pay another $35 to Stripe for the privilege of having a forgetful customer who couldn't even be bothered to email me for a refund. I've seen some businesses send a pre-billing email telling customers that they'll be charged on a certain date, so that customers have time to cancel if they want. Cloudflare does that for domain renewals, sending out emails 30 and 60 days before. Of course, there are also som…

Mine is a one-off payment :( They just forget they paid for it, plus the company name isn't the same as the app name, so they just go "welp, someone must be stealing from me!" and request a chargeback.

Anecdotally I helped a client entirely eliminate their chargeback rate by creating a new subsidiary named directly after their product, so that the billing line item was obviously the product. They also saw a slight increase in inbound sales, which surprised me.

Re: I've been waiting over a month for Anthropic to respond to my billing issue

#135

Post by ryandrake »

ssl-3 wrote: post #84
MostlyStable wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to remember that a chargeback should be considered the nuclear option, and, when using it, one should be comfortable with the possibility that one might never do business with this company again, since it could result in being blacklisted (even if one is, in fact, in the right). I'm not saying not to do it, but one should keep in mind the potential repercussions.

It's also important to remember that chargebacks aren't under our control. As cardholders, we can't issue them directly. All we can do is submit a dispute to the bank. The bank will then investigate (however they do that), and eventually act (in whatever way they choose -- which may include a chargeback). It may seem pedantic, but it's an important detail. Chargebacks are ugly. They constitute red flags on merchant a…

The fact that the record store could have easily handled your issue, but chose not to (and chose to not empower any of their employees to) until a bank got involved, should give a clue about what kind of company they actually were.

Re: I've been waiting over a month for Anthropic to respond to my billing issue

#136

Post by stavros »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #134
stavros wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine is a one-off payment :( They just forget they paid for it, plus the company name isn't the same as the app name, so they just go "welp, someone must be stealing from me!" and request a chargeback.

Anecdotally I helped a client entirely eliminate their chargeback rate by creating a new subsidiary named directly after their product, so that the billing line item was obviously the product. They also saw a slight increase in inbound sales, which surprised me.

That's a great idea, but it's only helpful above a certain sales volume, which I don't really have. It's just disappointing when the charge back happens, but the economics of the business don't really warrant doing anything about it.

Re: I've been waiting over a month for Anthropic to respond to my billing issue

#137

Post by alpaca128 »

yadaeno wrote: post #56
MostlyStable wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to remember that a chargeback should be considered the nuclear option, and, when using it, one should be comfortable with the possibility that one might never do business with this company again, since it could result in being blacklisted (even if one is, in fact, in the right). I'm not saying not to do it, but one should keep in mind the potential repercussions.

If a business attempts to steal from me I instantly charge back and the onus is on them to prove that I owe them money. I do this all the time and have never been blacklisted.

Some companies like Activision clearly state in their terms that chargeback means you will be permanently banned, no exceptions. You'll lose your account and access to all digital "purchases" forever.

They don't need to prove anything to stop doing business with you.

Re: I've been waiting over a month for Anthropic to respond to my billing issue

#138

Post by ssl-3 »

ryandrake wrote: post #135
ssl-3 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also important to remember that chargebacks aren't under our control. As cardholders, we can't issue them directly. All we can do is submit a dispute to the bank. The bank will then investigate (however they do that), and eventually act (in whatever way they choose -- which may include a chargeback). It may seem pedantic, but it's an important detail. Chargebacks are ugly. They constitute red flags on merchant a…

The fact that the record store could have easily handled your issue, but chose not to (and chose to not empower any of their employees to) until a bank got involved, should give a clue about what kind of company they actually were.

Yeah, good point.

I'll just forget about the fact that I'd spent thousands of dollars there over the course of decades, and they knew what I liked and would order inventory hoping that I'd buy it, and hold onto some of the tchotchke when it was time to take down some release date posters and put up new, just in case I wanted to take some, and I still kept giving them money until they eventually closed their doors forever because the owner was old and the building got ruined in a flood.

You're right. None of that was important. I'll just focus on that one incident when the kid at the counter of a record store couldn't figure out a financial problem on their own. That's all I need to know about the place. Those fuckin' scumbags!

Thank you very much. Your insight is very rewarding to me.

Re: I've been waiting over a month for Anthropic to respond to my billing issue

#139

Post by mootothemax »

stavros wrote: post #131
ValentineC wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to pay another $35 to Stripe for the privilege of having a forgetful customer who couldn't even be bothered to email me for a refund. I've seen some businesses send a pre-billing email telling customers that they'll be charged on a certain date, so that customers have time to cancel if they want. Cloudflare does that for domain renewals, sending out emails 30 and 60 days before. Of course, there are also som…

Mine is a one-off payment :( They just forget they paid for it, plus the company name isn't the same as the app name, so they just go "welp, someone must be stealing from me!" and request a chargeback.

Completely by accident, I have a setup that sends a pdf invoice to customers a couple of days after the sale. I’m pretty sure it’s a stripe option I must’ve misclicked.

Anyway- turns out that on the rare occasion someone’s had an issue, this gives them a really easy mechanism to write to me and tell me about it. They let off their steam in the email and then we make things good together. (Yet another reason why I always oppose noreply email addresses)

I still don’t know what or where the setting is, mind.

Re: I've been waiting over a month for Anthropic to respond to my billing issue

#140

Post by ValentineC »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #134
stavros wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine is a one-off payment :( They just forget they paid for it, plus the company name isn't the same as the app name, so they just go "welp, someone must be stealing from me!" and request a chargeback.

Anecdotally I helped a client entirely eliminate their chargeback rate by creating a new subsidiary named directly after their product, so that the billing line item was obviously the product. They also saw a slight increase in inbound sales, which surprised me.

Were you dealing with some other payment processor or bank that didn't allow custom statement descriptors? Stripe and PayPal let me write whatever I want there.
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