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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

#181

Post by hansvm »

dfadsadsf wrote: post #106
bsder wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't Meta getting hit with punitive damages for this crap? If Meta needed to cough up a million dollars to the state of California every time they lost one of these, they'd set up a proper customer service line tout suite. I know that small claims is limited in what it can award to the plaintiff. However, I don't think that applies to punitive damages against the defendant.

My personal take is that state has to mandate that systemic companies (>100M users or X $B in revenues) have to have high quality customer service at cost. It probably cost Meta $500-$2000 to adjucate hacked account case so it's unreasonable to ask company to do it for free (hackers/bots can also file those requests). I should be able to pay Meta $2000 to recover account if my business depends on it - even if it mean…

> go somewhere in person to show my ID

My experience is that you can get all your Google issues resolved if you show up to Mountain View in person and ask politely. Might a similar strategy work for Meta?

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

#182

Post by hansvm »

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…

I had a fun one a few months ago (internet or bank or some other normal culprit for requiring customer service). Mildly paraphrasing:

LLM> Hi, thank you for reaching out. My name is , how may I help you?

ME>

LLM> That's easy. I just need .

ME>

LLM> I'm sorry, I can't continue without .

ME>

...repeated that copy-pasta loop 3x in the off chance that a human somehow made that blunder

ME> Your responses are peculiar. Are you ChatGPT?

LLM> Hold on one moment while I find an agent to help you with your request.

...seemingly normal customer service interaction thereafter (maybe just resetting the prompt? IDK; they seemed human)

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

#183

Post by farrarstan »

thegrimmest wrote: post #123
int_19h wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, ensuring fair trading practices is precisely the area where government needs to be most actively involved in economic matters. What is the downside of clamping down on borderline fraud, exactly?

What do you mean "fair"? To me the idea of free/consensual exchange (backed by court-mediated disputes and bankruptcy protection) most resembles "fair". If you like a service, use it. If you don't, don't. The (quite small) risk of falling through the cracks and ending up hard stuck is just something one risk-accepts when signing up to a service and maintaining important data there. Your risk management is entirely yo…

[dead]

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

#184

Post by justsid »

lsllc wrote: post #115
sharkweek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 representativ…

Same here, but now it seems no-one implements 0 in automated phone systems anymore!

Hitting a combination of #, * and 0 seems to still do the trick for most places. That and excessive swearing at the robot.

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

#185

Post by mrWiz »

lsllc wrote: post #115
sharkweek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 representativ…

Same here, but now it seems no-one implements 0 in automated phone systems anymore!

I just say “representative” for every spoken request they make and that’s never let me down.

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

#186

Post by the_sleaze_ »

It isn't meta's fault the system is set up to incentivize this behavior, and it isn't wrong of them to do what is in their best interest.

Now that we've discovered the loophole just legislate it closed.

1. make the loser pay court fees or arbitration fines

2a. the court fees grow by some percentage with each loss over the last year. lose 1, pay 1x; lose 100 pay 10x etc

2b. the court fees are proportional to the losers net worth or capital

I like proportional fines the best since things like speeding or parking tickets can be ruinous to one car while the next won't even spare a thought for the cost of it. We should all feel the weight of the law equally.

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

#187

Post by doctor_eval »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #174
doctor_eval wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t that just mean that the company is externalising its costs and privatising the profits? Frankly, I think this is the problem that needs to be solved.

> Doesn’t that just mean that the company is externalising its costs and privatising the profits? On its own, no. Rasberry Pi not providing phone support isn't externalising any costs.

TFA is explicitly about Facebook externalising its support costs to small claims courts. If RPI was accused of the same thing, I'd feel the same way.

Anyway, as I understand it, RPI externalises support costs to retailers. I can certainly call my RPI supplier and talk to someone. Externalising commercially is totally fine, externalising to the public is up there with pollution, perhaps a kind of tragedy of the commons.

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

#188

Post by hanniabu »

doctor_eval wrote: post #142
josephg wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta might make a lot of money, but the profit per user is probably quite low, and they make up for that by having billions of users. Customer support scales with the number of users, not the profit overall. I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost (on their end) of a single customer support call to meta makes you a net financial loss for them. And how many customer support reps would they need to handle support for billi…

Doesn’t that just mean that the company is externalising its costs and privatising the profits? Frankly, I think this is the problem that needs to be solved.

That's the American way

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

#189

Post by hanniabu »

exe34 wrote: post #85
mathgradthrow wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the idea is that you need to buy something to figure out if it works most of the time. What you are saying us that your preferred society is one in which you are not allowed to determine if something works before you buy it.

no, I'm saying I believe in the free market. buy a product that meets your requirements. if you find it doesn't, return it for a refund. do a chargeback if they won't do a refund. you are entitled to a refund within 14 days. https://www.termsfeed.com/blog/return-refund-laws-eu/#:~:tex...

Can't believe there's still people to think the free market actually exists

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

#190

Post by doctor_eval »

thegrimmest wrote: post #140
doctor_eval wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People won't work if they are not able to sustain themselves (calorically) on the pay. A better alternative is simply to require companies to pay a living wage. The outcome is better, because you don’t lose the safety net for those who still need it.

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