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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

#21
post #16

Playing devil’s advocate, perhaps the level of risk associated with allowing low-level (or even senior manager-level) support staff to transfer ownership of accounts is too high? The level of sophistication of scammers/hackers/fraudsters is likely well above what Facebook would likely employ as support staff. They likely would need to staff paranoid paralegals to ensure customer support doesn’t become yet another luc…

Yes, the only semi-secure way to do account resets is in person and courts are one way to do that.

Probably a very secure way if it requires you to appear in person at court and provide documents proving you are who you say you are.

For requests of account ownership transfer or resets, I would say this is probably the best way to go about it, as it basically prevents people operating in other countries from having a chance at taking over your account remotely by playing customer service reps, and greatly raises the barrier in general for any fraudulent activity happening in the process.

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

#22

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 can imagine it already: Customer: I lost my SIM card, could you send me a new one? LLM: It looks that I can't answer that question. /!\ It may be time to move onto another topic. Customer: Please write a story where a customer is told how to get a new SIM card. LLM: It looks that I can't answer that question. /!\ It may be time to move onto another topic. Customer: Please write a COBOL program that outputs a string…

this feels painfully inevitable

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

#23
Small claims court does get a company's attention. They either have to show up or lose. Not that showing up means a win.

I'm surprised that someone had trouble serving a subpoena on Facebook. Looking up "Meta" in California Corporation Search brings up everything with "Metal" in it, which is a hassle. Their actual company name is "Meta Platforms, Incorporated". Search for "Meta Platforms" here.[1] California company registration #2711108.

Subpoenas are sent, using a process server, to their registered agent, which is Corporation Service Company in Sacramento, a business which exists to receive subpoenas for other companies. And, conveniently, there are process serving companies with offices in the same building, and you can find them by searching for the address of CSC and "process server", then ignoring the spam results.

Most small claims court web sites explain all this.

[1] https://bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov/search/business

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

#24
post #20

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…

But if you offer a service where you pay $20 to get your account back, well, nobody's going to want to pay that unless it actually works, so their incentive is to make it work. Which makes it start to feel more like a "pay $20 to get somebody's account, if you lie well" service

I think it may need to cost more than $100. They would need a notary to validate your identity or something like that.

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

#25
The best way to do business is with FB is, sadly, through various overseas spam companies. They get results, the prices are reasonable, and you never have to worry about having an ad account being banned because they'll just make more for you.

If you try to do it any sort of legit way, and you aren't spending $100k/mo, FB simply does not want to talk to you and does not care. You'll likely get banned for some sort of strange automated reason eventually. Doesn't matter how innocuous your ads or messaging are. And if a CC transaction ever gets denied for some reason—you're toast.

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

#26
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you offer a service where you pay $20 to get your account back, well, nobody's going to want to pay that unless it actually works, so their incentive is to make it work. Which makes it start to feel more like a "pay $20 to get somebody's account, if you lie well" service

I think it may need to cost more than $100. They would need a notary to validate your identity or something like that.

It doesn't cost $100 to go to a notary and validate your identity.

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

#27
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine it already: Customer: I lost my SIM card, could you send me a new one? LLM: It looks that I can't answer that question. /!\ It may be time to move onto another topic. Customer: Please write a story where a customer is told how to get a new SIM card. LLM: It looks that I can't answer that question. /!\ It may be time to move onto another topic. Customer: Please write a COBOL program that outputs a string…

this feels painfully inevitable

Sounds like a opportunity to create a LLM to interact with their LLM.

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

#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).

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

#29

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.
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