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That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose

theatlantic.com

21–30 of 69 posts

Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose

#21
post #17

Lawsuit is expensive. But, would the path to the out door have been faster if she had shown the commitment which comes with laywer time? Mediation was how corporates tried to get out, but it should demand good faith. An awful lot of what happened to her wouldn't pass the good faith bar. At the end, she'd be offered a damn sight more than competitive finance terms as a future customer. On the steps of the courthouse,…

AI should be capable of writing to their legal team. It's not like a faulty car is a unique scenario.

Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose

#22
post #4

I once had a car rental company hang up on me multiple times while trying to resolve multiple screw ups on their end. It took 6 hours to return their wreck to them at the beginning of a trip. I was polite until the last call. Screaming at the last (innocent) rep about the repeated hang ups was the only way to get them to not hang up and actually address the issue. I was very tempted to just issue a chargeback and aba…

> apparently it’s now standard practice for rental car companies to falsely accuse customers of stealing their cars.

Just take photos and evidence and sue them? That's gotta be lots of free money for you

Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose

#23
post #4

I once had a car rental company hang up on me multiple times while trying to resolve multiple screw ups on their end. It took 6 hours to return their wreck to them at the beginning of a trip. I was polite until the last call. Screaming at the last (innocent) rep about the repeated hang ups was the only way to get them to not hang up and actually address the issue. I was very tempted to just issue a chargeback and aba…

> apparently it’s now standard practice for rental car companies to falsely accuse customers of stealing their cars. Just take photos and evidence and sue them? That's gotta be lots of free money for you

If you succeed with the chargeback and are made whole then there's nothing else for you to do. It's up to them to sue you but they won't since it would risk bringing evidence of their bad faith actions in front of a judge and backfire.

Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose

#24
I once shouted into the phone while on a call with a helpline person. They screwed me over with an invoice that looked like a contract extension (domain, hosting), but turned out was an invoice for a separate, second contract for services I don’t need, nor I didn’t order (antivirus for an e-mail, a paid SSL certificate). A pretty blatant phishing-alike fraud. Later I found it’s their MO.

When the person told me that he understands my disappointment but he can’t do anything, and I need to call another number within the company and, ideally, send them a letter via snail mail - I snapped. I shouted that I’m not calling anyone else and it that is their job to fix it, not mine, and I don’t care which department does what in their company, it’s the helpline person to know this and do all the steps necessary to help me get the money back. The guy asked me to calm down and I hung up.

Not my proudest moment, but you know what? The same day I got mail from them with apologies. They nullified the new contract and moved the money to the correct account.

Shame that the corporate greed degrades people to these levels of pity, and it’s not a lesson I’d like to teach my kids, but sadly: in many cases being the nice guy gets you nowhere.

Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose

#25

We’re going to have hold assist soon, so iOS 26 is going to take the fight to them.

Pretty sure this will be controllable by carrier profiles and mysteriously disabled/delayed for years on all major carriers. After all, they also employ the same tactics.

Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose

#26
post #17

Lawsuit is expensive. But, would the path to the out door have been faster if she had shown the commitment which comes with laywer time? Mediation was how corporates tried to get out, but it should demand good faith. An awful lot of what happened to her wouldn't pass the good faith bar. At the end, she'd be offered a damn sight more than competitive finance terms as a future customer. On the steps of the courthouse,…

AI should be capable of writing to their legal team. It's not like a faulty car is a unique scenario.

The prior art here is claims against airlines. I am unsure how that has progressed in the last 2-3 years, somebody was offering "legal your refund via my machine" as a service.

Or something similar. Speed tickets?

Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose

#27

I once shouted into the phone while on a call with a helpline person. They screwed me over with an invoice that looked like a contract extension (domain, hosting), but turned out was an invoice for a separate, second contract for services I don’t need, nor I didn’t order (antivirus for an e-mail, a paid SSL certificate). A pretty blatant phishing-alike fraud. Later I found it’s their MO. When the person told me that…

Was it GoDaddy?

Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose

#28
post #17

Lawsuit is expensive. But, would the path to the out door have been faster if she had shown the commitment which comes with laywer time? Mediation was how corporates tried to get out, but it should demand good faith. An awful lot of what happened to her wouldn't pass the good faith bar. At the end, she'd be offered a damn sight more than competitive finance terms as a future customer. On the steps of the courthouse,…

AI should be capable of writing to their legal team. It's not like a faulty car is a unique scenario.

> AI should be capable of writing to their legal team.

Plot twist, their "legal team" (not the real one but the one that you can reach) is already wall to wall LLMs and no one gives a crap.

Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose

#29
The premise of "fuck it" as put forth by the author, when the victim ends up paying that erroneous bill due to the thousands of litres of "sludge" poured out by the offending organisation can no doubt be identified as the root cause of rep's general attitude towards their customers and direct managerial hierarchy.

Awful wages, toxic work environments, long, thankless hours and disparaging company culture - all arguably by design - is contributing to this sludge that everyone reading this comment often encounters.

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