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Accountability sinks

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Re: Accountability sinks

#261

Post by bmicraft »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #218
aziaziazi wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it’s still fine to have a customer service only answering in the official language. The chance are high that a random German speaks english so you’ll probably be good but if that’s not the case, blaming the company seems unfair to me.

>The chance are high that a random German speaks english so you’ll probably be good What does high mean in this context? I experienced what I would call the inverse Danish maneuver, the German obviously understand English because they often answered our English questions correctly - In German. In Denmark if a Dane understands what you said in Danish but you have a definite accent they will often answer your question…

They might have been rude, but that's besides the point. Even if they could speak English you shouldn't expect them to be comfortable doing so. That actually seems pretty rude in itself to me.

Re: Accountability sinks

#262

Post by rqtwteye »

Dilettante_ wrote: post #193
RandomLensman wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The German mail rail and track operator (Deutsche Bahn) isn't private but 100% state owned (and control sits with the federal government). They wanted to privatize it a couple of decades ago but abandoned it. There is still some hybridization between supposedly it being a business and also a public service left in the law, though.

The Deutsche Bahn AG is in fact a private Aktiengesellschaft(which is to say a stock company) with the german gov't owning 100% of the shares. I'd very much argue that it is run mostly like a private enterprise and only occasionally compelled by the government to act like a public service.

I would say Deutsche Bahn has managed to combine the disadvantages of public services with the disadvantages of private companies into one coherently terrible package.

Re: Accountability sinks

#263

Post by Tijdreiziger »

graemep wrote: post #229
eloisius wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience in Germany about a year ago. Train stations are mostly self-service now. The ticket kiosk ate my €50 and promptly rebooted. It didn’t print a receipt or anything. The only human I could find was a security guard. He told me to call the number on a sticker on the machine. The person who answered couldn’t speak English. My €50 is out there somewhere but it would cost me more than that to trac…

I had something similar happen to be on the tube in london. My ticket got demagnetised (combined intercity rail with travel card are/were still magnetic stripe tickets) and there were not staff at the station so I could not get the barrier open to leave.

There are supposed to be help points where you can call staff.

https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/london-undergroun...

Re: Accountability sinks

#264

Post by chgs »

RobotToaster wrote: post #233
bigiain wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brings to mind old wisdom: "A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a Management Decision." IBM presentation, 1979

See also: “To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.” —Paul Ehrlich

To err requires a computer

To really foul things up requires scalability

Re: Accountability sinks

#265

Post by heylook »

carlosjobim wrote: post #226
jazzypants wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, yet these companies won their lawsuits, and no wide scale voter fraud was ever found. So, your point is entirely irrelevant.

Winning or loosing a lawsuit doesn't say much about the truth of any matter. Especially when it's a civil suit between corporations, or a criminal suit in a jurisdiction that has plea deals.

One party agreed to pay the other party close to a billion dollars to stop the lawsuit from continuing. Why did they do that?

Re: Accountability sinks

#266

Post by concerndc1tizen »

atoav wrote: post #138
nh2 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is somewhat rubbish. I arrived at the train station in the night after 6 hours train journey. German Railways app shows there will be my final leg train in 45 minutes. I wait in the cold at night, sitting in the station building because it's warmer there. 5 minutes before departure I go on the platform. The local display shows no train, even though the all still shows it. I waited for nothing. Syncing the app…

And the root of all that? Privatization.

Exactly.

Being a bus driver used to be a decent job for semi-retired construction workers, and such.

But then privatization hit, and over the last 20 years, there is no niceness left. They're even trained to disregard customers, and penalized otherwise. It's insanely inhumane.

And the causal effect is very clear, there can be no doubt about it. It's not the bus driver's fault.

Re: Accountability sinks

#267

Post by eloisius »

jhrmnn wrote: post #149
eloisius wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience in Germany about a year ago. Train stations are mostly self-service now. The ticket kiosk ate my €50 and promptly rebooted. It didn’t print a receipt or anything. The only human I could find was a security guard. He told me to call the number on a sticker on the machine. The person who answered couldn’t speak English. My €50 is out there somewhere but it would cost me more than that to trac…

> The person who answered couldn’t speak English. It sounds like this was the main point of failure. I’m not sure it can be considered an error in the system. I’d consider the risk inherent in traveling in a country without knowing its language.

If I had been buying a ticket at a window from a human, there's no way I'd have handed over 50 EUR without someone understanding me. If fluency in the local language to the level that you can have a phone conversation (which is many times more difficult than face-to-face) is a prerequisite for visiting a country, you are either an impressive polyglot, or don't travel enough.

Re: Accountability sinks

#268

Post by JumpCrisscross »

lmm wrote: post #122
rougka wrote: post #64

I remember experiencing this in one of the German airports/airlines and having that exact thought. It was this fully automated airport, where the checkin is self serviced and you only interact with computers. Eventually, when I inserted my boarding pass I had a printed piece of paper back that said that they had to change my seat from aisle to midseat I then tried to find someone to talk to the entire way, but comput…

At this point everyone needs to get in the habit of using small claims court. You can often do it online in a few minutes these days. Make a good faith effort to get your problem addressed, and record the fact that you've done so to use in your hearing if it gets that far. Then just file the claim. Generally they fold immediately, and this way you incentivize actual customer service in the only language they understa…

Not every state allows you to file small claims against people outside the state, FYI.

Re: Accountability sinks

#269

Post by walleeee »

aeturnum wrote: post #248
walleeee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this sort of analysis is valid and fruitful in a very general sense. Software as a recently adopted vehicle in a long tradition of liability displacement / diffusion of responsibility / agency modification

Yah - it lies outside of the narrowly technical (though technical systems come up a lot) and part of what I would talk about would have been: how much is this a trick and how much of this is real? Like, is software doing slight of hand and really Uber (or whoever) should be taxed on an externality / risk? Or does this electronic machine of software genuinely create a new arrangement of responsibility? My unhelpful un…

My intuition is similar; software can distribute responsibility in ways no previous vehicle could, by virtue of speed, scale, and mode of interaction (in a McLuhan-ish "medium as message" sense). But it's still an evolution of long pre-existing social dynamics, not (or relatively rarely) an absolute novelty. Scamming is an ancient art which we did not invent, I suspect, but rather discovered ourselves doing already. Only painstakingly (and still only partially) have we dragged the concept into the light of consciousness.

I feel the same way about artificial intelligence: it's not new, it's all around us, digital computation merely crystallizes the concept. But shiny objects should not distract us from the much more general phenomenon.

Re: Accountability sinks

#270

Post by rahimnathwani »

sega_sai wrote: post #242
rahimnathwani wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the process of getting the money is reasonably straightforward. Not always. The airlines often lie.

At least in my experience, I asked for compensation 3 times and got the money in every case (with different companies: American Airlines, United and Lufthansa). But I agree the system could be improved further.

I've asked for compensation twice (Swiss and Air Canada) and gotten it once (Air Canada). Even the successful case wasn't resolved without many many emails.
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