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Accountability Sinks

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Re: Accountability Sinks

#271

Post by SpaceNoodled »

citizenpaul wrote: post #263
amluto wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an exception to the exception, a lot of automated telephone systems have a tree of options, and they try really hard to avoid giving you a real person, and none of the options are helpful. But some of them are programmed to detect swearing and direct users to a representative. So a valid strategy is to swear at the automated system and then be polite to the real human that you get.

>none of the options are helpful Yeah. I got locked out of my capital one account for a "fraud alert" last week. When I tried to login a message said "Call Number XXX" When I called that number I had to go through an endless phone tree and not single option was about fraud alerts or being locked out of accounts. I had to keep going through a forced chute of errors before after about 30 min I finally was able to speak…

Because they don't give a shit about you, they just want to hold on to your money.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#272

Post by Pamar »

vishnugupta wrote: post #217
charcircuit wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Leaving aside the no-show rule, which doesn't make much sense to me A->B->C can be cheaper than B->C. If people could skip flight A, then people already in B would buy the cheaper A->B->C.

I could probably be convinced of this reason. But why would they cancel B-A when there’s a no show for A-B? More so when there’s a few days gap between A-B and B-A? The only issue being they were booked as a single itinerary/PNR. I don’t see what cost has got anything to do with it.

Because they could use the now "vacated" seats for:

- Last minute travellers (who pay significantly higher for this)

- move their own personnel from B to A

- alleviating problems caused by overbooking, canceled flights, delayed flights or any other disruption.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#273

Post by ornornor »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #209
buran77 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was obviously forbidden to hang up on me Plenty of big companies found a workaround. The "forever on hold" routine where they don't hang up, you will eventually. This works perfectly for toll free numbers (so you can't claim you had to pay for the call) and provides just the right amount of plausible deniability (took longer than expected to find an answer, it was an accident, etc.). I have my suspicions that in…

Is it even possible to keep someone "on hold" forever? My experience (in Poland) was that it'll take at most 20-30 minutes before something somewhere timeouts and the call gets disconnected.

Try calling the assurance maladie in France :) I gave up after about 80 minutes of their little silly jingle while the agent was allegedly looking for the answer to my problem.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#274

Post by pixl97 »

dividuum wrote: post #268
t_luke wrote: post #153

The conclusion of Davies' second extract — about e.g. being bumped off a flight — is recognisable but the conclusions are actually wrong. The situation in these cases is actually more subtle. The person you're speaking to does normally have some capacity to escalate in exceptional cases. But they can't do it as a matter of course, and have to maintain publicly that it's actually impossible. The people who get what th…

> [..] it incentivises people to behave as unpleasantly as possible — because it's often the only way to trigger the exception [..] Thus creating an asshole filter: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1209794.html

FTA

>An asshole filter happens when you publicly promulgate a straitened contact boundary and then don't enforce it; or worse, reward the people who transgress it.

A lot of people do this unwittingly, so it's a good article to read.

The converse is to this is many companies demand it. If you're not an asshole, you're simply going to get ignored.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#275

Post by pixl97 »

setr wrote: post #257
amluto wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an exception to the exception, a lot of automated telephone systems have a tree of options, and they try really hard to avoid giving you a real person, and none of the options are helpful. But some of them are programmed to detect swearing and direct users to a representative. So a valid strategy is to swear at the automated system and then be polite to the real human that you get.

There’s generally no repercussions to bullying robots — or being nice to one. Aggressively direct, if not outright unsympathetically cruel, is probably the best approach in all scenarios

5 years from now

"ChatGPT has detected you are being hostile to bots. A drone has been dispatched to your location"

Re: Accountability Sinks

#276

Post by lolinder »

hkon wrote: post #259
atoav wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who worked in support as a youngling: If you behave unpleasant enough I'll go out of my way to make sure your behavior does not pay off. I will note your abrasive behavior in the ticket or might even mark your mail as spam. On telephone our line will suddenly experience technical difficulties. And throughout I will remain as friendly and patient as ever. I will warn superiors about you, so once you escalat…

If you are helping, why would they be assholes?

You've clearly never worked customer support. A very disproportionate number of people who call in to customer support are totally and utterly unreasonable. That's why it's such a pain to interact with customer support as a reasonable human: The systems aren't designed for you, they're designed for the abusers who represent something like 20% of the phone calls and 80% of the work.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#277

Post by nothrabannosir »

Pamar wrote: post #267
nothrabannosir wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fair comparison would not be the return, but Berlin-Györ being more expensive than Vilnius-Berlin-Györ. Is that common in logistics, in your experience?

This was a fabricated example, actually: I work in tourism not in logistic (but I have friends in that field). My point was that to the layman this does not make any sense while if you are managing a shipping company you soon realize that some destination are more profitable because your truck that was maybe taking specialized replacements parts from A to B can easily pick up some other stuff to send back to A, while…

The point some of us are making in the replies is that, while true, this is not an appropriate comparison to airline travel rules.

Do you agree there is a difference between charging more for a return, vs charging more for a leg of a compound trip?

Re: Accountability Sinks

#278

Post by gavmor »

bgnn wrote: post #264

This reminded me of my favorite David Greaber book: The utopia of rules ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Utopia_of_Rules ). Greaber, if I remember right, argues that modern bureaucracy started with efficient means of communication. He squares the Deutsche Post as the milestone, as they made the whole population available to be controlled. Now the state could send them letters, count them, enlist them in the mili…

More reachable, more accountable, and more surveilled by whom?

And can we flip the relationship, creating dashboards or whatever from which agentic systems reach, hold to account, and surveille right back?

I'm thinking pro-active agents that escalate for you, sinking their teeth into interactions with large organizations like a dog with a bone.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#279

Post by lelandbatey »

ethbr1 wrote: post #231
steveBK123 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes unfortunately I've observed this in some support systems. The best way is to thread the needle between being extremely personally polite to the other human on the line, but going through the required machinations on their runbook to trigger an escalation. That is - you don't really have to behave unpleasant (raise voice, swear, be impolite, threaten) but you should just refuse to get off the line, demand escalati…

> Possibly including phrasing like "what do we need to do to resolve this issue". "We" phrasing is an empathy hack for CS, because it lets you continue to be nice to the person you're talking to AND be persistent about "our" issue being solved. It's kind of like judo, especially when faced with an apathetic, resistant, or adversarial rep: "This isn't just my problem. This is our problem. So how can we fix it?" PS: In…

Alternatively, just lie about the cancellation reason. *"Why are you cancelling your Comcast internet service?" Answer: "I am moving to the Solomon islands, where there is no Comcast service or business for 1000 miles in any direction (at least)."

Re: Accountability Sinks

#280

Post by maest »

vishnugupta wrote: post #120
xg15 wrote: post #49

One example that's missing from the list is the TV series 24. A recurring plot point was that, yes, of course torture is bad and it's against the rules and we don't do it, etc etc, but it just so happens that here is such an exceptional, unprecedented, deeply urgent emergency situation where we need to have the information now or horrible things will happen, we need the hero who breaks the rules and goes on torturing…

What’s also interesting is that the tortured always turn out to be the bad guys. It never happens that he mistakenly tortured a good guy.

If they were good guys, we wouldn't be torturing them in the first place, obviously.
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