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Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

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Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#31

Post by FergusArgyll »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #15
quartz wrote: post #4

> "Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives—including a chatbot," Rivers wrote. "It does not explain why it believes that is the case" or "why the webpage titled 'Bereavement travel' was inherently more trustworthy than its chatbot." This is very reasonable-- AI or not, companies can't expect consumers to know which parts of their digital e…

Forget about digital experiences for a moment. Forget entirely about chatbots. > Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives That includes EMPLOYEES. So they tried to argue that their employees can lie to your face to get you to buy a ticket under false pretense and then refuse to honor the promised terms? That's absolutely fucked.

Standard for airlines

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#32

Post by mcny »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #29
mschuster91 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They tried to argue that their employees can lie to your face to get you to buy a ticket under false pretense and then refuse to honor the promised terms. That's fucked. Pretty standard behavior for big companies. Airlines and telcos are the utter worst ... you have agent A on the phone on Monday, who promises X to be done by Wednesday. Thursday, you call again, get agent B, who says he doesn't see anything, not ev…

I bet if we removed the requirement to get a lawyer and file a lawsuit that those behaviors would vanish real quick, if all you had to do as the wronged consumer was report to an authority that Company X is doing business dishonestly.

> I bet if we removed the requirement to get a lawyer and file a lawsuit that those behaviors would vanish real quick, if all you had to do as the wronged consumer was report to an authority that Company X is doing business dishonestly.

They can still appeal the decisions of the authority in the courts of law. They will just get the authority disbanded altogether. Previously, on hn `Amazon argues that national labor board is unconstitutional (apnews.com)` https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39411829

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#33

Post by renewiltord »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #29
mschuster91 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They tried to argue that their employees can lie to your face to get you to buy a ticket under false pretense and then refuse to honor the promised terms. That's fucked. Pretty standard behavior for big companies. Airlines and telcos are the utter worst ... you have agent A on the phone on Monday, who promises X to be done by Wednesday. Thursday, you call again, get agent B, who says he doesn't see anything, not ev…

I bet if we removed the requirement to get a lawyer and file a lawsuit that those behaviors would vanish real quick, if all you had to do as the wronged consumer was report to an authority that Company X is doing business dishonestly.

I think I could price for a few tens of thousands of dollars a service that creates a bunch of such wronged consumers. There are a bunch of homeless people in San Francisco we will represent. To make it easy for someone on the streets to be able to complain, we actually operate as a non-profit that advocates on their behalf for having wronged the company. You could use my service to attack another company on demand, but I advise that you do it at critical moments. Ideally, two weeks before a big launch or so should do it so that we have enough time to stagger out sufficient number of complaints.

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#34

Post by dukeyukey »

im3w1l wrote: post #13

I hope there can be some reasonable middle ground. I think in this case it's good the woman got her money. But Air Canada, presumably scared of what the next case might cost them decided to turn the chat bot off entirely. I think that's a bit unfortunate. I don't know what the solution looks like. Maybe some combination of courts only upholding "reasonable" claims by AI. And then insurance to cover the gaps?

I don't see why chatbots can't be kept to the same standard as human staff. If an airline support agent lied to me to sell me tickets, no shit I'd want a refund and compensation! Chatbots should be allowed to be wrong, but the company should be prepared to face the consequences of that.

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#35

Post by RajT88 »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #15
quartz wrote: post #4

> "Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives—including a chatbot," Rivers wrote. "It does not explain why it believes that is the case" or "why the webpage titled 'Bereavement travel' was inherently more trustworthy than its chatbot." This is very reasonable-- AI or not, companies can't expect consumers to know which parts of their digital e…

Forget about digital experiences for a moment. Forget entirely about chatbots. > Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives That includes EMPLOYEES. So they tried to argue that their employees can lie to your face to get you to buy a ticket under false pretense and then refuse to honor the promised terms? That's absolutely fucked.

I have had this happen in a sense.

I once booked a flight to meet my then-fiancee in Florida on vacation. Work travel came up unexpectedly, and I booked my work travel from ORD > SFO > TPA.

Before I made that booking, I called the airline specifically to ask them if skipping the ORD > TPA leg of my personal travel was going to cause me problems. The agent confirmed, twice that it would not. This was a lie.

Buried in the booking terms is language meant to discourage gaming the system by booking travel where you skip certain legs. So if you skip a leg of your booking, the whole thing is invalidated. It's not suuuuper clear, I had to read it a few times, but I guess it kinda said that.

Anyways - my itinerary was invalidated by skipping the first flight, and I got lucky enough that someone canceled at the last minute and I could buy my own seat back on the now-full flight for 4x the original ticket price I paid (which was not refunded!).

I followed up to try and get to the bottom of it, but they were insistent they had no record of my call prior, and just fell back on "It's in the terms, and I do not know why you were told wrong information". Very painful lesson to learn.

I try and make a habit of recording phone conversations with agents now, if legal in where I'm physically located at the time.

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#36

Post by floatrock »

Here's the real punchline:

> Experts told the Vancouver Sun that Air Canada may have succeeded in avoiding liability in Moffatt's case if its chatbot had warned customers that the information that the chatbot provided may not be accurate.

Here's a glimpse into our Kafka-esque AI-powered future: every corporate lawyer is now making sure any customer service request will be gated by a chatbot containing a disclaimer like "Warning: the information you receive may be incorrect and irrelevant." Getting correct and relevant information from a human will be impossible.

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#38

Post by wing-_-nuts »

quartz wrote: post #4

> "Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives—including a chatbot," Rivers wrote. "It does not explain why it believes that is the case" or "why the webpage titled 'Bereavement travel' was inherently more trustworthy than its chatbot." This is very reasonable-- AI or not, companies can't expect consumers to know which parts of their digital e…

I once ordered a gift for my father for christmass. The order page indicated that it would arrive on time. When it didn't arrive, I requested a refund. They then pointed to their FAQ page where they said that orders during the holidays would incur extra processing time, and refused the refund.

I wrote back that unless they issused a refund, I would issue a charge back. You don't get to present the customer with one thing and then do otherwise because you say so on a page the customer has never read when ordering.

They eventually caved, but man, the nerve.

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#39

Post by morkalork »

mschuster91 wrote: post #22
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget about digital experiences for a moment. Forget entirely about chatbots. > Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives That includes EMPLOYEES. So they tried to argue that their employees can lie to your face to get you to buy a ticket under false pretense and then refuse to honor the promised terms? That's absolutely fucked.

> They tried to argue that their employees can lie to your face to get you to buy a ticket under false pretense and then refuse to honor the promised terms. That's fucked. Pretty standard behavior for big companies. Airlines and telcos are the utter worst ... you have agent A on the phone on Monday, who promises X to be done by Wednesday. Thursday, you call again, get agent B, who says he doesn't see anything, not ev…

I had this happen with Rogers! Another loved and treasured bigcorp in Canada! Called to tell them I was moving in 2 months and to cancel my service and the agent says, oh well if you want to still have internet in the mean time, you'll have to call back in two months when you move. Ok. Great. I do that. Agent number 2: Well you didn't cancel with X many days of notice so there's a cancellation fee now on your acoount. Pay up!

I suppose agent 1 was jerking my chain so he wouldn't take the hit on his retention metrics so I don't blame him 100%. I blame Rogers bullshit system of incentives for their employees and their bullshit contracts they force on consumers who have little to no choice in the market here.

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#40

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

im3w1l wrote: post #13

I hope there can be some reasonable middle ground. I think in this case it's good the woman got her money. But Air Canada, presumably scared of what the next case might cost them decided to turn the chat bot off entirely. I think that's a bit unfortunate. I don't know what the solution looks like. Maybe some combination of courts only upholding "reasonable" claims by AI. And then insurance to cover the gaps?

Why is that unfortunate? I honestly don't think there's any value in using AI for this if it's not guaranteed to give you correct answer.
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