Many countries and some US states have laws against vexatious litigants. A similar approach should be used against malicious customer service like this.
I'm actually surprised the sort of sludge described in the article isn't already illegal.
That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose
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Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose
#32Many countries and some US states have laws against vexatious litigants. A similar approach should be used against malicious customer service like this.
I would like to see laws against constructive illegal practices, or at least an assumption that any forseeable outcome of the company's policies is considered by the court to have been the intentional outcome. Codify "the purpose of a system is what it does" into a legal presumption.
Say, Wells Fargo giving their front line staff unattainable targets for account openings, which was a somewhat deniable way to mandate that staff illegally open accounts for everyone that they interact with.
Or, a gym requiring a certain retention rate for customers calling to cancel. Predictably, this just results in the call center staff illegally refusing to cancel the gym membership, so it's tantamount to a company policy that customers can't cancel their accounts unless they get lucky.
Or airlines that are required to give you compensation, but only do so if you ask, and ask in a very specific and timely manner, for example, hotel compensation for cancelled flights.
Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose
#33I avoid situations like this as if it was the plague but a long time ago I dealt with it for both myself and others who lost the will to deal with it.
This included both commercial and government entities. I never raised my voice, I simply made it abundantly clear that I had a nearly infinite appetite for being litigious in a very public manner if they did not immediately address the issue at hand in good faith. It was effective. In literally every case they did something reasonable and I never heard about it again, even in cases where they had been dragging someone for years.
To be clear, I would have pressed the point if they hadn’t relented. But in every case they did in fact relent. They are obviously making judgments about blowback potential when they do these things, which is terrible policy. Doubly so when governments do it, since they explicitly work for us.
Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose
#34This is where the average consumer needs agentic AI on their side.
So there’s even less accountability?
How does this result in less accountability, if for the AI agent to even have a chance to work properly it would basically need to save all of the calls, emails and other information in a persistent way, where it doesn't matter if it's hours or months since the last 'update'?
Just to be clear, this AI agent would be in the customer's control, nothing to do with whatever company it's dealing with.
Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose
#35Many countries and some US states have laws against vexatious litigants. A similar approach should be used against malicious customer service like this.
You should be able to invoice for your own time trying to fix their error.
Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Serve them it on physical paper then.
Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose
#37I 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?
After each interaction with their reps, I’m inching close to start PleaseLetMomGo hosting just to fuck with them
Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose
#38I once had a nightmare series of phone calls with Timer-Warner Cable. I had to cancel because I was making an emergency move out of the apartment and area on the east coast. My call would get dropped on every call; I probably made a dozen calls, explained the situation, waited forever, then transferred or call dropped. At one point a rep transferred me to another call center guy in Chicago, he was totally confused about why I would be transferred to him almost a thousand miles away. Instead of focusing on the emergency for why I was moving out, I was messing around with their horrible service. Swore off ever using them again.
Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose
#39This is where the average consumer needs agentic AI on their side.
This is where all consumers need strong consumer protection laws on their side.
In New Zealand for example, the person/company that took your money in exchange for the product or service is always the one responsible - they can't fob you off to someone else. Products must be fit for purpose, and for a time that's reasonable for the lifetime of the product (not just the warranty). They are required to repair, replace or refund a faulty product within a reasonable amount of time. Taking a company to (small claims) court is reasonably cheap - no lawyers required.
Re: That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose
#40I used to work in callcenter technology. We actually had a feature in one of our systems to make the customers wait even if there were agents directly available. Why? To get them accustomed to long waiting times, discourage them from calling all the time. It is really sick. It was like a fake waiting queue. It could even generate fake messages saying "there's x customers before you".
Of course the companies that wanted to implement this features were the awful ones you shouldn't want to work for or do business with. The ones that abhorred the feature were the ones that cared about customers and employees (usually more EU-centric companies).