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FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

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Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#41

Post by Razengan »

mortenjorck wrote: post #27
0des wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this model require an FB account to be used as intended?

It does, but "requires a Facebook account" doesn't entirely capture the nature of Oculus' requirements. If, for instance, Twitter sold hardware that required a Twitter account, that would indeed be the beginning and end of it – create a new Twitter account for the hardware, and off you go. What Oculus requires, however, is your Facebook account, as in the one you created over a decade ago and never use but is full of…

> Creating a separate account just for using the hardware is not only expressly forbidden, but can result in you being locked out of your device

Wow. That is despicable.

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#42

Post by doopy1 »

mortenjorck wrote: post #27
0des wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this model require an FB account to be used as intended?

It does, but "requires a Facebook account" doesn't entirely capture the nature of Oculus' requirements. If, for instance, Twitter sold hardware that required a Twitter account, that would indeed be the beginning and end of it – create a new Twitter account for the hardware, and off you go. What Oculus requires, however, is your Facebook account, as in the one you created over a decade ago and never use but is full of…

I deleted by FB account and created a new dummy account for Oculus. No issues.

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#43

Post by Rebelgecko »

saddlerustle wrote: post #29
mortenjorck wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, but "requires a Facebook account" doesn't entirely capture the nature of Oculus' requirements. If, for instance, Twitter sold hardware that required a Twitter account, that would indeed be the beginning and end of it – create a new Twitter account for the hardware, and off you go. What Oculus requires, however, is your Facebook account, as in the one you created over a decade ago and never use but is full of…

The same is true of an Xbox and a Microsoft account. The sign up flow requires a full name and the ToS requires you not to give false information.

Last I checked, it wasn't a TOS violation to have multiple Microsoft accounts like it is with FB. Microsoft even has some official support for for work vs personal accounts

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#44

Post by saltedonion »

metajack wrote: post #38
shoeshoeshoey wrote: post #24

FB had an internal help system called "Oops". It was meant for employees to get help for friends they knew in real life. It was discontinued not long ago (EDIT: maybe not according to a child comment). There were just too many requests for help. Facebook has a corporate structure that simply will not prioritize any effort longer than 6 months unless a senior company executive (Mark, Sheryl) supports it. Even if it af…

I used oops to help someone I knew several months back. It still exists and worked amazingly well.

Can you elaborate what this system does? Escalates customer support tickets for employees?

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#45

Post by SilverRed »

ilamont wrote: post #12

Before going to extremes, many hacking victims try the usual routes to get customer service but quickly find out it seems impossible to reach someone at Facebook to help fix the problem. Same story with AI lockouts at Google. Even if you do have access to "someone at Google" good luck getting a clear answer of what happened or how to fix the issue.

I think we can appreciate how this is a difficult problem though. Google support would get a torrent of actual hackers contacting them to gain access to someones account. Not restoring access to a few real cases is probably better than giving access over to a hacker.

GitLab recently said that customer support will not help restore access to your account if you lock yourself out unless you have an active subscription to your account and can use your billing details as verification.

How should google support handle this? Perhaps banks should offer an identify verification service?

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#46

Post by busymom0 »

ilamont wrote: post #12

Before going to extremes, many hacking victims try the usual routes to get customer service but quickly find out it seems impossible to reach someone at Facebook to help fix the problem. Same story with AI lockouts at Google. Even if you do have access to "someone at Google" good luck getting a clear answer of what happened or how to fix the issue.

Yep. Even developers with apps which might have gotten wrongly flagged by the artificial unintelligence only get to talk to automated emails unless they can create a big enough shit storm on social media to get a few tech blogs to write about it.

A very recent example was Droid script app on Android:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26956077

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#47

Post by SilverRed »

doopy1 wrote: post #42
mortenjorck wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, but "requires a Facebook account" doesn't entirely capture the nature of Oculus' requirements. If, for instance, Twitter sold hardware that required a Twitter account, that would indeed be the beginning and end of it – create a new Twitter account for the hardware, and off you go. What Oculus requires, however, is your Facebook account, as in the one you created over a decade ago and never use but is full of…

I deleted by FB account and created a new dummy account for Oculus. No issues.

FB runs bots over the platform to detect these accounts. Since they have everyone's contact list, they can just check your friends list and see if you appear in their contact lists. If not, they will lock you out and require you to send a photo of your ID.

And even if they have not yet, they can at any time and all of your games and hardware get locked which is permitted in their ToS. Why would you want to take this risk when the alternative platforms do not have real identity rules.

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#48

Post by hangonhn »

shoeshoeshoey wrote: post #24

FB had an internal help system called "Oops". It was meant for employees to get help for friends they knew in real life. It was discontinued not long ago (EDIT: maybe not according to a child comment). There were just too many requests for help. Facebook has a corporate structure that simply will not prioritize any effort longer than 6 months unless a senior company executive (Mark, Sheryl) supports it. Even if it af…

That was literally the only way I got help after someone somehow managed to registered one of my email address under a Facebook account I don't control and tried to impersonate me. I don't even know how that was possible since FB does email verification. I tried the normal help system but got nowhere so I reached out to my friends who work at FB. One of them used the internal help system it was resolved within a couple of days. A mutual friend of ours joked that I was really using my "tech privileges" and he was absolutely right. I would have had to deal with a FB account pretending to be me for a while if not for the fact that I live in Silicon Vally and have a lot of friends who work for FB. It really shouldn't have been how that matter was resolved.

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#49

Post by busymom0 »

SilverRed wrote: post #45
ilamont wrote: post #12

Before going to extremes, many hacking victims try the usual routes to get customer service but quickly find out it seems impossible to reach someone at Facebook to help fix the problem. Same story with AI lockouts at Google. Even if you do have access to "someone at Google" good luck getting a clear answer of what happened or how to fix the issue.

I think we can appreciate how this is a difficult problem though. Google support would get a torrent of actual hackers contacting them to gain access to someones account. Not restoring access to a few real cases is probably better than giving access over to a hacker. GitLab recently said that customer support will not help restore access to your account if you lock yourself out unless you have an active subscription…

Disagree. A company as big as google should have the decency to at least have a human reach out to paying developers before they permanently ban apps which developers use to make a living:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26956077

Re: FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization

#50

Post by mmahemoff »

metajack wrote: post #38
shoeshoeshoey wrote: post #24

FB had an internal help system called "Oops". It was meant for employees to get help for friends they knew in real life. It was discontinued not long ago (EDIT: maybe not according to a child comment). There were just too many requests for help. Facebook has a corporate structure that simply will not prioritize any effort longer than 6 months unless a senior company executive (Mark, Sheryl) supports it. Even if it af…

I used oops to help someone I knew several months back. It still exists and worked amazingly well.

I'm sure detractors would find plenty to criticise about a system to prioritise friends and family, but it's smart from a QA perspective. They get a corpus of issues that are falling through the cracks, coming from real people without an agenda.
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