Customer support has gotten even worse, if such a thing be possible
In the past two days I’ve spent several frustrating hours locking horns with so-called customer support for three companies. The terms “customer support” and “chat” became fairly Orwellian quite some time ago, but the situation has gotten even more ridiculous because the chatbots now seem to operate along forced-choice lines, with pre-written tabs with answers from which you must choose in order to go on to the next step. If nothing fits – well then, tough. If you arbitrarily choose an answer even if it doesn’t fit, then you get on a track from which you can’t escape and which has zero to do with your problem.
Fun. And in the case of some companies, there’s no way to talk to a live person without the chatbot deciding that you merit that reward for your labors. I didn’t qualify, apparently.
However, one of the three companies, Amazon, does have a phone number to call if all else fails. You might be amused at what I was calling Amazon about, which was basically to try to keep the company from giving me way too much money as a refund for an item I’m trying to return. The item originally cost around $37.00, but when I went through the online process to return it, Amazon was eager to give me a refund of about $160.00. When I mulled over that particular ethical dilemma, I found that I just couldn’t accept the largesse. So I tried again, and now Amazon wanted to give me about $60.00, which was an improvement but still didn’t sit well with me.
The chatbot was completely flummoxed by this situation, which didn’t fit any of the chatbot’s choices for me and thus was nonexistent as far as the chatbot was concerned. The actual person with whom I finally talked – after a call with the usual authentication brouhaha and a remarkably short stay on hold – at least understood what I was describing. But she said the computers were malfunctioning and she couldn’t check my account or do anything about the problem. She then made the helpful suggestion that I call back later. I replied that I’d already spent an inordinate amount of time trying to save Amazon money.
So I’m postponing the whole thing in hopes that Amazon gets its act together with the refund through the online process, which is ordinarily quite easy. But this isn’t really about Amazon, which at least had an actual person with whom I could actually talk, even if that person had a thick accent and lives halfway across the world. Her heart seemed to be in the right place. It’s the forced-choice chatbots that are incredibly annoying and have definitely gotten worse lately. Chatbots used to actually be able to respond to somewhat open-ended free-form statements or questions, but from what I’ve seen lately, they now lack that versatility.
Is it any wonder so many people are so testy these days? Not only do we have to deal with what might be the imminent fall of Western civilization, but we have to deal with increasingly sadistic versions of customer support.
Your heart’s in the right place, Neo, for not wanting to take too big a refund, but you’re certainly not obligated to spend more than that in Amazon’s time and your own time to try to rectify it. I think you’ve made a good faith attempt and should just let them do their thing. If it really is a mistake they will probably bill you for the difference at some point in some way…
It may be counterintuitive but sometimes a business does better by not trying to fix situations like that. Happened to a relative of mine who bought a big TV. They brought him a second one by mistake, which he tried to return, but there wasn’t really a process for that, and what he learned was the situation was so rare that the expense of setting up a process to handle it would cost far more than just the occasional free TV (bearing in mind that what the TV cost the company is far less than what it cost my cousin).
In the end he sold it at a discount to someone he knew.
I’ve noticed that service, in general, has gotten much worse in the last couple of years. Decent restaurants with waiters are usually OK, but the self-serve counters or checkouts are frequently terribly slow.
One of the added frustrations are some customers in my older age cohort who, in spite of waiting in line for some time, feel compelled to have a conversation with the employee.
You are a far better person than I. About the time the chatbot decided I didn’t qualify for a live person, I’ve have mentally said “ok, I guess you don’t want your money back. Thanks, I’ll spend it foolishly on something I don’t need, but really want.”
Neo, good on you for trying to be honest with Amazon. Also good that you gave up for now, to let them fix the error. [I’ve read about lawyers sending doctors a bill, for time they wasted in waiting rooms.]
Refilling a prescription at Walmart used to take ~ 1 minute: main menu > prescripton number > confirm first four letters of last name > when prescription will be ready > done.
Now the robo-voice is a borderline bitchy-sounding woman. I tried to use only my keypad, instead of the interactive voice response. I was almost done, then it said it didn’t understand my response and was connecting me to a person. I hung up because I didn’t want that. Then I tried at least once more, but the robo-voice started breaking up, and then connected me to a person:
Hello, this is (?), how can I help you?
I’m sorry, is your name Arita?
Ritu; R-I-T-U. (South Asian accent detected.)
I explained my problem. OK, she said, let me turn on my computer. [Did I wake you up??] I could hear an American voice talking in the background.
Eventually she sorted it out (I hope.) Total process ~ 10 minutes.
They have developed baroque levels of dysnfunction
Walmart is reasonably responsive cvs has gine skynet
Machine learning has its limits. It’s not really “artificial intelligence.”
You did your best. Take the refund and donate the overage to a food pantry.
Boy do I understand your frustration. I spent 8 hrs on Sunday and 4 hrs today trying to untangle the mess ComCast made on a neighbor’s cable/internet/home phone account last Thursday when she responded to a message to call about new offers as her current discount plan would end soon. One of the complicating factors in her case was the default text message confirmations from the Xfinity chatbot and their agents. As a woman born in the 30’s she refuses to text or give up her flip phone so between her southern drawl and the agent’s thick accent and lots of “I don’t understand you” she ended up with a new plan and a way better price (yay). Unfortunately she discovered over the next 2 days some of her favorite channels wouldn’t work without a new subscription and then her bundled home phone stopped working.
Sunday’s agent did his best to restore her phone and missing channels but said it might take 24 hrs to take effect. This AM when everything remained unresolved after a system refresh we got the phone working but after having to reactivate her voicemail I realized she lost her original phone number. Today the call-bot recognized we’d made changes yesterday and offered robo help but was willing with a couple clearly spoken NO’s let us get to an live agent in 30 or 40 minutes. Eventually she found a way to re-subscribe to the missing channels and get the old home phone number reassigned. Unfortunately since xfinity had cancelled and reactivated the phone service she has to wait 24 hrs for the number change back to her old number to take effect, but at least she has a working phone in the meantime and a $30 price reduction with free paper billing.
As you say Neo, what a nightmare it is working in this new customer support world where we have to live with the tyranny of the programmed support process and the communication difficulties that come with trying to talk to India on VOIP.
Neo, take the money and run. Your time spent on this warrants you having the money.
Life is Hell, then we call customer support.
neo:
We have a saying concerning “found money” (i.e. money not earned):
“Kiss it up to God and spend it on something pretty.”
The advantage of people is that sometimes you can threaten to call the police. I once got a service canceled by saying that I had been told I could cancel it, and it would be telephonic fraud if I couldn’t.
I’ve gotten to the point where if the customer service rep. speaks understandable english, I feel lucky.
Generally, the customer service reps from the Philippines are easy to understand; those with Chinese-sounding accents I find incomprehensible , and those with Indian accents can go either way.
Oft times I have randomly hit the # key or or “O” key in an effort to bypass the automated / machine responses. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.
If they place me on hold for,say, X minutes, sometimes I will just hang up and immediately call back. Sometimes this works, sometimes not.
trust me its not any clearer in Tagalog accented English or Spanish, it’s a special gift that they confound you when you are trying to do a simple thing, like order a prescription, as the status of a delivery, I say to myself ‘it’s not rocket science’ or particle physics, but I may be wrong,
Hear, hear! The forced-choice chatbot (well-named) is a great candidate for the mob to escort to a nice tree with a nice rope for the hanging. We might be slightly less brutal if the sonofabitch who invented said chatbot emerges, but not much.
(He said after encountering not one, but two FCCs in the same day).
}}} You did your best. Take the refund and donate the overage to a food pantry.
Nahhh. A charitable entity, sure… but I stopped giving to “food pantries” about 8-10 years ago, when they started BSing people about “Food insecurity” and trying to tell me that “one quarter of all children go to bed not knowing where their next meal would come from.”
Give.
Me.
A.
BREAK.
We don’t have a childhood obesity issue in this country because “25% of kids are going *hungry*“
Should they eat better? Yes. This is probably the main cause of the obesity…
But are they actually hungry? NO. In fact, Fuck NO.
If “25% of kids don’t know where their next meal is coming from” has any truth value at all, it’s only because they have no reason to think they should be worried and so, like any typical kid, don’t think about it at all… it just magically happens.
I used to donate considerably — like at least two bags of canned goods, usually four — to my office food drive whenever they held it. But then they started that dishonesty. Not any more. I will continue to donate to charity, but not to one that lies to me about how significant the issue is.
As to Amazon — Yeah, I found out a long time ago where to go to get to an actual human, and have the link saved for any future needs.
It’s available on the web site, you just have to dig and dig and dig until you find it.
Ordered a part on a Ryobi site. No option to review after entry. Received email confirmation but second email with shipping details never came. Phone calls put me on hold but never get an actual person. After multiple attempts,looked up Company on LinkedIn and messaged Logistics manager. Got a reply and he upgraded shipping to overnight at no charge. Phone and website likely still broken but at least a real person got the job done.
The use of AI chatbots is expanding rapidly. These new chatbots have become a threat to economies like the Philippines, where call center help desk employment is a significant part of the economy.
Of course, the chatbots require enormous data centers, with electrical demands comparable to small cities. Solar panels can’t provide it. Will we start to see AI-generated media opinion pieces calling for more nuclear reactors?
@neo:if such a thing be possible
Nice subjunctive, was this the reason for the “language and grammar” tag?
Any time I’ve used subjunctive mood professionally, an editor has removed it, simply because too many people think it’s wrong… like when people hypercorrect “him and me” to “him and I” (or worse to “he and I”).
Niketas:
Thanks!
The “language and grammar” tag is because the spambots purport to understand language but they have very little understanding of it, and the customer has to choose on of their pre-canned tags instead. In addition, there’s the fact that even when a person answers, the accents are so thick it’s hard to understand them.
I think perhaps, in a roundabout and stunningly inefficient way, Amazon may be telling you they are tired of dealing with you and no longer want your business. I have encountered a substantial number of businesses seemingly engaged in that very practice, several to the maximum degree possible.
I had a contractor, a friend also, actually, who wouldn’t send me a bill for replacing a patio door. I’d paid for the door, but still owed him for labor. (He had taken forever to do the job.) After requesting the bill, I asked a second time, telling him I wouldn’t be asking again. He never sent the bill.
I think you’ve done your due diligence, Neo.
You are so right when you wrote that when you do get to speak to a real person (on Amazon in particular) they all have foreign accents and it is difficult at times to understand them. I find myself screaming at the chatbots which makes no sense at all. Verizon is even worse!
Donate the extra money to a worthy cause such as cancer or diabetes research.
You think that’s bad? Just last week, I went so far down the rabbit hole with a company’s chatbot that it set fire to my computer and caused it to explode. The fire spread and caused my house to burn down. I am now living in the middle of the road with nothing but an umbrella for shelter.
Yes, though live-but-dim human beings were a real service thing (and disservice for their employers) decades ago and probably still are.
Experience 1. 1970. Northfield, Minnesota. I’m a senior physics major at Carleton College. At the local fast food (a one-off called “Quarterback Club”) I ordered several items for dinner totaling, in my head, $1.37 (all numbers approximately remembered). The young-woman “townie” tending the cash register totals it up, gets $0.75. I say, “No, that’s not right.” She does it again, winds up with $0.93. “No, try again.” Third time yields $1.19. I’d had enough, so that’s what I paid.
Experience 2. VISA credit card, mid-1980s. Over the phone, purchased an airline ticket for an intra-California flight for something like $100. Showed up at LAX the day of the flight, but it got cancelled because of weather (yes, within California!), so I decided to drive and turned in my ticket at the airline counter for credit. When that month’s credit-card statement arrived, I paid it off in full (as usual) less the amount of the ticket credit I expected to receive. No problem.
And then I received the credit, too, on the next statement (so now I’m $100 ahead!). I wrote to the card issuer saying that the $100 was theirs, not mine. They wrote back saying that if I wanted the airline to bill me again, I should talk to the airline. ?!?!?! So I left it at that, figuring, “I’m $100 ahead now. Who knows where this will go if I try harder to educate these mopes?”
I have to talk to Uber support almost daily. I have learned to speak clearly, in short sentences with short words. They have something which spits out endless “I’m so sorry you’re having this problem. Please let me put you on a brief hold . . . . And it’s usually brief.
They do have a tendency to transfer me all over the place to different departments.
One common problem: I get to a store for a pickup. I’m told someone else has already picked up. Someone did, failed to mark the order picked up, and enjoyed the free meal. Then that driver cancels the order. So it shows on Uber that a new driver is needed. They bump the pay up some, and it goes to another driver, who arrives and is told “already picked up.” That driver hits cancel, and the order recycles to another driver, with more money added. This can happen five times!
It comes to me as a $35 fee to deliver a combo meal four miles away. I know what’s coming. When the store tells me it’s picked up, I ask, how much to remake it? If it’s $10 or $12, I tell them I will pay, and do. Mark order received and head to customer–who I have messaged and apologized and told that I have personally paid for the food and I am coming. Customer is hungry, puzzled, but grateful to me.
I deliver, and the $35 fee is mine, less the cost, and $23 is a good payout for such a trip. I also report this to Uber, to three different people, and sometimes Uber will reimburse me.
Had I done the right thing by Uber policy, I call and report order picked up by another. Then Uber *may* give me $3 for the drive time and time spent on hold with support.
For anything photographic, video, stereo, or just electronic in general I can VERY HIGHLY recommend B&H Photo out of NYC. It’s not just an internet-only company…they’ve got a huge retail presence in NYC, a well-designed web site, and they still allow ordering over the phone, which means you don’t have to put credit card information out on the ‘net.
Their customer service group is simply outstanding. When ordering, you’re talking to people (actual human beings) who know the product, and can make recommendations and suggestions. I’ve only had to return one product I’ve ordered from them (the manufacturer’s issue, not theirs) and it was simple and painless, and they credited my account as soon as they received the product.
I’ve had outstanding customer service from them where they’ve gone far beyond what I anticipated as a solution. Their performance has made me a loyal customer, and I don’t hesitate to suggest them as a vendor for anything they sell.
@ jimmy958 > “You think that’s bad?”
Is this you??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE
AesopFan
As a matter of fact, . . .