
DoNotPay app waits on hold for you - stunt
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/16/avoid-waiting-on-hold/
======
dglass
I downloaded the do not pay app a week ago because I wanted to use their
temporary card number feature to sign up for a free trial.

This feature automatically declines the charge when the trial finishes.

The app was free to download and I was immediately asked to enter my credit
card on the onboarding flow. I was a bit annoyed but reluctantly entered it
and figured I could cancel this before the trial.

Then I went to create one of these fake cards and got a notification that my
actual credit card was charged $3. What? Turns out activating one of these
fake cards automatically activated my free trial. I had no idea and was
annoyed by this dark pattern, and even more annoyed I fell for it.

Then I tried to cancel and the only thing I could find is a chat bot that kept
presenting the same options. Ironic that the article talks about bypassing a
bot when they use one themselves to handle customer service.

After going through the chat of flow a few times I was able to cancel my
subscription, but the chat it didn’t know how to handle my refund request. I
ended up finally finding a form I could send an email to someone asking for a
refund.

This app has dark patterns all over the place to trick you into paying for
their products that save you money. I would not recommend it.

~~~
brianpgordon
Since I closed my BoA account I've been using privacy.com for temporary credit
card numbers. It "just works" \- for me at least - and I haven't been charged
a dime. They make their money from interchange fees.

~~~
subhro
Citibank still offers the disposable card number thing. I am forgetting the
official name they have for it.

~~~
rhacker
Except last time I tried using that feature it required something crazy... I
think like either a Java applet or a Flash something or a Windows download...
so I didn't get far with that.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
BoA just sunsetted their "ShopSafe" virtual CCN tool last month, which had a
UI that required Flash. They didn't offer any explanation (or more than about
20 days' notice...), but I had to wonder if they just didn't want to port it
to something modern...

------
TallGuyShort
I'm excited that they got investment to build an Android version - I plan to
be an early customer. A couple of things, though:

>> write legal letters to scare businesses out of overcharging you

This one actually concerns me a little. A lot of businesses use legalese to
scare and overwhelm you, so it's great to have something to fight back. But
there are also a lot of people out there who just game the system as consumers
too - I'm a little concerned for Mom & Pop shops who will just end up being
the victims here instead. Ultimately I don't think there's a perfect solution
to the fact that dishonest, selfish people exist.

>> they’ll think ‘this could be made public and go viral and hurt our business

This might play out in a more complicated way. I have an app that records all
my calls. I stop the recording immediately if it's a personal call. If it's a
business I inform them I'm recording the phone call. Much of the time, that
ends the call. The business was going to record it too, but now that they know
I'm going to record it, they tell me they'll have to end the call and schedule
a time to call back when neither of us records it, which I refuse to do, so I
take care of business in writing, often in-person instead. Instead of making
my over-the-phone business more confident, it just eliminates the phone as an
option.

~~~
tombrossman
Curious, what call recording app do you use now please, and does it properly
record full duplex audio from the line (so not using speaker/headset/other
workarounds)?

The last time I had this working perfectly was with a Nexus 4 and I find that
call recording apps do not work on newer phones I've bought since. Any
suggestions? Android or iOS, I don't care which platform as long as it works
well.

I used to set the app to only record incoming calls from callers not in my
address book, and on several occasions it was a huge benefit to have these to
refer to later.

Companies really do not like it when you email them recordings of their
employee lying to you, and will go out of their way to make things right
immediately when that happens.

~~~
ikeboy
I did this once with Chase and didn't get anywhere. Had a CFPB case opened and
they refused to budge.

I had called multiple times and was told that their QuickPay was irreversible
and that it was fine to use it for commercial transactions. I accepted it for
a transaction, the transaction got reversed and money taken out of my account
and I was charged overdraft fees. Submitting the audio recording did not make
a difference.

~~~
tombrossman
That's a shame, what was their explanation? Did they say it's OK for Chase
employees to lie to customers, or did they dispute the authenticity of your
recording?

There's probably something in the fine print of your contract with them that
lets them get away with whatever happened, but always escalate matters as it's
pretty effective. Press them on social media, if there's arbitration try it or
small claims court, and involve any local media or politicians that you can
get on your side.

Basically, just be a huge pain in the ass and do not give up or go away until
they back down. This can take a while and you must document everything, every
interaction.

~~~
ikeboy
They supposedly couldn't play the audio file.

Looking back I probably should have transcribed it and highlighted the
relevant parts to show the issue more clearly.

------
atlasunshrugged
I think it's Do NOT Pay

This company has consistently come out with some amazing products, really
refreshing to see a tech company that seems to just purely be fighting to
solve annoying problems that haven't been touched before. Also founded by a
solid entrepreneur who is the son of Bill Browder who has done incredible work
throughout the world advocating for legislation that will help eliminate
corruption and who wrote a fascinating book (Red Notice) on his time as an
investor in Russia. I won't spoil it but it reads like a thriller despite
being nonfiction and is well worth a read.

------
ssheth
Isn't this basically same service as GetHuman which has been around for years?

[https://gethuman.com/call-back](https://gethuman.com/call-back)

~~~
bberenberg
I used GetHuman once a couple months ago, and they spammed me for weeks after
without any ability to unsubscribe.

------
tareqak
I use a Chase Liquid card that’s associated with my Chase checking account
[0]. The balance I keep on it is always 0.01 (it used to be 0.00, but Chase
closed my last Liquid account because it was not used, so I’m hoping keeping
one cent on it keeps it active). The Chase Liquid card is a prepaid Visa debit
card, so the merchant cannot pull more than what is on the card (they are
denied), and the card is accepted wherever Visa is accepted. Some merchants
can detect whether or not the card is a debit card, but this occurrence has
been very rare in my personal experience (definitely once, maybe twice, I
can’t remember the specific merchants).

I use my Chase Liquid card as the default card for _any_ merchant that wants a
card to automatically charge per month, or for _any_ merchant that offers a
discount for having autopay setup (one example of the latter case is T-Mobile
where I get $5.00 off my bill Per month for just having a card on file for
autopay). Merchants have gotten better at notifying me when my payment is due
before actually charging me, so I actually perform one-time payments in these
cases using my normal credit card that offers cash back.

Yes, this approach does not provide any additional privacy beyond keeping my
intended payment method to myself. For anything more, I only know of
privacy.com . However, this approach is sufficient for practically all of my
needs.

[0] [https://www.chase.com/personal/debit-reloadable-
cards/starbu...](https://www.chase.com/personal/debit-reloadable-
cards/starbucks?jp_cmp=rb/liquid_redirect/off/redirect/na)

------
martinni
Doesn't this defeat the purpose of the entire automated phone system? An agent
time is precious the automation is there for simple tasks that doesn't require
any intervention. If everyone starts requesting an agent it'll clog up the
system for everyone.

~~~
sudhirj
Automated phone systems are completely useless after the advent of the
internet and the smartphone. Anything on any company's IVR is more accessible
on the app or the website. There's no way I'd call my bank from the bank's app
to have my damn statement and balance read out to while I'm looking at it. If
we call someone these days, it's to talk to a human.

~~~
dvtrn
They became useless when they became, for the caller (or at least for me), an
exercise in double-and sometimes-triple entry of "validating" information as
you move across queues because I guess no one has figured out how to store the
29 buttons I have to press for an account number from one queue to the next
and and refusing to take DTMF tones (looking at you ComEd Energy) as inputs
and in general, being as user hostile as possible to callers before getting
even placed into queue.

USAA gets this right, to your point.

I can't tell you how many times I've opened the App, started doing something
in their "support menu" and been told "You need to call support for this,
press this button", the phone starts ringing and even if I have to wait a few
minutes, the person who picks up the phone already knows who I am, why I'm
calling based on inputs from the Mobile App. They authenticate by sending a
security code _to the app_. Hands down my favorite experience calling support
is whenever I need to call USAA for something.

(Plus, despite being retired from the services for 12 years now, it is nice
sometimes hearing "Good Morning Sergeant Torres". Takes me back to my days on
the flight line in a strange way, heh)

------
joshstrange
The recording is the better feature IMHO. My iPhone was jailbroken before I
updated to the 11 Pro and the audio recording tweak was one of my favorite
tweaks. I thought of spinning up a service that did this just using Twilio but
wasn't sure if people would be willing to pay (I think $1-3/mo would cover
costs).

I just used a recording the other day when Spectrum (shitty internet provider,
formally Time Warner) tried to lie to me and I was able to re-listen to my
previous conversation with them to catch them in the lie.

inb4: I live in a 1 party state and even so I rarely talk to a "real" person
on my phone, it's only businesses and if they are going to have a recording
then so will I.

~~~
londons_explore
There are a bunch of android call recording apps and on most phones they work
without a jailbreak etc.

------
gnicholas
How do they get you to the right department? If you call the wrong dept at
Comcast, for example, they transfer you into the queue for the proper
department, which would take just as long as calling in on your own.

~~~
degenerate
Same for AT&T.

------
Animats
The web site for DoNotPay looks completely different: "The World's First Robot
Lawyer". (A bad claim to make.) It's mostly about parking tickets.

~~~
nickfromseattle
I think DoNotPay's first use case was disputing parking tickets. Basically the
founder made it as a teen after getting a ton of his own parking tickets and
the app helped dispute and overturn something like 160,000+ parking tickets
for users in the US and UK.

[http://money.com/money/4387657/donotpay-chat-bot-traffic-
tic...](http://money.com/money/4387657/donotpay-chat-bot-traffic-ticket-new-
york-london/)

------
xhgdvjky
I have tried this a few times and always been spooked by being asked up front
to enter too much information including passwords(!!!????) for some products

------
parliament32
Typo in the title, DoNotPay is the correct name.

[https://donotpay.com/](https://donotpay.com/)

------
Chris911
I always use Google Hangout's free phone call when calling customer service.

------
s3nnyy
"Surprisingly, the startup has never been sued."

Ok, why should it be sued?

~~~
rpmisms
Translation : "Some exec should have spooked by now"

