It's really another symptom of the digital asymmetry.
It's the same as sign-up being one-click CC details input, but cancelling the account/subscriptions requires you to send a paper mail to America, with parcel tracking, and then The Company has 90 (business) days to "review your case", and they may as well decline it, to which your recourse is... take them to court? In California?
Compare that to the medieval market/bazaar: the seller shows you the goods, you show them the geld; you inspect the item(s), they inspect the payment(s). You either both agree to the exchange, or not. Symmetry.
And no, I'm not advocating traveling back in time. I'm advocating for more symmetry between the selling and the buying sides.
I like your way of articulating. I've been describing things in much harsher terms lately along the lines of "modern economy is a scam".
Thinking of things like how Comcast quietly bumps your bill up every year unless you call and argue with them. Or when I rented a storage unit at a Public Storage that opened next door. They automatically enroll you in their 15/mo "insurance" no matter if you already have a policy and the only way to "opt out" is to contact them in writing and submit a form at least a day AFTER you sign up.
All these little micro-grifts that make these companies millions of dollars at scale is definitely ASYMMETRIC.
Because none of these behaviors are a scam, all here is legal and spelled out in the legalese. And it is all possible because you have authorized _them_ to debit your account, whereas you did not get any way of debiting _their_ account.
As such the "onus of work" is always on you. This is why the "decline by default" to any claim is so powerful - it's marginally free for them, but it's a lot of work for you.
And it's even better with those call centers: have a number to call but no human to answer - how is anyone going to prove that there are no humans vs "you haven't waited long enough"? (...not even a rhetorical question, how could you?)
I have no good ideas how to solve it properly, because this is a balance thing and it's way too easy to reverse the positions instead of balancing them.
As a natural person (vs a legal entity) I do always try to opt for post-paid wherever possible. And I have heard and read about "escrow" but never seen it in practice... Though that idea would be my starting point.
<rant>
I order about 300 packages per year, and usually only get ~3/yr that go this way:
Thanks for buying this very specific item of which we have 17 listed as available for the next day delivery! Unfortunately we actually have none of them. As you have already paid us we may [be bothered to try] obtain one for you, but it will take a month or more. Or you can try to select other items from our offer [which we may have or not have]. And finally we are legally obliged to return your money if you wish so, for that you'll need to fill the specific forms and we have 7 days to process, but we guarantee you'll get your money back eventually!
And at this point my thought is: Fine, just gimme the option to pay somewhere between 0 days and 3 months after I got the product/service. Oh and also given "next day delivery" is actually "next day to 3+ months later", I'd like the option to maybe-pay the listed price or perhaps 16% of it. After all details don't matter!...
</rant>
got one of their laser printers years ago, still working fine.
no joke did a firmware update on it ~3 weeks ago. found an IP on the network I didn't recognize, was the printer's DHCP, decided to get weird and log into the online interface, ran the update.
It's not clear from the article. Are they reducing the staff count so that it naturally averages at at least 15 minutes to get to an agent or are they literally adding a loop in to make people wait even if an agent is available? While longer waits are not great, I guess I could excuse the first way. If they are just sticking people on hold to make they hang up even when the wait time would have been shorter without an artificial hold, that is just bad.
It's the latter, but is there any effective difference, really? Say that lowering their their staff level from X to Y would result in a 15 minute wait for a smaller, undeterred group of callers. Putting an artificial floor for wait time of 15 minutes would mean that (X-Y) agents are sitting idle while callers are artificially waiting. I assume HP would not continue to employee them, since cost reduction was the point, after all. So it seems like the only difference is order of operations.
> To reaffirm the changes, HP says in the staff memo: "The wait time for each customer is set to 15 minutes - notice the expected wait time is mentioned only in the beginning of the call."
automation happens where market forces want it to happen -- cut costs, make more money.
first, couldn't really do this (easily) without IP telephony, and having IP telephony everywhere; still more dial-up and analog out there than you'd think.
and there is little financial incentive for the company putting you on hold to give a shit or code in the feature to dial you back -- they don't want you getting on the call; it's in their interest for you to give up and hang up the phone. calls getting through == cancelled plans, refunds, and time used by support. so don't do the automation.
now it's so easy it's hard to ignore, and 3rd party tools will reshape that landscape.
reduces my overhead / wait time, doesn't have to do anything crazy or complicated, unlikely to give bad or wrong answers -- it just connects me when someone is on the other side -- and won't be especially expensive
Comcast/Xfinity changed their system last year so that if you try to call and talk with voice to a support human you're sent into a loop that eventually hangs up on you. The only way to talk to a human now is to say you want to cancel your account.
> The only way to talk to a human now is to say you want to cancel your account.
You can physically go to one of their storefronts. Sadly, Comcast is my only option for internet service, and I've found Comcast's online or voice support to be pretty much worthless except for the most minor things. However, I can get more complicated things done by going to one of their physical locations and talking to a real, physical human being.
This is really no different from health insrance companies just automatically denying first attempts at prior authorization: because it increases profits. Increasing waiting times means a certain percentage of peopel will give up or get disconnected and not bother re-trying. That's fewer calls your representatives will have to take so you need fewer of tehm, saving money.
Everywhere you look, from egg prices to electricity prices to broadband prices to medicare care costs, you see price gouging. Some event might be used to justify those prices increases. Profits always need to increase.
Some people will look at all this and say it's fine. These people are modern serfs who think their billionaire lord and masters deserve to be their lord and masters.
Some will see this as a few bad apples and it's a lack of government regulation or a lack of competition, which is the same thing because companies will seek to increase profits by decreasing competition by buying up or merging with competitors.
Eventually you realize all of this is by design. It's a fundamental and systemic problem. It's the internal contridctions in capitalism.
Airlines do it too. One dark pattern I experienced during Covid was that the airline call system was automatically set to hang up after 30 minutes. If you were lucky you'd get to speak to a representative at around minute 25, but never get your ticket rebooked.
It's the same as sign-up being one-click CC details input, but cancelling the account/subscriptions requires you to send a paper mail to America, with parcel tracking, and then The Company has 90 (business) days to "review your case", and they may as well decline it, to which your recourse is... take them to court? In California?
Compare that to the medieval market/bazaar: the seller shows you the goods, you show them the geld; you inspect the item(s), they inspect the payment(s). You either both agree to the exchange, or not. Symmetry.
And no, I'm not advocating traveling back in time. I'm advocating for more symmetry between the selling and the buying sides.
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