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What if one feels uncomfortable with inventing a fictional person? Is signing emails 'Company X Accounts Dept' a reasonable compromise? Opinions?
by kranner 16y ago
What if one feels uncomfortable with inventing a fictional person? Is signing emails 'Company X Accounts Dept' a reasonable compromise?
Opinions?
- patio11 16y agoYou'd be shocked how easy it is to make The Computer into a bad cop. This is your automatic notice: our accounting system has classified your account as delinquent because $YOU_FAIL_AT_TIMELY_BILL_PAYMENT. If you do not bring your account into positive status, the system will mark your account for escalation of collection activities. To make a payment, $PAY_AS_AGREED_YOU_MAMOO. If you believe you are seeing this message in error, $FEEL_FREE_TO_ASK_ME_TO_MARK_YOU_CURRENT_BEFORE_YOU_PAY because $THAT_WILL_BE_A_FUN_CONVERSATION. You can automate paper nastygrams -- not that anyone will notice if they're actually sent by hand, mind you...
- kranner 16y agoGood point, you've probably just summarized Paypal's Antifraud department.
- JabavuAdams 16y agoI like it! That reminds me of the "Dear $CandidateName$," PFO letter I got after a job interview...
- notahacker 16y agoThe best thing about an apparently automated system is that when they call you to complain you're not undermining any relationships by saying "yeah... our system does that. So have you paid yet? Why not?"
- andrewljohnson 16y agoI like how you present a reasonable solution, in the face of a blogger presenting a total nutjob idea addressing the same problem. It IS much more scary to get semi-automated collections threats, than to talk to some fake guy on email.
- jason_tko 16y agoI'm sorry I gave you the wrong impression with that article. My aim was to outline how important this kind of separation is, and I then provided an example of a strategy that I don't employ myself, but other people do. Unfortunately, instead of a discussion based around separation of accounts people and the service providing people, the discussion turned to the ethics of creating fictional employees. I've edited the article in order to keep the focus on the point I was trying to make. In any case, thanks for taking the time to comment.