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I'd ask that we consider a different spectrum than good and bad, but naive and abused. Look at LL Bean and their cancellation of their lifetime warranty [1]. T

I'd ask that we consider a different spectrum than good and bad, but naive and abused. Look at LL Bean and their cancellation of their lifetime warranty [1]. That linked article talks about abuse of the warranty, but I'm fairly sure people were trolling through ebay + thrift shops and buying items to return and resell as new. That's abuse and they had to make changes to it. Or consider how widely reviled PayPal is for how they "take" their customer's money and lock it up. I had a friend who worked there that described it as "a fraud detection company that occasionally takes payments". You can't even imagine the ingenious lengths people go to commit fraud and rip PayPal and other people off. So they have by necessity become this draconian organization. When Google/Gmail was small it was easier, they were more naive. But now? I imagine every scammer in the world is trying to corrupt and steal gmail accounts as a stepping stone to greater fraud - and some significant portion are trying to do so by claiming that someone else's account was hacked and that ney need special access. I don't think there's any easy answers to these thorny problems but forcing it into a false good/bad dichotomy isn't helping. 1 - https://slate.com/business/2018/02/l-l-bean-has-ended-unlimited-returns-and-i-am-fairly-certain-its-my-fault.html https://slate.com/business/2018/02/l-l-bean-has-ended-unlimi...

dhimes 9y ago
Perhaps, but I think GP has a good first step: gave even the most rudimentary of ways to speak with someone (livechat, helpdesk, whatever) Otherwise, we are just guessing. Some will give them the benefit of the doubt. Some will assume the worst. The truth is simply somewhere in between. The opposite of the LL Bean anecdote is a company that gave a lifetime warranty and made a name for itself in the nautical outerwear industry. People bought in part because of the warranty. After a few years they started having to make good on the warranty- not because of fraud, but because out wear doesn't last forever.
- dralley 9y ago
  That's reasonable, but also consider that the Apple iCloud "hacking" from a few years back was largely social engineering Apple's tech support into providing them with enough information to get access.
Cw67NTN8F 9y ago
>>When Google/Gmail was small it was easier, they were more naive. But now? Poor Google. Even with ~ $100 Billion in yearly revenue and over $100 BILLION in cash they cannot hire customer support people? 10,000 new employees in a third world country at, say, $25,000 year (including other expenses) costs $250,000,000 a year. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/key-statistics?p=GOOG https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/key-statistics?p=GOOG

dhimes 9y ago

Perhaps, but I think GP has a good first step: gave even the most rudimentary of ways to speak with someone (livechat, helpdesk, whatever) Otherwise, we are just guessing. Some will give them the benefit of the doubt. Some will assume the worst. The truth is simply somewhere in between. The opposite of the LL Bean anecdote is a company that gave a lifetime warranty and made a name for itself in the nautical outerwear industry. People bought in part because of the warranty. After a few years they started having to make good on the warranty- not because of fraud, but because out wear doesn't last forever.

dralley 9y ago
That's reasonable, but also consider that the Apple iCloud "hacking" from a few years back was largely social engineering Apple's tech support into providing them with enough information to get access.

Cw67NTN8F 9y ago

>>When Google/Gmail was small it was easier, they were more naive. But now? Poor Google. Even with ~ $100 Billion in yearly revenue and over $100 BILLION in cash they cannot hire customer support people? 10,000 new employees in a third world country at, say, $25,000 year (including other expenses) costs $250,000,000 a year. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/key-statistics?p=GOOG https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/key-statistics?p=GOOG