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I have no particular opinion about the facts of the specific case in question. But there is something weird about the way customer service is set up these days:

I have no particular opinion about the facts of the specific case in question. But there is something weird about the way customer service is set up these days: 1) Company: Doesn't like dealing with problem users/clients. 2) Company institutes policy saying that they can do whatever they want with no explanation. This makes it more efficient to handle the problem users. 3) Sanctioned users are now more frustrated than before because they aren't even given any explanation of what happened. 4) Users who are tech savvy take to social media or use personal networks to get special dispensations (see: every time someone posts on HN about a problem with their Google account and gets special intervention). 5) Company: Is happy because there is still an informal workaround for dealing with sufficiently motivated users or weird cases. 6) Users: Are left more powerless and potentially frustrated than when they had more sane tech support channels, but the company doesn't have to care about this. This seems really suboptimal and the OP's comments on power imbalances seem on target. [edit: formatting, wording.]

nugget 8y ago
Imagine a world in which Experian or Equifax would only fix a mistake on your credit report if you had enough followers to embarrass them on social media. This is where appropriate consumer protection laws come into play. The whole idea feels intuitively like a silly overreach to me since I watched Twitter, Airbnb, and these other services grow from nothing and so I take them less seriously, whereas banks and credit bureaus have existed as giants since I was born. On the other hand, one could imagine GDPR adding a rule that users must be provided with a detailed explanation and an appeals process before accounts can be deleted, and it wouldn't seem too burdensome when compared with the rest of the regulation.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  To be fair that actually might be an improvement for those two companies.
- FussyZeus 8y ago
  People seem to be naturally anti-regulation, failing to see that those regulations don't exist purely upon the whims of bureaucrats, but chiefly to address previous issues brought to the regulator's attention. Sometime in the last century, this idea was implanted by big businesses in the media and therefore the thoughts of the citizenry that regulation is more than anything, just people who couldn't succeed in business bullying people who are, and that shit is so fucking dangerous that it makes me shake. Amazon, AirBNB, Google, Facebook, Apple, none of these companies give a FUCK about you any further than they are legally required to, not one iota further, and we constantly bemoan our politicians over having a "too regulated" business environment.
  - aeorgnoieang 8y ago
    But who regulates the regulators? As bad as this example is, have you never heard of the nightmares people fall into dealing with government bureaucracies? If anything, they're much much worse than the worst that companies inflict. Regulatory capture is a real thing too. Regulation isn't obviously positive just because there are reasons people trot out to justify it. You're right, companies don't generally care about me. But neither does the Social Security Administration, the Department of Justice, my local police department, my local school board, or any post office in which I've ever found myself.
    - 394549 8y ago
      > But who regulates the regulators? As bad as this example is, have you never heard of the nightmares people fall into dealing with government bureaucracies? If anything, they're much much worse than the worst that companies inflict. I think that last sentence could only be honestly written by someone who's lived their whole life in a society protected by strong regulatory structures. The massive benefits of regulation are taken for granted and forgotten, but the problems of implementation that still exist are magnified out of proportion. Government bureaucracy is certainly not perfect, but lets not kid ourselves that it's worse than the alternative. And the answer to your question is: a functioning legislature that's accountable to its constituents, and competently exercises its oversight role. > Regulatory capture is a real thing too. But rather than a call for less regulation, it's really a call for better oversight of the regulators.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  >imagine GDPR adding a rule that users must be provided with a detailed explanation and an appeals process before accounts can be deleted Arguably, that's already the case. The combined rights given in articles 15, 16 and 22 make it very difficult to legally justify a policy of banning people without explanation or appeal, especially if that process is automated. At the very least, you have the right to see any data used in that decision-making process and to have any inaccurate data corrected. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-15-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-15-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-16-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-16-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/
  - hrnnnnnn 8y ago
    This is great, thanks for the links!
  - tripzilch 8y ago
    I'd expect as much--since you can't refuse service to someone for the stated reason of having the wrong skin colour or religion, you of course also can't refuse service without stating any reason at all. That rule doesn't exist just to protect consumers only from being discriminated to their face. I'm kind of surprised that this is in the GDPR, I thought it had been part of consumer protection regulations for much longer. Maybe that was only in specific EU jurisdictions.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- gnode 8y ago
  > GDPR From the article: > ...have exercised our discretion under our Terms of Service to disable your account(s) The language here implies that the account still exists in a suspended state, and is not deleted. If you're a european, under the GDPR they must give you all your data if you ask for it. Maybe this would include the reason they banned the account. Otherwise, you can at least demand that they erase the data they're holding only to your disadvantage.
  - gwright 8y ago
    It isn't clear to me that the GDPR requires disclosure of data that is related to a person but was not created by or provided by that person. So complaints from user1 about user2 or customer service notes about user2 wouldn't be considered personal data of user2 and thus wouldn't fall under GDPR rules. If this isn't the correct interpretation, I would appreciate a pointer to something in the GDPR that elaborates on this.
    - M2Ys4U 8y ago
      >It isn't clear to me that the GDPR requires disclosure of data that is related to a person but was not created by or provided by that person. Why wouldn't it? If it's data about an identifiable individual then - by definition - it is personal data. Furthermore, in the ICO's recent report into political parties' use of personal data[0], they expressed the following view: "Our investigation found that political parties did not regard inferred data as personal information as it was not factual information. However, the ICO’s view is that as this information is based on assumptions about individuals’ interests and preferences and can be attributed to specific individuals, then it is personal information and the requirements of data protection law apply to it." [0] https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/2259369/democracy-disrupted-110718.pdf https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/2259369/democracy... p29
      - gwright 8y ago
        There is a difference between the interpretation of the phrase "personal data" within the context of the GDPR and outside the context of GDPR. At least I think there is a difference. For example, consider a website that maintains a collection of birthdays for public figures derived from public sources (historical documents, news accounts, social media posts from the public figures themselves, etc.). In many jurisdictions the birth dates might even be available via public record searches. Clearly the birth dates are "personal data" in the colloquial sense of the phrase, but I don't think that the data as held by the website operator would be subject to the GDPR provisions, right?
- benologist 8y ago
  I think we will actually see the right to have an account be instated and the right to permanently ban people taken away from websites, now that we can see their lifespan may actually be decades and the banning becomes profoundly disproportionate for non-criminal activity. It's analogous to the MPAA/RIAA demanding to disconnect people for piracy, except it might have already been in effect for over 2 decades for some people and websites.
- ahoy 8y ago
  I'd rather imagine a world where Experian or Equifax don't have a credit report on me, but I agree with the crux of your message.
  - emaginniss 8y ago
    What would that world look like? When you wanted to borrow money, how would the lender expect that they have a good idea of your risk profile? You could tell them all of the companies with which you've had a good relationship, but ignore the ones where you've failed to pay them. If you could default or discharge your obligations without any repercussions, that would essentially end the ability for people to get loans without collateral. Apartment rental companies wouldn't know whether you had broken leases in the past. This would make the entire world much more conservative with their money because they'd have to treat everyone as the same risk profile. There would be no benefit for good economic behavior.
    - brianpgordon 8y ago
      By statute, credit agencies can only keep 7 years of credit history on you. Wouldn't lenders be even better served without that 7-year limit? Yet the limit remains in place, because ultimately the point of all of this is to serve consumers and society at large, not just lenders. It's about finding a balance where economic value is maximized while reasonably protecting consumers. And given the Equifax breach it's not unreasonable to question whether the appropriate balance involves this system continuing to exist at all in its current form.
    - lxxxvi 8y ago
      No credit score in Slovenia. The country still functions...
- tomjen3 8y ago
  As others had said that is almost the case already, and it does give you the right to know the basis for an automated decision and have a human review it.
- wuliwong 8y ago
  What if you don't have enough people voting the same way as you and the government ignores your request for regulations that benefit you?
bsharitt 8y ago
>4) Users who are tech savvy take to social media or use personal networks to get special dispensations (see: every time someone posts on HN about a problem with their Google account and gets special intervention). The only reason I maintain a Twitter account is that it seem to be the only way to engage the "good" customer support at so many companies these days. When I was having trouble with my U-verse TV box, AT&T sent me a new one and then scheduled a tech to come out a few days later to "install" it. I plugged it up and called AT&T to have them activate the box, but they refused to let me give them the relevant serial number from the box to activate it over the phone and were adamant they had to send a tech to do it. I complained into the void on Twitter and AT&T replied asking me to DM them the relevant information(account number, serial number, etc) and they got it turned on in five minutes. They still couldn't/wouldn't cancel the tech visit so he showed up and we told him he wasn't needed.
- J-dawg 8y ago
  > The only reason I maintain a Twitter account is that it seem to be the only way to engage the "good" customer support at so many companies these days. I've heard enough people say the same thing to assume it must be true. I also saw a lot of this type of complaining (usually expressed in hyperbolic, super-outraged language) when I used to use Twitter. This seems very counter intuitive though. Why would a company want to encourage people to make complaints in the most public way possible? It makes the company look bad, and encourages opportunistic complaining (I'm sure there are people who feign outrage over some small issue in the hope of being sent some coupons or a discount code). Surely they'd be better off investing in private complaints channels (email, chat etc), and making it clear that you'll get the fastest response by using those. I wonder if it's because the customer service channels were often outsourced or off-shored years ago, and are hidden behind layers of process and management. Whereas the head of marketing has the company Twitter account on her phone.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    You're getting cause and effect wrong. Because it's public, they act on it. I'm completely certain they'd prefer to be doing off-Twitter support, via the complex phone tree, emails that take 72 hours for a response, etc., but they don't have that option.
wolfgke 8y ago
> This seems really suboptimal and the OP's comments on power imbalances seem on target. There is an easy solution: Tell all your friends that they should avoid companies that have such a policy in their terms of service and create a public blacklist of such companies including an explanation what policy in their terms of service justifies putting the company on this blacklist.
- Bahamut 8y ago
  Good luck convincing people they shouldn't use anything by Google.
  - wolfgke 8y ago
    But you can look at the individual services and tell them what alternatives there exist and what "dubious" terms of service these companies avoid. It is not an all-or-nothing, but an "avoid, except for these two exotic use cases, for which there currently exists no alternative (and as soon as there exists one, drop also these)".
    - Bahamut 8y ago
      Sure, and that probably will hurt such bad actors to some degree, but alternatives also come with downsides too - no product is perfect out there, and people often have different priorities. Not to say I applaud Google's strategy - I think it is horrific.
  - imhoguy 8y ago
    At least they should utilize it with private domain plus run frequent backups of gmail and gdrive stuff. One never knows when one may get unplugged.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  The existence of a power imbalance indicates you can't really do without the other party. The big companies have amazing economies of scale, and consumers (on their good side) can benefit greatly from them. There's a handful of airlines, two mobile networks, one ISP for most people, etc. edit: Also, in my experience running businesses, the 10% of the customers cause 90% of the problems, so eliminating them results in much greater profits and cost savings. And if the problem customer is not high value, then there isn't much incentive in dealing with them.
sehugg 8y ago
This sounds familiar -- Amazon suddenly blocked the Kindle version of my book about 8-bit arcade game programming (https://www.amazon.com/Making-8-bit-Arcade-Games-C/dp/1545484759 https://www.amazon.com/Making-8-bit-Arcade-Games-C/dp/154548...) and won't provide a path to remediation or give any further response other than "we're upholding our previous decision". Some of the author forums actually recommend emailing Jeff Bezos directly in these situations.
- technologia 8y ago
  I bought a physical copy of your book as a teaching aid for some kids I help tutor, its really great! I can't imagine why Amazon could justify blocking the Kindle version, maybe (and this is a stretch) the scanned content may have triggered some security check?
  - sehugg 8y ago
    Thanks! I appreciate it. I don't know why, could be related to PDF formatting but it's the exact same template as my other book. Could be a trademark claim, or just some grumpy reviewers, without feedback I have no idea. So now I'm selling a downloadable PDF on Gumroad.
    - jjeaff 8y ago
      If you will keep pestering them with an email about what you have done to correct your book (make up some stuff based on their guidelines) and send it over and over and over (waiting until they respond each time), changing it up a bit each time, you'll usually get through to an idiot that will unblock you.
    - technologia 8y ago
      That's great, sorry that Amazon is screwing you this way. I'll direct my students to your Gumroad listing then.
    - russh 8y ago
      I'm not familiar with Gumroad; how do I find your book?
ballenf 8y ago
This is a huge problem inherent in large-scale platform-type businesses in growth stages. The scale required to be competitive in these arenas is such that if support costs scaled linearly they would strangle you. At least until you reach near-monolopy status and can raise prices. These platforms each hit a nadir in customer service before a few embarrassing failures that trigger apologies and more transparency. It's also worth noting that these customer service failures are only newsworthy when the platform has ubiquity. That is, getting banned only matters if it locks you out of a significant portion of a market. As others point out there are some industries that have consumer protections. For example, Visa basically cannot single out individuals to be ineligible for Visa cards. It's worth considering whether these protections should be extended to any company controlling large market segments. Maybe machine learning can (ironically) bring some humanity back to customer service. And I don't mean infuriating, worthless chatbots. I mean instead of having single-criteria lists of "offenses" that trigger bans have machine learning models that can look at customers holistically in a way that would be very difficult to manually program. This approach could be taken now using "dumb" scoring and weighting algorithms, but it would require a lot of manual work tweaking and analyzing.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Why would Visa care to ban anyone from their network? They get paid no matter what, and have zero liability. The banks issuing Visa cards can certainly ban people, and use credit reports to deny applicants. Banks and merchants are the ones eating the fraud/chargeback losses, and they'll drop you in a heartbeat if you're causing them to lose money.
- rajacombinator 8y ago
  There’s no evidence of reversal from nadir, ie it is an ever deepening black hole of “screw the customers.” eg. Google and Apple have no customer service. Generally the approach is fake apology then onwards into the abyss.
ptero 8y ago
Another option for users is to file a complaint with the appropriate regulator, screenshot their submission and provide it to the company in question. For companies that, like AirBnB often operate in the gray area WRT regulations (and for which regulators often appreciate extra firepower) this could elicit a quick response. It is sad that you have to do this, but it might be the most effective option. It might also help others in the same situation.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Sadly in the US, this isn't a channel we have available much. The FCC just announced that they're just gonna tell you to go pound sand unless you pay them. State Attorneys General can still do things, sometimes.
pojkofd00m 8y ago
Man, I'm so happy to read this, exactly how I feel regarding pretty much everything involving a subscription. - Company abuses contract (imo fraudulently but they can always say it's negligence) - Company waits to see if user is motivated enought to take action against them - As more and more company do this, less and less people are capable to keep up with the extra work (support calls, letters, judicial action) and less and less "honest" alternatives exist. => Today's world It's kind of a capitalist darwin selection.
mindslight 8y ago
4a) said savvy users also have to be willing to write these emotionally persuasive victim-narrative posts and pump them on social media. I think this is the polar opposite of what the average tech-focused person wants to be doing. Github stole my 4-character username ("mind") to hand over to some machine learning startup-lookalike. Their official justification is it had been inactive for over two years (it had not), and a third party had reported it (to take, obviously). There was also no pre or even post notice, just the next time I logged in it showed up already changed. I could have easily and promptly responded to any notice - the lack of account activity was due to being occupied with the fallout from a significant death in the family. I tried emailing customer service, but of course there's no need to consider facts when they've got policies. I thought about trying to raise a social media stink when they were being acquired by Microsoft. But at the end of the day it's just not worth trying to craft a narrative to be received by the "web 2.0 class". I had enjoyed having the short name as Github is obviously a common center for bug reports etc, and I figured I'd eventually mirror repositories there. But at this point any illusion of cromulence they had is gone, and repos need to first be published on a real solution anyway. So whatever.
- yding 8y ago
  That other party is called Tiny Mind. Somewhat apropos I guess?
- Diederich 8y ago
  > Github stole my 4-character username ("mind") to hand over to some machine learning startup-lookalike. Wow ok, I'd just like to be crystal clear here. 1. Your github userid was 'mind', and you had used that ID. 2. With no notice, github changed which persons/entities had access to/owned that ID. I assume repos and gists were moved to your new ID? May I ask what they changed it to? Were you a member of any organizations? Thanks.
  - mindslight 8y ago
    1. yes. 2. yes. The complete lack of a notice period is my biggest problem, as I could have easily responded to an email to say that it had not been abandoned. My username was forcibly changed to "mind-zz". I found this out a mere 2 months after it happened, upon logging in. Admittedly, my account did have little activity. I used it to make a bona fide Rust bug report, logged in at various other times to check said bug report or just look around, and then life happened. So there weren't public URLs that were being relied on. Although according to the customer service response, they would have done the exact same thing even if it had copious early activity. Presumably there's more of an invisible line based on how much your usage looks like you're dependent on them, and how much of a public disruption it would cause. But that's the point - the actual Rust repo isn't about to get yanked out from under all of us, and people that fit the mold of creating their new repos on Github are probably fine. But the less you're in the "community" the more you're at the mercy of their arbitrariness.
tlb 8y ago
It's important to keep in mind how many problem users there may be. Trolls can create millions of accounts, and to respond thoughtfully to each one would require orders of magnitude more manpower than the trolls themselves. So every service needs a bulk insta-perma-ban hammer for large-scale trolls. Twitter is banning accounts by the millions in order to make a dent in the trollage. Sadly, there will be false positives. Legitimate users that get mistakenly banned need recourse. Traditionally, your recourse was through the law. But courts are so slow and inefficient that it takes months and thousands of dollars to get even the simplest thing decided, let alone some kind of he-said-she-said dispute like the case here. If I were the OP, I'd just sign up again with a burner phone number.
chongli 8y ago
This has been a problem since humanity moved beyond living in extended family villages. It's the problem of civilization. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Knowing people who have power makes you more powerful. Power, because it depends on popularity, tends to be distributed according to a power law (funny coincidence, that).
tripzilch 8y ago
> there is something weird about the way customer service is set up these days In countries without proper consumer protection laws and regulations, mind you.

nugget 8y ago

Imagine a world in which Experian or Equifax would only fix a mistake on your credit report if you had enough followers to embarrass them on social media. This is where appropriate consumer protection laws come into play. The whole idea feels intuitively like a silly overreach to me since I watched Twitter, Airbnb, and these other services grow from nothing and so I take them less seriously, whereas banks and credit bureaus have existed as giants since I was born. On the other hand, one could imagine GDPR adding a rule that users must be provided with a detailed explanation and an appeals process before accounts can be deleted, and it wouldn't seem too burdensome when compared with the rest of the regulation.

paulie_a 8y ago
To be fair that actually might be an improvement for those two companies.
FussyZeus 8y ago
People seem to be naturally anti-regulation, failing to see that those regulations don't exist purely upon the whims of bureaucrats, but chiefly to address previous issues brought to the regulator's attention. Sometime in the last century, this idea was implanted by big businesses in the media and therefore the thoughts of the citizenry that regulation is more than anything, just people who couldn't succeed in business bullying people who are, and that shit is so fucking dangerous that it makes me shake. Amazon, AirBNB, Google, Facebook, Apple, none of these companies give a FUCK about you any further than they are legally required to, not one iota further, and we constantly bemoan our politicians over having a "too regulated" business environment.
- aeorgnoieang 8y ago
  But who regulates the regulators? As bad as this example is, have you never heard of the nightmares people fall into dealing with government bureaucracies? If anything, they're much much worse than the worst that companies inflict. Regulatory capture is a real thing too. Regulation isn't obviously positive just because there are reasons people trot out to justify it. You're right, companies don't generally care about me. But neither does the Social Security Administration, the Department of Justice, my local police department, my local school board, or any post office in which I've ever found myself.
  - 394549 8y ago
    > But who regulates the regulators? As bad as this example is, have you never heard of the nightmares people fall into dealing with government bureaucracies? If anything, they're much much worse than the worst that companies inflict. I think that last sentence could only be honestly written by someone who's lived their whole life in a society protected by strong regulatory structures. The massive benefits of regulation are taken for granted and forgotten, but the problems of implementation that still exist are magnified out of proportion. Government bureaucracy is certainly not perfect, but lets not kid ourselves that it's worse than the alternative. And the answer to your question is: a functioning legislature that's accountable to its constituents, and competently exercises its oversight role. > Regulatory capture is a real thing too. But rather than a call for less regulation, it's really a call for better oversight of the regulators.
jdietrich 8y ago
>imagine GDPR adding a rule that users must be provided with a detailed explanation and an appeals process before accounts can be deleted Arguably, that's already the case. The combined rights given in articles 15, 16 and 22 make it very difficult to legally justify a policy of banning people without explanation or appeal, especially if that process is automated. At the very least, you have the right to see any data used in that decision-making process and to have any inaccurate data corrected. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-15-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-15-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-16-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-16-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/
- hrnnnnnn 8y ago
  This is great, thanks for the links!
- tripzilch 8y ago
  I'd expect as much--since you can't refuse service to someone for the stated reason of having the wrong skin colour or religion, you of course also can't refuse service without stating any reason at all. That rule doesn't exist just to protect consumers only from being discriminated to their face. I'm kind of surprised that this is in the GDPR, I thought it had been part of consumer protection regulations for much longer. Maybe that was only in specific EU jurisdictions.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
gnode 8y ago
> GDPR From the article: > ...have exercised our discretion under our Terms of Service to disable your account(s) The language here implies that the account still exists in a suspended state, and is not deleted. If you're a european, under the GDPR they must give you all your data if you ask for it. Maybe this would include the reason they banned the account. Otherwise, you can at least demand that they erase the data they're holding only to your disadvantage.
- gwright 8y ago
  It isn't clear to me that the GDPR requires disclosure of data that is related to a person but was not created by or provided by that person. So complaints from user1 about user2 or customer service notes about user2 wouldn't be considered personal data of user2 and thus wouldn't fall under GDPR rules. If this isn't the correct interpretation, I would appreciate a pointer to something in the GDPR that elaborates on this.
  - M2Ys4U 8y ago
    >It isn't clear to me that the GDPR requires disclosure of data that is related to a person but was not created by or provided by that person. Why wouldn't it? If it's data about an identifiable individual then - by definition - it is personal data. Furthermore, in the ICO's recent report into political parties' use of personal data[0], they expressed the following view: "Our investigation found that political parties did not regard inferred data as personal information as it was not factual information. However, the ICO’s view is that as this information is based on assumptions about individuals’ interests and preferences and can be attributed to specific individuals, then it is personal information and the requirements of data protection law apply to it." [0] https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/2259369/democracy-disrupted-110718.pdf https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/2259369/democracy... p29
    - gwright 8y ago
      There is a difference between the interpretation of the phrase "personal data" within the context of the GDPR and outside the context of GDPR. At least I think there is a difference. For example, consider a website that maintains a collection of birthdays for public figures derived from public sources (historical documents, news accounts, social media posts from the public figures themselves, etc.). In many jurisdictions the birth dates might even be available via public record searches. Clearly the birth dates are "personal data" in the colloquial sense of the phrase, but I don't think that the data as held by the website operator would be subject to the GDPR provisions, right?
benologist 8y ago
I think we will actually see the right to have an account be instated and the right to permanently ban people taken away from websites, now that we can see their lifespan may actually be decades and the banning becomes profoundly disproportionate for non-criminal activity. It's analogous to the MPAA/RIAA demanding to disconnect people for piracy, except it might have already been in effect for over 2 decades for some people and websites.
ahoy 8y ago
I'd rather imagine a world where Experian or Equifax don't have a credit report on me, but I agree with the crux of your message.
- emaginniss 8y ago
  What would that world look like? When you wanted to borrow money, how would the lender expect that they have a good idea of your risk profile? You could tell them all of the companies with which you've had a good relationship, but ignore the ones where you've failed to pay them. If you could default or discharge your obligations without any repercussions, that would essentially end the ability for people to get loans without collateral. Apartment rental companies wouldn't know whether you had broken leases in the past. This would make the entire world much more conservative with their money because they'd have to treat everyone as the same risk profile. There would be no benefit for good economic behavior.
  - brianpgordon 8y ago
    By statute, credit agencies can only keep 7 years of credit history on you. Wouldn't lenders be even better served without that 7-year limit? Yet the limit remains in place, because ultimately the point of all of this is to serve consumers and society at large, not just lenders. It's about finding a balance where economic value is maximized while reasonably protecting consumers. And given the Equifax breach it's not unreasonable to question whether the appropriate balance involves this system continuing to exist at all in its current form.
  - lxxxvi 8y ago
    No credit score in Slovenia. The country still functions...
tomjen3 8y ago
As others had said that is almost the case already, and it does give you the right to know the basis for an automated decision and have a human review it.
wuliwong 8y ago
What if you don't have enough people voting the same way as you and the government ignores your request for regulations that benefit you?

bsharitt 8y ago

>4) Users who are tech savvy take to social media or use personal networks to get special dispensations (see: every time someone posts on HN about a problem with their Google account and gets special intervention). The only reason I maintain a Twitter account is that it seem to be the only way to engage the "good" customer support at so many companies these days. When I was having trouble with my U-verse TV box, AT&T sent me a new one and then scheduled a tech to come out a few days later to "install" it. I plugged it up and called AT&T to have them activate the box, but they refused to let me give them the relevant serial number from the box to activate it over the phone and were adamant they had to send a tech to do it. I complained into the void on Twitter and AT&T replied asking me to DM them the relevant information(account number, serial number, etc) and they got it turned on in five minutes. They still couldn't/wouldn't cancel the tech visit so he showed up and we told him he wasn't needed.

J-dawg 8y ago
> The only reason I maintain a Twitter account is that it seem to be the only way to engage the "good" customer support at so many companies these days. I've heard enough people say the same thing to assume it must be true. I also saw a lot of this type of complaining (usually expressed in hyperbolic, super-outraged language) when I used to use Twitter. This seems very counter intuitive though. Why would a company want to encourage people to make complaints in the most public way possible? It makes the company look bad, and encourages opportunistic complaining (I'm sure there are people who feign outrage over some small issue in the hope of being sent some coupons or a discount code). Surely they'd be better off investing in private complaints channels (email, chat etc), and making it clear that you'll get the fastest response by using those. I wonder if it's because the customer service channels were often outsourced or off-shored years ago, and are hidden behind layers of process and management. Whereas the head of marketing has the company Twitter account on her phone.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  You're getting cause and effect wrong. Because it's public, they act on it. I'm completely certain they'd prefer to be doing off-Twitter support, via the complex phone tree, emails that take 72 hours for a response, etc., but they don't have that option.

wolfgke 8y ago

> This seems really suboptimal and the OP's comments on power imbalances seem on target. There is an easy solution: Tell all your friends that they should avoid companies that have such a policy in their terms of service and create a public blacklist of such companies including an explanation what policy in their terms of service justifies putting the company on this blacklist.

Bahamut 8y ago
Good luck convincing people they shouldn't use anything by Google.
- wolfgke 8y ago
  But you can look at the individual services and tell them what alternatives there exist and what "dubious" terms of service these companies avoid. It is not an all-or-nothing, but an "avoid, except for these two exotic use cases, for which there currently exists no alternative (and as soon as there exists one, drop also these)".
  - Bahamut 8y ago
    Sure, and that probably will hurt such bad actors to some degree, but alternatives also come with downsides too - no product is perfect out there, and people often have different priorities. Not to say I applaud Google's strategy - I think it is horrific.
- imhoguy 8y ago
  At least they should utilize it with private domain plus run frequent backups of gmail and gdrive stuff. One never knows when one may get unplugged.
lotsofpulp 8y ago
The existence of a power imbalance indicates you can't really do without the other party. The big companies have amazing economies of scale, and consumers (on their good side) can benefit greatly from them. There's a handful of airlines, two mobile networks, one ISP for most people, etc. edit: Also, in my experience running businesses, the 10% of the customers cause 90% of the problems, so eliminating them results in much greater profits and cost savings. And if the problem customer is not high value, then there isn't much incentive in dealing with them.

sehugg 8y ago

This sounds familiar -- Amazon suddenly blocked the Kindle version of my book about 8-bit arcade game programming (https://www.amazon.com/Making-8-bit-Arcade-Games-C/dp/1545484759 https://www.amazon.com/Making-8-bit-Arcade-Games-C/dp/154548...) and won't provide a path to remediation or give any further response other than "we're upholding our previous decision". Some of the author forums actually recommend emailing Jeff Bezos directly in these situations.

technologia 8y ago
I bought a physical copy of your book as a teaching aid for some kids I help tutor, its really great! I can't imagine why Amazon could justify blocking the Kindle version, maybe (and this is a stretch) the scanned content may have triggered some security check?
- sehugg 8y ago
  Thanks! I appreciate it. I don't know why, could be related to PDF formatting but it's the exact same template as my other book. Could be a trademark claim, or just some grumpy reviewers, without feedback I have no idea. So now I'm selling a downloadable PDF on Gumroad.
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    If you will keep pestering them with an email about what you have done to correct your book (make up some stuff based on their guidelines) and send it over and over and over (waiting until they respond each time), changing it up a bit each time, you'll usually get through to an idiot that will unblock you.
  - technologia 8y ago
    That's great, sorry that Amazon is screwing you this way. I'll direct my students to your Gumroad listing then.
  - russh 8y ago
    I'm not familiar with Gumroad; how do I find your book?

ballenf 8y ago

This is a huge problem inherent in large-scale platform-type businesses in growth stages. The scale required to be competitive in these arenas is such that if support costs scaled linearly they would strangle you. At least until you reach near-monolopy status and can raise prices. These platforms each hit a nadir in customer service before a few embarrassing failures that trigger apologies and more transparency. It's also worth noting that these customer service failures are only newsworthy when the platform has ubiquity. That is, getting banned only matters if it locks you out of a significant portion of a market. As others point out there are some industries that have consumer protections. For example, Visa basically cannot single out individuals to be ineligible for Visa cards. It's worth considering whether these protections should be extended to any company controlling large market segments. Maybe machine learning can (ironically) bring some humanity back to customer service. And I don't mean infuriating, worthless chatbots. I mean instead of having single-criteria lists of "offenses" that trigger bans have machine learning models that can look at customers holistically in a way that would be very difficult to manually program. This approach could be taken now using "dumb" scoring and weighting algorithms, but it would require a lot of manual work tweaking and analyzing.

lotsofpulp 8y ago
Why would Visa care to ban anyone from their network? They get paid no matter what, and have zero liability. The banks issuing Visa cards can certainly ban people, and use credit reports to deny applicants. Banks and merchants are the ones eating the fraud/chargeback losses, and they'll drop you in a heartbeat if you're causing them to lose money.
rajacombinator 8y ago
There’s no evidence of reversal from nadir, ie it is an ever deepening black hole of “screw the customers.” eg. Google and Apple have no customer service. Generally the approach is fake apology then onwards into the abyss.

ptero 8y ago

Another option for users is to file a complaint with the appropriate regulator, screenshot their submission and provide it to the company in question. For companies that, like AirBnB often operate in the gray area WRT regulations (and for which regulators often appreciate extra firepower) this could elicit a quick response. It is sad that you have to do this, but it might be the most effective option. It might also help others in the same situation.

s73v3r_ 8y ago
Sadly in the US, this isn't a channel we have available much. The FCC just announced that they're just gonna tell you to go pound sand unless you pay them. State Attorneys General can still do things, sometimes.

pojkofd00m 8y ago

Man, I'm so happy to read this, exactly how I feel regarding pretty much everything involving a subscription. - Company abuses contract (imo fraudulently but they can always say it's negligence) - Company waits to see if user is motivated enought to take action against them - As more and more company do this, less and less people are capable to keep up with the extra work (support calls, letters, judicial action) and less and less "honest" alternatives exist. => Today's world It's kind of a capitalist darwin selection.

mindslight 8y ago

4a) said savvy users also have to be willing to write these emotionally persuasive victim-narrative posts and pump them on social media. I think this is the polar opposite of what the average tech-focused person wants to be doing. Github stole my 4-character username ("mind") to hand over to some machine learning startup-lookalike. Their official justification is it had been inactive for over two years (it had not), and a third party had reported it (to take, obviously). There was also no pre or even post notice, just the next time I logged in it showed up already changed. I could have easily and promptly responded to any notice - the lack of account activity was due to being occupied with the fallout from a significant death in the family. I tried emailing customer service, but of course there's no need to consider facts when they've got policies. I thought about trying to raise a social media stink when they were being acquired by Microsoft. But at the end of the day it's just not worth trying to craft a narrative to be received by the "web 2.0 class". I had enjoyed having the short name as Github is obviously a common center for bug reports etc, and I figured I'd eventually mirror repositories there. But at this point any illusion of cromulence they had is gone, and repos need to first be published on a real solution anyway. So whatever.

yding 8y ago
That other party is called Tiny Mind. Somewhat apropos I guess?
Diederich 8y ago
> Github stole my 4-character username ("mind") to hand over to some machine learning startup-lookalike. Wow ok, I'd just like to be crystal clear here. 1. Your github userid was 'mind', and you had used that ID. 2. With no notice, github changed which persons/entities had access to/owned that ID. I assume repos and gists were moved to your new ID? May I ask what they changed it to? Were you a member of any organizations? Thanks.
- mindslight 8y ago
  1. yes. 2. yes. The complete lack of a notice period is my biggest problem, as I could have easily responded to an email to say that it had not been abandoned. My username was forcibly changed to "mind-zz". I found this out a mere 2 months after it happened, upon logging in. Admittedly, my account did have little activity. I used it to make a bona fide Rust bug report, logged in at various other times to check said bug report or just look around, and then life happened. So there weren't public URLs that were being relied on. Although according to the customer service response, they would have done the exact same thing even if it had copious early activity. Presumably there's more of an invisible line based on how much your usage looks like you're dependent on them, and how much of a public disruption it would cause. But that's the point - the actual Rust repo isn't about to get yanked out from under all of us, and people that fit the mold of creating their new repos on Github are probably fine. But the less you're in the "community" the more you're at the mercy of their arbitrariness.

tlb 8y ago

It's important to keep in mind how many problem users there may be. Trolls can create millions of accounts, and to respond thoughtfully to each one would require orders of magnitude more manpower than the trolls themselves. So every service needs a bulk insta-perma-ban hammer for large-scale trolls. Twitter is banning accounts by the millions in order to make a dent in the trollage. Sadly, there will be false positives. Legitimate users that get mistakenly banned need recourse. Traditionally, your recourse was through the law. But courts are so slow and inefficient that it takes months and thousands of dollars to get even the simplest thing decided, let alone some kind of he-said-she-said dispute like the case here. If I were the OP, I'd just sign up again with a burner phone number.

chongli 8y ago

This has been a problem since humanity moved beyond living in extended family villages. It's the problem of civilization. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Knowing people who have power makes you more powerful. Power, because it depends on popularity, tends to be distributed according to a power law (funny coincidence, that).

tripzilch 8y ago

> there is something weird about the way customer service is set up these days In countries without proper consumer protection laws and regulations, mind you.