11 ms·

DoNotPay app waits on hold for you

130 points by stunt 7y ago

atlasunshrugged 7y ago
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 7y ago
Isn't this basically same service as GetHuman which has been around for years? https://gethuman.com/call-back https://gethuman.com/call-back
- atlasunshrugged 7y ago
  Seems similar, I think I remember a podcast about DoNotPay though and part of the vision was that they would put a bunch of these services into the single app to make it more useful/used more frequently I assume. Maybe that's the core differentiator but not sure
- bberenberg 7y ago
  I used GetHuman once a couple months ago, and they spammed me for weeks after without any ability to unsubscribe.
s3nnyy 7y ago
"Surprisingly, the startup has never been sued." Ok, why should it be sued?
- rpmisms 7y ago
  Translation : "Some exec should have spooked by now"
TallGuyShort 7y ago
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.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  > 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 Why go out of the way to inform them? Whenever I hear “this call may be monitored or recorded,” I figure I’m being given clear consent to record the call in a two-party consent State.
  - TallGuyShort 7y ago
    Well I don't always, actually - I actually had an argument with someone on HN one time who was suggesting that if I didn't tell them I was violating two-party consent even if they said the words "this call may be recorded". But I digress... When I do tell them, it's because I'm trying to achieve what is said in the article: I'm trying to disincentivize the bad behavior from happening in the first place. I want to cut the bullshit out immediately, not just be well-armed to shame them or take them to court later.
martinni 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  I personally think companies purposefully cut costs on customer service, especially if they're monopolies like Comcast who don't have to care about the customer that much. This helps.
dglass 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
  - nickthemagicman 7y ago
    OMG yes! Second this! Privacy.com is amazing! Been using it for months and have to say it's outstanding. I didn't realize they made their money on interchange fees. I thought they were just selling my data...and the app is so good was ok with that.
    - brewdad 7y ago
      Just assuming (not unreasonably) that Privacy.com is selling your data. What a world we live in!
gnicholas 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Same for AT&T.
parliament32 7y ago
Typo in the title, DoNotPay is the correct name. https://donotpay.com/ https://donotpay.com/
joshstrange 7y ago
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 7y ago
  There are a bunch of android call recording apps and on most phones they work without a jailbreak etc.
Chris911 7y ago
I always use Google Hangout's free phone call when calling customer service.
tareqak 7y ago
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/starbucks?jp_cmp=rb/liquid_redirect/off/redirect/na https://www.chase.com/personal/debit-reloadable-cards/starbu...
Animats 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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-ticket-new-york-london/ http://money.com/money/4387657/donotpay-chat-bot-traffic-tic...
xhgdvjky 7y ago
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

130 points by stunt 7y ago

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 7y ago

Isn't this basically same service as GetHuman which has been around for years? https://gethuman.com/call-back https://gethuman.com/call-back

atlasunshrugged 7y ago
Seems similar, I think I remember a podcast about DoNotPay though and part of the vision was that they would put a bunch of these services into the single app to make it more useful/used more frequently I assume. Maybe that's the core differentiator but not sure
bberenberg 7y ago
I used GetHuman once a couple months ago, and they spammed me for weeks after without any ability to unsubscribe.

s3nnyy 7y ago

"Surprisingly, the startup has never been sued." Ok, why should it be sued?

rpmisms 7y ago
Translation : "Some exec should have spooked by now"

TallGuyShort 7y ago

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.

ryandrake 7y ago
> 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 Why go out of the way to inform them? Whenever I hear “this call may be monitored or recorded,” I figure I’m being given clear consent to record the call in a two-party consent State.
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  Well I don't always, actually - I actually had an argument with someone on HN one time who was suggesting that if I didn't tell them I was violating two-party consent even if they said the words "this call may be recorded". But I digress... When I do tell them, it's because I'm trying to achieve what is said in the article: I'm trying to disincentivize the bad behavior from happening in the first place. I want to cut the bullshit out immediately, not just be well-armed to shame them or take them to court later.

martinni 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
nickthemagicman 7y ago
I personally think companies purposefully cut costs on customer service, especially if they're monopolies like Comcast who don't have to care about the customer that much. This helps.

dglass 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  OMG yes! Second this! Privacy.com is amazing! Been using it for months and have to say it's outstanding. I didn't realize they made their money on interchange fees. I thought they were just selling my data...and the app is so good was ok with that.
  - brewdad 7y ago
    Just assuming (not unreasonably) that Privacy.com is selling your data. What a world we live in!

gnicholas 7y ago

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 7y ago
Same for AT&T.

parliament32 7y ago

Typo in the title, DoNotPay is the correct name. https://donotpay.com/ https://donotpay.com/

joshstrange 7y ago

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 7y ago
There are a bunch of android call recording apps and on most phones they work without a jailbreak etc.

Chris911 7y ago

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

tareqak 7y ago

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

Animats 7y ago

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 7y ago
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-ticket-new-york-london/ http://money.com/money/4387657/donotpay-chat-bot-traffic-tic...

xhgdvjky 7y ago

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