6 ms·

Would you be ok if this law allowed a company to charge for the support request? Like, $50 to have a human review your dispute?

rexf 6y ago
They would actually provide support? That's amazing! Right now, the solution is to contact them through social media campaigns and hope the right people step in to fix. $50 could be steep for many and trivial for others, but that's a different discussion.
bleepblorp 6y ago
Allowing companies to charge their customers $50 to resolve account access issues would only give companies an incentive to make 'mistakes' so they can earn $50 by spending a few minutes 'fixing' the error. Customers shouldn't be billed to fix mistakes that aren't their fault. In a functioning market, money is supposed to flow away from faults, not towards them.
- thoraway1010 6y ago
  You miss the point entirely. Currently because the volume of bogus support requests is so enourmously high, and the fraud attempts also very high - the cost to properly do something like handle account lockout requests properly (on the scale of billions of users) would be EXTREMELY high. Google is actually pretty clear for consumer accounts, if you lock yourself out your content is lost and they suggest setting up a new account. Cell phone companies do handle this, you can do things like sim swaps etc with a real person - but you are usually paying $50 - $100 per MONTH with them. And even there plenty of folks have complained of having 2FA codes stolen as a result of this convenience. If they could charge $50 or $100 to provide paid support (a situation that is actually very COMMON at the enterprise level) for at least some people this will be worth doing. Then the business case is there to staff / resource etc the fix. Currently, with youtube / gmail etc, the revenue per user is so low it will NEVER make economic sense to have humans dealing with an account. But keep on banning paid support and you'll keep on getting no support.
  - bradly 6y ago
    > Currently, with youtube / gmail etc, the revenue per user is so low it will NEVER make economic sense to have humans dealing with an account. Google made over $6 billion in profit in one quarter this year. YouTube had revenue over $5 billion in one quarter. They announced a $25 billion stock buyback. Google doesn't offer support because they choose not to.
    - throwaway_1299 6y ago
      I work in a similar space and it is significantly complex and expensive to do this. Back of the napkin math - * Lets say on average customers contact Google support once a year for each product they use. That's 0.25 tickets per user per quarter. * Consider Google has ~10billion monthly productuser combinations (9 products have 1B+, most have significantly more) That is 2.5M tickets/support requests a quarter. ~28M tickets a day * If we consider an average ticket take ~3 mins to resolve, thats ~155k hours a day * If we take an employee being productive for 7 hours a day, that's 22k employees * If you take a 1:10 ratio, that is 2205,220 and 22 - 1st, 2nd and 3rd line managers. * Take the cost to be an average of 30k,60k,150k and 300k for each of those layers, thats ($661, $132M, $33M, $6.6M) which totals to ~$833M per quarter * The real world costs for this will probably be anywhere between 2X to 3X of this because all of these people come with other costs like infrastructure, tooling, space, etc. So we are looking at ~$1.7B to $2.5B. One might be tempted to say that money can be saved vs my estimates but keep in mind the challenges of localization, time zones, compliance etc is also significant and will probably mean an even larger expense. So yeah, it would be ~40% of the quarterly profit. Sure this is an expense so tax etc can be changed but my argument would be that we are severely underestimating the complexity and challenge at each step. So yes, I do think it will never make economic sense unless you are on the platform with sufficiently high spend. Just like every single other economic system we have out there.
      - macintux 6y ago
        Then maybe don’t build your business on a model that makes it impossible to do the right thing for your users.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  I was thinking about for free services... having to provide free human support for free services is going to make it impossible to support any free service.
TheChaplain 6y ago
Not sure that would solve it. Instead forcing companies to provide a free human based support channel for billing- and authentication issues related to paid services is a better option. I believe it would take most companies very short time to invent working solutions to problems.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  Right, I was thinking more for free services (like basic gmail)
- throwaway_1299 6y ago
  Do you really want Google to have your real identity?
toast0 6y ago
How about I deposit $50, if they agree it's their fault, they give me the $50 back and fix it. If they don't agree it's their fault, they keep the $50 and fix it. If they don't agree there's a problem, I get $40 back. If they keep my $50 and I still think they're wrong, an appeal process is available, etc.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  Good idea!, or something nearby / a bit similar. Sort of an insurance, for getting help if locked out
notyourday 6y ago
Yes, and if they (the company) are wrong, then the customer automatically gets several hundred times the amount.

rexf 6y ago

They would actually provide support? That's amazing! Right now, the solution is to contact them through social media campaigns and hope the right people step in to fix. $50 could be steep for many and trivial for others, but that's a different discussion.

bleepblorp 6y ago

Allowing companies to charge their customers $50 to resolve account access issues would only give companies an incentive to make 'mistakes' so they can earn $50 by spending a few minutes 'fixing' the error. Customers shouldn't be billed to fix mistakes that aren't their fault. In a functioning market, money is supposed to flow away from faults, not towards them.

thoraway1010 6y ago
You miss the point entirely. Currently because the volume of bogus support requests is so enourmously high, and the fraud attempts also very high - the cost to properly do something like handle account lockout requests properly (on the scale of billions of users) would be EXTREMELY high. Google is actually pretty clear for consumer accounts, if you lock yourself out your content is lost and they suggest setting up a new account. Cell phone companies do handle this, you can do things like sim swaps etc with a real person - but you are usually paying $50 - $100 per MONTH with them. And even there plenty of folks have complained of having 2FA codes stolen as a result of this convenience. If they could charge $50 or $100 to provide paid support (a situation that is actually very COMMON at the enterprise level) for at least some people this will be worth doing. Then the business case is there to staff / resource etc the fix. Currently, with youtube / gmail etc, the revenue per user is so low it will NEVER make economic sense to have humans dealing with an account. But keep on banning paid support and you'll keep on getting no support.
- bradly 6y ago
  > Currently, with youtube / gmail etc, the revenue per user is so low it will NEVER make economic sense to have humans dealing with an account. Google made over $6 billion in profit in one quarter this year. YouTube had revenue over $5 billion in one quarter. They announced a $25 billion stock buyback. Google doesn't offer support because they choose not to.
  - throwaway_1299 6y ago
    I work in a similar space and it is significantly complex and expensive to do this. Back of the napkin math - * Lets say on average customers contact Google support once a year for each product they use. That's 0.25 tickets per user per quarter. * Consider Google has ~10billion monthly productuser combinations (9 products have 1B+, most have significantly more) That is 2.5M tickets/support requests a quarter. ~28M tickets a day * If we consider an average ticket take ~3 mins to resolve, thats ~155k hours a day * If we take an employee being productive for 7 hours a day, that's 22k employees * If you take a 1:10 ratio, that is 2205,220 and 22 - 1st, 2nd and 3rd line managers. * Take the cost to be an average of 30k,60k,150k and 300k for each of those layers, thats ($661, $132M, $33M, $6.6M) which totals to ~$833M per quarter * The real world costs for this will probably be anywhere between 2X to 3X of this because all of these people come with other costs like infrastructure, tooling, space, etc. So we are looking at ~$1.7B to $2.5B. One might be tempted to say that money can be saved vs my estimates but keep in mind the challenges of localization, time zones, compliance etc is also significant and will probably mean an even larger expense. So yeah, it would be ~40% of the quarterly profit. Sure this is an expense so tax etc can be changed but my argument would be that we are severely underestimating the complexity and challenge at each step. So yes, I do think it will never make economic sense unless you are on the platform with sufficiently high spend. Just like every single other economic system we have out there.
    - macintux 6y ago
      Then maybe don’t build your business on a model that makes it impossible to do the right thing for your users.
cortesoft 6y ago
I was thinking about for free services... having to provide free human support for free services is going to make it impossible to support any free service.

TheChaplain 6y ago

Not sure that would solve it. Instead forcing companies to provide a free human based support channel for billing- and authentication issues related to paid services is a better option. I believe it would take most companies very short time to invent working solutions to problems.

cortesoft 6y ago
Right, I was thinking more for free services (like basic gmail)
throwaway_1299 6y ago
Do you really want Google to have your real identity?

toast0 6y ago

How about I deposit $50, if they agree it's their fault, they give me the $50 back and fix it. If they don't agree it's their fault, they keep the $50 and fix it. If they don't agree there's a problem, I get $40 back. If they keep my $50 and I still think they're wrong, an appeal process is available, etc.

cutemonster 6y ago
Good idea!, or something nearby / a bit similar. Sort of an insurance, for getting help if locked out

notyourday 6y ago

Yes, and if they (the company) are wrong, then the customer automatically gets several hundred times the amount.