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That seems like a skewed test that is biased companies that work at scale. It's much harder to have good customer service for every user when you're making penn

That seems like a skewed test that is biased companies that work at scale. It's much harder to have good customer service for every user when you're making pennies per user but bank on having billions of users.

eigenvector 6y ago
It's also much easier to do hard things when you're making billions of dollars. I find the argument that Google et al cannot -afford- to do anything but treat their users in an arbitrary, high-hanged way unconvincing.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  It doesn't matter how much money they make, what matters is how much they're making per user, and how much it would cost per user to provide them to full customer support. You can get decent Google customer support if you pay 1$/month and get Google One (one top of extra storage space). https://one.google.com/about/support https://one.google.com/about/support
  - eigenvector 6y ago
    No, at a basic level how much they make per user is not the user's problem. That's Google's chosen business model. You cannot sell a defective thing then when the customer comes back say "sorry, we actually only made $0.01 on that so we don't provide customer service, goodbye." Your obligation to not, for instance, arbitrarily revoke someone's account access causing them measurable harm is not dependent on whether you deem yourself to have a sufficient level of profit on the transaction. Companies have obligations that external and not bounded entirely by their commercial whims.
    - nearbuy 6y ago
      That's the reality for companies with high volume and low margins. The number of customer service representatives per user they can hire is proportional to their profits per user. You can't change that with legislation. A company making 1/10th the profit per user cannot spend as much on customer service. At best, you can make laws that effectively ban companies from having low margins. If I buy something from my local dollar store, they have a no return policy. The items are typically low quality. But they cost a dollar. My cell company, on the other hand, charges around $60/month for a phone plan, so they have more customer service representatives.
      - eigenvector 6y ago
        In almost every developed country in the world except the United States, it would be illegal to sell a defective item then refuse to refund or replace it, whether it's $1 or $10,000. Consumer protection regimes are a real thing that exist, although maybe not in your jurisdiction. So yes, you can legislate that. By making merchants bear the cost of defects and take a loss on replacing the product, you make it no longer a viable business model to constantly sell broken stuff. It's a proper alignment of incentives. In a world where Google is being sued for antitrust in part because of a monopoly they built by giving stuff away for free, perhaps making it harder to have a "low margins, but we aren't accountable for anything" business is not a bad thing. You're also building a strawman - that Google would need to spend a lot per user on customer service to start actually providing customer service instead of refusing to do so for most of its products. It would need to spend a lot in absolute dollars, sure, but the vast majority of users would have precisely zero support interactions. No one is saying that Google should have an army of 500,000 support reps. Just that it should actually be possible to contact Google without knowing someone who works there.
        nearbuy 6y ago
        To expand on the dollar store example, they will take back an item that was sold outright broken or defective (although I've never seen anyone actually return in item to the dollar store). They don't have to take back all their low quality products when they perform poorly or break, nor do they offer customer support. I think you're building a strawman here. This is a thread about Google having poor customer service, and you're trying to frame it as if Google is refusing to refund defective products. Those are not the same. Google refunds or replaces defective products they sell. Google has some customer support. It's not very good. Google has several billion users and only about 100k employees total. That's somewhere around 1 employee per 30k users. Customer support quality is a continuum, not a binary thing. The comment you replied to was pointing out that a company that makes a small amount per user cannot afford the same level of customer service as a company that makes a lot per user. No one in the thread said Google couldn't hire more customer support. They said looking at customer support quality as an "ad-hoc monopoly test" is biased against companies with huge user bases and small margins per user.
    - ehsankia 6y ago
      > You cannot sell a defective thing That's the flaw in your argument, they didn't sell anything... You are using a free product, which you are not obligated to use and didn't pay for.
lhorie 6y ago
Amazon has pretty good customer service, IMHO. I've even had good experiences w/ AT&T of all companies (though presumably that's because there's virtually no barrier for switching providers in SF)
- ehsankia 6y ago
  You get excellent support as a Prime member paying $10+ a month, or you've just spend hundreds shopping there. You're not a free ad-based user like with Google. I'm not sure how much these numbers hold up, but a quick search claims that they get around 150-250M monthly users. That's still a whole order of magnitude away from 1-2B Google gets.
  - lhorie 6y ago
    Honestly, I got good support even for things that logically would not yield profits (in my case, I erroneously bought a music book for the wrong instrument, called in to explain my mistake, and they subsequently shipped the right one for free, without even asking me to return the other one). I don't have prime and I'm not one of those people that always shops amazon. I read recently that a lot of amazon returns just end up in the dumpster. It feels like they consider the logistics of returns in their customer retention strategy.
katzgrau 6y ago
> but bank on having billions of users At the point where you have billions of users, you may just be a...
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Silicon Valley might be resistant to admit operating at scale is just bad for people. At a certain scale a lot of societal harms manage to fall through the cracks.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  So what's the solution? Limit who can use Youtube? Charge for usage of Youtubes? So only those who can afford it are able to get tutorials on how to fix their sink and tie a tie but poor people can keep getting poorer?
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    >So only those who can afford it are able to get tutorials on how to fix their sink and tie a tie but poor people can keep getting poorer? does the same logic also apply to the tools you use to fix the sink? I really have to laugh about this borderline gaslighting attempt that Google and Facebook have come up with to justify their ad monopolies. As if having to pay for information is any more objectionable than having to pay for anything else. The only reason they've concocted this terrible argument is because free stuff is how they get their fangs into everyone.
    - ehsankia 6y ago
      It was just an example, the point is that these services have democratized access to information and have greatly helped bring up less wealthy people. Ad-based model has it's fair share of problems, but being able to give everyone, even the poor who wouldn't able to afford it, access to information that can help them improve their lives, is easily the best argument for that model.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    No, I think success in large platforms has depended on being able to automate away human problems, ignoring the harm that causes. We need to mandate human moderation and customer service, as well as a robust and transparent appeal process. And we need to strip Section 230 immunity so platforms have real liability behind their content decisions. Platforms above a certain scale will either require enough manpower to handle them appropriately, or will break down at a certain size and lead to a wider market.
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
Double Click / Google Ads doesn't have billions of users. It is unbelievable how much money people spend on Ads and still get really bad customer service. I hear things are (somehow) even worse with FB Ads customer service.

eigenvector 6y ago

It's also much easier to do hard things when you're making billions of dollars. I find the argument that Google et al cannot -afford- to do anything but treat their users in an arbitrary, high-hanged way unconvincing.

ehsankia 6y ago
It doesn't matter how much money they make, what matters is how much they're making per user, and how much it would cost per user to provide them to full customer support. You can get decent Google customer support if you pay 1$/month and get Google One (one top of extra storage space). https://one.google.com/about/support https://one.google.com/about/support
- eigenvector 6y ago
  No, at a basic level how much they make per user is not the user's problem. That's Google's chosen business model. You cannot sell a defective thing then when the customer comes back say "sorry, we actually only made $0.01 on that so we don't provide customer service, goodbye." Your obligation to not, for instance, arbitrarily revoke someone's account access causing them measurable harm is not dependent on whether you deem yourself to have a sufficient level of profit on the transaction. Companies have obligations that external and not bounded entirely by their commercial whims.
  - nearbuy 6y ago
    That's the reality for companies with high volume and low margins. The number of customer service representatives per user they can hire is proportional to their profits per user. You can't change that with legislation. A company making 1/10th the profit per user cannot spend as much on customer service. At best, you can make laws that effectively ban companies from having low margins. If I buy something from my local dollar store, they have a no return policy. The items are typically low quality. But they cost a dollar. My cell company, on the other hand, charges around $60/month for a phone plan, so they have more customer service representatives.
    - eigenvector 6y ago
      In almost every developed country in the world except the United States, it would be illegal to sell a defective item then refuse to refund or replace it, whether it's $1 or $10,000. Consumer protection regimes are a real thing that exist, although maybe not in your jurisdiction. So yes, you can legislate that. By making merchants bear the cost of defects and take a loss on replacing the product, you make it no longer a viable business model to constantly sell broken stuff. It's a proper alignment of incentives. In a world where Google is being sued for antitrust in part because of a monopoly they built by giving stuff away for free, perhaps making it harder to have a "low margins, but we aren't accountable for anything" business is not a bad thing. You're also building a strawman - that Google would need to spend a lot per user on customer service to start actually providing customer service instead of refusing to do so for most of its products. It would need to spend a lot in absolute dollars, sure, but the vast majority of users would have precisely zero support interactions. No one is saying that Google should have an army of 500,000 support reps. Just that it should actually be possible to contact Google without knowing someone who works there.
      - nearbuy 6y ago
        To expand on the dollar store example, they will take back an item that was sold outright broken or defective (although I've never seen anyone actually return in item to the dollar store). They don't have to take back all their low quality products when they perform poorly or break, nor do they offer customer support. I think you're building a strawman here. This is a thread about Google having poor customer service, and you're trying to frame it as if Google is refusing to refund defective products. Those are not the same. Google refunds or replaces defective products they sell. Google has some customer support. It's not very good. Google has several billion users and only about 100k employees total. That's somewhere around 1 employee per 30k users. Customer support quality is a continuum, not a binary thing. The comment you replied to was pointing out that a company that makes a small amount per user cannot afford the same level of customer service as a company that makes a lot per user. No one in the thread said Google couldn't hire more customer support. They said looking at customer support quality as an "ad-hoc monopoly test" is biased against companies with huge user bases and small margins per user.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    > You cannot sell a defective thing That's the flaw in your argument, they didn't sell anything... You are using a free product, which you are not obligated to use and didn't pay for.

lhorie 6y ago

Amazon has pretty good customer service, IMHO. I've even had good experiences w/ AT&T of all companies (though presumably that's because there's virtually no barrier for switching providers in SF)

ehsankia 6y ago
You get excellent support as a Prime member paying $10+ a month, or you've just spend hundreds shopping there. You're not a free ad-based user like with Google. I'm not sure how much these numbers hold up, but a quick search claims that they get around 150-250M monthly users. That's still a whole order of magnitude away from 1-2B Google gets.
- lhorie 6y ago
  Honestly, I got good support even for things that logically would not yield profits (in my case, I erroneously bought a music book for the wrong instrument, called in to explain my mistake, and they subsequently shipped the right one for free, without even asking me to return the other one). I don't have prime and I'm not one of those people that always shops amazon. I read recently that a lot of amazon returns just end up in the dumpster. It feels like they consider the logistics of returns in their customer retention strategy.

katzgrau 6y ago

> but bank on having billions of users At the point where you have billions of users, you may just be a...

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

Silicon Valley might be resistant to admit operating at scale is just bad for people. At a certain scale a lot of societal harms manage to fall through the cracks.

ehsankia 6y ago
So what's the solution? Limit who can use Youtube? Charge for usage of Youtubes? So only those who can afford it are able to get tutorials on how to fix their sink and tie a tie but poor people can keep getting poorer?
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >So only those who can afford it are able to get tutorials on how to fix their sink and tie a tie but poor people can keep getting poorer? does the same logic also apply to the tools you use to fix the sink? I really have to laugh about this borderline gaslighting attempt that Google and Facebook have come up with to justify their ad monopolies. As if having to pay for information is any more objectionable than having to pay for anything else. The only reason they've concocted this terrible argument is because free stuff is how they get their fangs into everyone.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    It was just an example, the point is that these services have democratized access to information and have greatly helped bring up less wealthy people. Ad-based model has it's fair share of problems, but being able to give everyone, even the poor who wouldn't able to afford it, access to information that can help them improve their lives, is easily the best argument for that model.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  No, I think success in large platforms has depended on being able to automate away human problems, ignoring the harm that causes. We need to mandate human moderation and customer service, as well as a robust and transparent appeal process. And we need to strip Section 230 immunity so platforms have real liability behind their content decisions. Platforms above a certain scale will either require enough manpower to handle them appropriately, or will break down at a certain size and lead to a wider market.

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago

Double Click / Google Ads doesn't have billions of users. It is unbelievable how much money people spend on Ads and still get really bad customer service. I hear things are (somehow) even worse with FB Ads customer service.