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FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization
- bee_rider 5y agoHuh. Well, I guess this does shift the individual from product to customer, although it seems like quite a drastic measure to take. The real moral I guess is, set up 2FA and maybe that trusted recovery person feature, whatever they call it.
- mofosyne 5y agoMore like product and customer. Not like Facebook has an incentive to treat your data with any more respect if paid or not. Just like how movie tickets and train tickets don't get any cheaper with advertisement everywhere.
- dkonofalski 5y agoNot really, considering that every person who used the trick didn't even open it and returned it immediately after getting their account recovered. Facebook already caught on to this.
- bjtitus 5y agoThe real moral is to not build your company without any modicum of user support. The users who have any clue what 2FA is are not the ones getting their account hacked. They are the 60+ year olds who use Facebook as their only contact with friend and family, unfortunately.
- failuser 5y agoSadly, the moral is that you can build a company without user support. You just need to grow fast past the stage where users can ignore you. Even if you don’t have a FB account you are in danger of imposter creating one for you. A very small percent of customers require support and you can safely ignore them.
- zamalek 5y agoYou're even more-so the product with a FB device on your head. You're just paying to be tracked in a much more intimate way than before, why else would they now require a FB login?
- neither_color 5y agoNobody is buying an Oculus headset right now because they've been recalled and won't be available until August 24th. https://www.oculus.com/quest-2/removable-facial-interface-alert/ https://www.oculus.com/quest-2/removable-facial-interface-al...
- jeremyis 5y agoThis recall is only for the foam face insert. It's removable and probably very inexpensive to make / replace. Oculus is sending free replacements to folks. I am an avid Quest 2 user since ~October. I play Population:one and _love_ it. It's a team-based Battle Royale. I am just blown away by how much fun and social it is. It's been a godsend during the pandemic. The Quest 2 is only $300 - I strongly recommend it!
- 0des 5y agoDoes this model require an FB account to be used as intended?
- renewiltord 5y agoI believe so. It is required by them for store purchases.
- ct520 5y agoYes
- rychco 5y agoYes, so it should absolutely be avoided at all costs.
- wsc981 5y agoFrom what I read there’s an enterprise Oculus Quest 2 model that is more expensive but doesn’t require a Facebook account.
- 5y ago
- oeiiooeieo 5y agoOculus Rift? More like "Oculus Grift", eh?
- themodelplumber 5y agoNo info on how this Facebook account takeover is happening? I wish they would provide details...
- floatingatoll 5y agoThey didn’t have 2FA, so it’s probably as basic as a password reuse attack.
- bjtitus 5y agoThe really shocking thing is the lack of any delay with email changes. I've known several people whose accounts were hacked and properly flagged by Facebook within hours but the hacker was able to change the email address immediately with no waiting period and remove the other addresses so access was impossible. I tried this on my own account shortly after and, sure enough, there's no waiting period where previous emails remain allowed to reset passwords.
- floatingatoll 5y agoThat point deserves an FP.
- jrm4 5y agoMicrosoft saw the concept of touchscreens and bought out "Surface" around 2003ish; and as a result, we didn't get widespread touchscreens until about a decade or so later. FB buying Oculus feels exactly like that for VR.
- MathYouF 5y agoThis is more of an alternative statement for anyone interested since your statement didn't give anything concrete. Oculus is far far ahead of where any VR developers thought it would be in 2021. In January of 2019 the Rift was still running on cables connected to a $2000 laptop and confined to a 5x5ft square play area with 7 foot tall poles holding scanners on each corner,also plugged into the same computer. If you wanted to experience VR, you had to have all those things and set them up. Now for $300 I can (and have) experience VR on a beach with no Internet or electricity for a couple hours. The opinion of most VR developers I know is that Facebook have unequivocally advanced VR headset progression more than any other company and better than we couldve ever hoped.
- aphroz 5y agoIs doing VR on the beach really a progress though?
- 1270018080 5y agoRead his entire comment
- jimmySixDOF 5y agoSo right! A lot of it comes down to the availability of Qualcomm's XR2 chip but Oculus has made VR accessable to anyone for half the price of a mobile phone and that is a game changer. Lot of noise lately about the death of VR [1] or PCVR [2] but my money says things in 3D are just about to lift off. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/virtual-reality-rich-white-kid-of-technology/ https://www.wired.com/story/virtual-reality-rich-white-kid-o... [2] https://twitter.com/kentbye/status/1421545550407630849?s=19 https://twitter.com/kentbye/status/1421545550407630849?s=19
- ilamont 5y agoBefore going to extremes, many hacking victims try the usual routes to get customer service but quickly find out it seems impossible to reach someone at Facebook to help fix the problem. Same story with AI lockouts at Google. Even if you do have access to "someone at Google" good luck getting a clear answer of what happened or how to fix the issue.
- SilverRed 5y agoI think we can appreciate how this is a difficult problem though. Google support would get a torrent of actual hackers contacting them to gain access to someones account. Not restoring access to a few real cases is probably better than giving access over to a hacker. GitLab recently said that customer support will not help restore access to your account if you lock yourself out unless you have an active subscription to your account and can use your billing details as verification. How should google support handle this? Perhaps banks should offer an identify verification service?
- busymom0 5y agoDisagree. A company as big as google should have the decency to at least have a human reach out to paying developers before they permanently ban apps which developers use to make a living: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26956077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26956077
- MattGaiser 5y agoI wonder why Google doesn’t just offer a premium support tier.
- dudus 5y agoThey do. Support is part of Google One.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
- onelovetwo 5y agopeople who pay for a product get customer service prioritization over those who pay nothing, who woulda thought.
- tolbish 5y agoEdit: free version mentioned in TFA
- AussieWog93 5y agoIt's in the article. (Free) FB users locked out of their accounts are buying Oculus just to get access to FB support.
- tomc1985 5y agoeveryone pays for Facebook with their data. In fact, people not even on Facebook pay for Facebook with their data
- wmf 5y agoI wonder if Portal also works; it's only $100.
- shoeshoeshoey 5y agoFB had an internal help system called "Oops". It was meant for employees to get help for friends they knew in real life. It was discontinued not long ago (EDIT: maybe not according to a child comment). There were just too many requests for help. Facebook has a corporate structure that simply will not prioritize any effort longer than 6 months unless a senior company executive (Mark, Sheryl) supports it. Even if it affects the bottom line - and there were plenty of examples where large customers could not spend significantly more money with Facebook because of software bugs - they won't do anything about it.
- metajack 5y agoI used oops to help someone I knew several months back. It still exists and worked amazingly well.
- saltedonion 5y agoCan you elaborate what this system does? Escalates customer support tickets for employees?
- toast0 5y agoYeah, from my time working at FB, it's basically a customer support queue that actually gets reviewed. Sometimes, there can be some additional discussion between the person looking at the ticket and the employee who reported it, so that clarifications can be made when needed. From what I saw, it's mostly used for account recovery, but sometimes used for bug reporting. FWIW, Yahoo had a similar escalation path while I was there (that seems to still exist). This is a way to help friends and family get their accounts fixed, and also to help make sure employees don't look at their friend and family's accounts with internal tools.
- mmahemoff 5y agoI'm sure detractors would find plenty to criticise about a system to prioritise friends and family, but it's smart from a QA perspective. They get a corpus of issues that are falling through the cracks, coming from real people without an agenda.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- codezero 5y agoI suspect once this kind of workaround becomes known it's also a target for hackers - if there's a way around Facebook support to access an account, hackers will use it too.
- stacker8888 5y agoAs a happy Oculus Quest 2 owner and non-Facebook user, I'd like to thank everyone for potentially destroying the customer support experience for me!
- ninkendo 5y agoHow do you have a Quest 2 without a FB account?
- kfarr 5y agoOnly if you use it as a paperweight
- weare138 5y agoI've noticed there's been several suspect comments from Oculus 'owners'.
- mdoms 5y agoYeah there's some very obvious astroturfing going on in this thread.
- annadane 5y agoYou're not allowed to say that on HN (I don't disapprove of you saying it however and I've said the same thing myself - the point of my comment is that it's ridiculous to disallow comments like that)
- goatsi 5y agoThe rule for it is pretty straightforward, to quote dang about it: >As I've tried to explain many times (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...), there are two problems: (1) real abuse is happening on the internet; and (2) internet users frequently imagine that they're seeing such abuse when in reality they are merely seeing something they dislike. Both problems are serious, but for entirely different reasons, and we need to be careful not to confuse them, since (2) is extremely common, indeed is the laziest internet production that exists. Allowing people to do #2 everywhere (so to speak) could easily destroy the community. >Fortunately, a simple rule turns out to suffice: don't post accusations of abuse unless you have some bit of evidence to go on. Someone else having a different view than you does not count as evidence. You need at least a shred of something objective, and if you don't have that, then you can't post accusations. Since the overwhelming majority of #2 posts have no evidence, that rules them out. Getting people to actually follow this rule is a different issue of course. What compelling evidence do you have?
- imwillofficial 5y agoDoes Amazon have anything like Facebooks oops?
- travoc 5y agoNo. Having your business wiped out by an errant script is just part of the experience.
- imwillofficial 5y agoI think the that process could use some improvement!
- delhanty 5y ago> "The only way you can get any customer service is if you prove that you've actually purchased something from them," he said. Seriously, this sounds super-entitled to me. Why is this unfair? Also, the advertising supported-model has so many negative consequences. Pragmatically, FB isn't just going to fade away, so wouldn't it be better if they evolved towards a paid model? (Or at least the option to pay.)
- nightfly 5y agoBecause Facebook doesn't offer a regular subscription service, and for lots of people Facebook is how they stay in contact with their friends and family. So being SOL because some asshole is trying to steal your account sucks. There's nothing "entitled" about wanting back something you lost because of no fault of your own.
- MattGaiser 5y agoI think if FB offered a $5 “talk to a human” option or a premium tier for users, then people would be satisfied. But instead there is this clunky hack of buying an Oculus device.
- whimsicalism 5y agoNot economical for any problem that takes more than 15 or so mins to solve.
- robertwt7 5y agoActually I don't remember that I ever get a reply from facebook support. But yeah not sure how many support request they're getting considering that spam accounts are popping up every day
- fallingknife 5y agoUtility services start off as luxuries, and are private and unregulated. This was true with telephone and electric companies. When these services get to a certain point where there are real consequences for not being able to access the system, they need to have public regulation to ensure access and customer service. ISP internet service has definitely reached this point, and I think that there's a strong argument that Google & FB accounts (particularly for businesses) have reached this point as well.
- bigyikes 5y agoI hate FB and Google, but I don’t buy this argument. It doesn’t pass the duck test for me — doesn’t look or quack like a utility in my view. I am sympathetic to the argument though. Getting locked out of your existing Gmail account could be really disastrous. Maybe there should be regulation for email extrication — if you’re going to ban me, you better allow me to update all of my accounts to not use your email service first.
- kilobaud 5y agoYou seriously dont think email, search, or direct-messaging services sound _anything_ like the telephone or the postal service or the radio?
- odux 5y agoThe are critical pieces of the modern world yes. But not a utility. One cannot live without a utility and utilities generally have a monopoly in most places. If my power or water company bans me for some reason I am toast. I have to endure undue hardship to get something that provides may be 10% of the utility (own well, water pump, generator...). Internet itself (the pipes) on the other hand are probably a utility. I prefer the natural gas like solution though for internet. Someone owns the infrastructure and it is heavily regulated. Multiple other companies resell it, provide addon services etc. But search, email etc are like cars in the US. Essential, but also a business operating in a competitive space.
- jimrandomh 5y agoThere's a bit of a story behind this. Oculus is owned by Facebook, but the Facebook website and the Oculus headsets/software are by different teams working in different states. When Facebook bought Oculus, they decided to get rid of the Oculus-specific account system and use only Facebook accounts. The Facebook account requirement took effect with the launch of the Oculus Quest 2, which launched in October 2020. October 2020 was the month before the US election, and the peak of both disinformation/influence campaigns, and of Facebook-the-website's efforts to combat those campaigns. So the spambot detector sensitivity was turned up to max that month, and if you tried to create a new account, there was a large chance you'd be mistaken for a bot and banned immediately. So a bunch of people who weren't Facebook users got fancy new VR headsets, tried to create Facebook accounts in order to be able to use them, and got immediately banned. The support department for Facebook-the-website was not at all up to the task of dealing with this. This kind of wrecked their product launch; instead of the press coverage and public reaction being about how great their hardware was, it was about all the people who couldn't use their hardware because of account issues. So now Oculus has a completely separate support department for Facebook account issues, which acts less like it's supporting a free website and more like it's supporting a $300 piece of hardware. And if you have an account issue with the website, and you want to use that support department instead of the bad one, then buying a Quest 2 is not such a bad idea.
- greenie_beans 5y agoIs this supposed to justify FB’s poor support for hacked accounts? Or are you just telling stories? It’s a good story, at least.
- rincebrain 5y agoTo me, it seems more like "this is how this isle of happiness exists despite everything" than "this is why the ocean of sadness exists".
- sonofhans 5y agoThat’s funny, it’s just too late for me. I just returned two Quest 2s because we couldn’t create Facebook accounts. Ironic. I’ve spent years not even wanting one, and when I do, it was impossible.
- treeman79 5y agoWife’s account was hacked. 15 years old, thousands of photos. As in she got an email saying new login. I told her to go to app and change password. Nope. They had changed the email and phone number associated with it. That was that. Spent entire day on it and all we could get was the to have account locked. Completely impossible to talk to anyone. Nearly got the occulas to try and back door it. I have backups of many but not all. Lots of tears. Turns out almost all of her friends have lost their original accounts.
- taurath 5y agoCan’t we just scan a can of Mountain Dew and sing a slogan or something, this seems extreme
- Yhippa 5y agoPlease drink a verification can
- w-ll 5y agoIt's not coincidence that Baja Blast is back.
- birdyrooster 5y agoIt's possible it's just a coincidence, but I agree it's likely cause and effect.
- unixhero 5y agoHaha
- AppleCandy 5y agoNeed a Cuke with my FriendFace...
- hutzlibu 5y agoI suppose this is referencing something, non US people do not get?
- dageshi 5y agohttps://imgur.com/r/4chan/dgGvgKF https://imgur.com/r/4chan/dgGvgKF 4chan post
- geraltofrivia 5y agoThat.... was powerful :D
- cush 5y agoHmm. Turns out consumers are willing to pay money for goods and services. Who would have thought?
- torgian 5y agoThe real travesty is that you have to have an account to use the headset.
- Causality1 5y agoYes, and nearly everyone called it the moment Facebook bought Oculus. That any journalists at the time actually gave credence to Facebook's claims Oculus would remain independent is incredibly shameful. As for me, my Rift sits unused in a box. The Oculus desktop software may be the worst piece of shit I've ever used and I can't lay eyes on it without wishing ill upon its developers.
- FreakyT 5y agoThe OG Rift is still pretty great -- unlike the newer products, it doesn't require a Facebook account, and you can use it with SteamVR if you want and not really even bother with the Oculus software.
- mattnewton 5y agoFor now, that is: I was warned that it will be forced on me at a later date during setup. My next headset will probably be an index as a result. I had gotten the original oculus because I was afraid of missing out on oculus exclusives, but I would only really miss super hot. (I also don’t understand how they shipped the new oculus without the eye spacing adjuster; my partner and I have different settings for it and get dizzy using the wrong one)
- codesnik 5y agonew oculus = oculus quest 2? it has an adjuster, though with just three fixed settings. Or which one?
- Scottopherson 5y agoOculus Rift 2, most likely. It was the newest hardware before Quest 2 and it has no physical hardware for eye adjustments.
- mgraczyk 5y agoPeople like to criticize ML, but my worst experience with Facebook was caused by a truly fucked up rule based system that banned my startup's Instagram account because the account operator changed the email address too quickly after merging it with a Facebook ads account. No machine learning, no probabilities, just "if (event that is usually sketchy) { ban with no appeal }" Even as a Facebook employee, there was nothing I could do to help (I joined Facebook after leaving this startup, but still wanted to help because I founded it). Even determining the cause of the ban could have cost me my job (for good reason, don't want corruption and bribery, etc). I understand the need to be cautious, but based on my analysis at the time the false positive rate was over 5% for this particular rule (based on later reactivations). Seemed way to high considering my startup had spent over 50K on FB ads in the connected account.
- NoblePublius 5y agoIf the moral of the story is that you only get customer service when you are an actual customer, I say, yeah, duh.
- W-Stool 5y agoI honestly do not understand why any sentient person would have anything to do with Facebook at this point, VR headsets or not. It is just an awful company, period.
- type_Ben_struct 5y agoIt is, but because the majority of people are unaware (or simply don’t care) then it can be hard to avoid. During lockdown I deleted all of my accounts on Facebook owned products, including WhatsApp, but I began to feel increasingly isolated. Now life is more “normal”, it’s very difficult to meet someone in a bar/club and tell them you don’t have Instagram, Facebook or WhatsApp without sounding dodgy. Sad reality I’ve found as a 25 year old single man in London.
- newsyyswen 5y agoChin up, mate. In the US, I'm starting to hear a lot more "I wish I did that", and a lot less "that's weird what are you hiding?" People are starting to come around as they and their family members start to have more acutely negative experiences with social media.
- asadlionpk 5y agoIf fb didn't exist tomorrow, I wouldn't have a way to contact my family and friends. It would be panic. I also LOVE my quest 2. FB isn't perfect but hating it is getting boring now.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- philote 5y agoGenuinely curious, how is Facebook the only way you have to contact friends and family? Do you not have their email addresses or phone numbers? Or even physical addresses? What if you get locked out of your Facebook account?
- okareaman 5y agoFacebook should send a highly secure second password for safe keeping when an established (ie not new) account requests it. This password can be entered in emergencies like this to deactivate the account until proper ownership can be established.
- Robotbeat 5y agoMaybe this is good? The start of FB going from completely ad-driven to partially a for-pay service? (I mean... the Quest 2 is probably being sold at a loss with the idea that it'll help make money from ads... but also, the game store, which is not as icky as their privacy-destroying ad business.)
- bww 5y ago> He plans to return the unopened device, and while he's glad the strategy worked, he doesn't think it's fair. "The only way you can get any customer service is if you prove that you've actually purchased something from them," he said. I think this guy just figured out the “customer” part of “customer service”. This, I think, illustrates the issue with Facebook well.
- rkagerer 5y agoOne completely different business unit incentivizing customers of another? Antitrust implications?
- monkpit 5y agoI have stopped receiving messenger notifications whenever I have the Facebook app open. Like no unread bubble or anything. It has caused me to stop using the Facebook app almost completely (which, honestly, is probably a good thing). But, the inner QA in me wants to file a ticket and hunt down a fix. It bugs me in the back of my mind. I’ve tried searching for a fix, but nobody seems to have the same exact issue. I’ve tried uninstalling both apps and reinstalling in various orders to no avail. I wish I could just call or chat with support and get a meaningful conversation going with someone who could actually help (as opposed to reading from a script). Sounds like I need to buy an Oculus.
- aasasd 5y agoFinally some use for VR.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- croes 5y agoMaybe because headset owners are actually customers instead of users. FBs other customers pay for ads.
- ehsankia 5y agoI understand the struggle of trying to provide free support to billions of users, but more companies should provide a "pay a fee for real customer support" kinda hot line. Whatever price is costs to provide said support, honestly, many would be happy to pay for it. Google sorta does this through Google One, it's 2-3$ a month and you also get some extra storage space. It's not perfect but you actually get to talk to a real human being.
- qwerty456127 5y agoWhy wouldn't Facebook just offer paid subscriptions with premium support and extra goodies to everyone interested?
- beezischillin 5y agoThey would have to offer a service up to some standard.
- beezischillin 5y agoIronically enough I made a new Facebook account for my Quest2 because I was worried that should they ban my actual Facebook account, I would lose all my purchases... I don't care if it's against the TOS, I'm more likely to lose my main account at this point anyway.
- okokwhatever 5y agoGuys, I love Life Hacks created by common people so much! There's hope in humanity.
- saos 5y ago> Morgan said the episode has made him realize just how embedded Facebook is in his life. Yes and the reason you should delete.
- quaesitor 5y agoWhy is this on the front page when my submission of the same thing from 40 days ago got completely buried? Just curious.
- Cybotron5000 5y agoI _love_ my Mockulus Qwest no. 9. I’ve taken to wearing it to bed so I get to earn Zuckbucks whilst I sleep! [P.S. Palmer Eldritch is a genie, Suckerberg’s man boobs are the digital reincarnation of those of Augustus Caesar, and Peter Teak is a modern Medici (and all-round handsome rake)!]
- tacocataco 5y agoI don't really follow VR tech, were the people who already owned a occulus given a refund since their headset was useless without a Facebook account?