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I am so so so glad to see this article because I feel like I'm a crazy person for seeing this everywhere in my life and not hearing anyone else complain about i

• dfxm12 4y ago
  I don't think the government should be concerned with a $10 overcharge on your bill that takes a 15 minute phone call to fix. The government is concerned with more systemic issues. As an example, when there was $1.3 Billion dollars in harm across more than 11 million accounts, they stepped in with Wells Fargo: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-orders-wells-fargo-to-pay-37-billion-for-widespread-mismanagement-of-auto-loans-mortgages-and-deposit-accounts/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-order...
  • aliqot 4y ago
    We need some type of ombudsman that exists between people and corporations to solve these small matters. Small claims is a bit much, and it's individual only. Congresspeople and such are a bit too much for this purpose also. There needs to be something lesser, with a very large stick to swing around.
    • dfxm12 4y ago
      There are local consumer protection agencies and the better business bureau that might be able to help here. But, I mean, there was an issue and it got resolved pretty seamlessly. What do you want the BBB do? If this becomes a regular occurrence, that's another thing.
      • aliqot 4y ago
        The BBB is a private organization that a corp has to agree to be a member of and pay dues to. They're as much of a failure as Yelp.
      • lmm 4y ago
        A 15 minute phone call is not seamless. I should be able to write an email, or better yet, just not pay it, and be assured there will be no retalliation if the original problem is a mistake on the company's side.
    • drewcoo 4y ago
      Almost like the CFPB? https://2020.elizabethwarren.com/cfpb https://2020.elizabethwarren.com/cfpb
      • dfxm12 4y ago
        The CFPB does some great work (and hopefully their recently proposed rule lowering credit card late fees becomes enacted), but unfortunately their scope is limited to financial institutions. I don't think they'll help with Comcast, stuff ordered online, insurance, etc. It would be great if we could expand their scope a bit or have another board for general consumer protection.
  • serverholic 4y ago
    This feels like a bad faith comment. You could have commented on systemic issues with these corporations but instead you fixated on one example.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • jdalgetty 4y ago
    Agreed, but it's never a 15 minute phone call...
    • dfxm12 4y ago
      OP said they got it resolved with a 15 minute phone call. I was just assuming they were telling the truth...
      • xboxnolifes 4y ago
        minimum
        • dfxm12 4y ago
          They were clear on it taking 15 minutes: In the end I got the charge reversed, cold comfort, I was out a quarter hour...
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • deathanatos 4y ago
    The entire point of TFA is that this is a systemic issue, happening across the economy, across services. I too feel like the person above you: my day is weighed down with doing tasks that either used to be part of what you were paying to get, and now have been outsourced to you (and lest we kid ourselves, the price didn't budge) or tasks which are effectively "hey, company, can you do your job?". I'll reuse the example I used in an earlier thread along these same veins: my SO caught COVID. At the time, I only suspected it: so I ordered a test from Walgreens. This was done online, and the online flow told me: "we'll contact you when the order is ready for pickup". Great. Hours pass. I call in, and get the chatbot. I navigate its menus to "lookup order status", and input the information: "there is no order under that number" — fine, sure, lie to me. I try a few more things, and finally cave & ask for a human. Hold for 20 minutes for "we're experiencing above average call volume" (more lies) and we get a human: "oh, your insurance declined." Like, okay Walgreens … let's say that's true: you decide to just blackhole my order, and gaslight me when I try to find it? And further, now I have to get in contact with the insurance, since … they're not suppose to decline. Walgreens knows they're not supposed to decline, but instead of telling the insurer "that's some hot garbage", they foisted the job of getting the insurer to do their job onto me. Nowhere, here, is anyone doing anything economically productive. The only person doing anything is me. The test was paid for out of pocket. It's an example, yes, but it's one I've been dealing with across companies, across the economy, for months? years?, has been getting worse, and is continuing to get worse. It no longer seems isolated to your usual bad actors like airlines who can't get planes from point A to point B to save their lives, it's everywhere. Consumer protection laws, regulatory action, class actions (if we could! I.e.: more consumer protection laws…) is the systemic level fix to this nonsense. > on your bill that takes a 15 minute phone call to fix. It's never a 15 minute phone call.
    • dfxm12 4y ago
      I understand your frustration, and I think the US insurance system in general and your case specifically is materially worse than what OP described. After all, you never really got your issue resolved, as you had to pay out of pocket for something that your insurance was probably supposed to cover. It sucks we don't have anyone obvious to go to with these healthcare issues. It's never a 15 minute phone call. Why do people keep telling me this? I'm only going by what OP said. Tell them they were lying when they said they were on the phone for a quarter hour :)
  • michael1999 4y ago
    Regulated monopolies should exactly be hammered on this. That's why we have anti-trust in the first place - the bargaining power is so lopsided! The line between this and Wells Fargo is much thinner than you think. Nobody has managed to prove actual malice at the board level at Wells. A company like Xfinity is likely prioritizing bugs by revenue. As a result, bugs that result in overcharging will be fixed last, if ever. It is unrealistic targets, crappy policies, and bad incentives all the way down. The only way to actually make them care would be fines which would move it up the revenue list.
    • yamtaddle 4y ago
      CFPB should be handling some of this, but it's clear they'll never be funded and staffed like they should be, and it's been demonstrated that when one of our two political parties controls the executive the CFPB won't be permitted to do anything but twiddle their thumbs. That's until they manage to eliminate them entirely.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• oakwhiz 4y ago
  It's especially bad when "something went wrong" style error messages appear and it becomes your responsibility to waste time with support staff who aren't given the ability to actually resolve or even see the error. In many cases piles of support tickets are unresolved for years, even though they are marked closed for KPI reasons, with the same unexplainable malfunctions persisting for some percentage of the customer base. In an ideal world, support would be proactive and any errors that occur immediately set off alarm bells that would then have people already working on the problem.
• thwayunion 4y ago
  It's a coordination problem. Everyone -- and I mean everyone -- should just send a letter and go directly to your Attorney General's office if the letter isn't acknowledged with the issue resolved within 30 days. It takes about two minutes, almost never fails, and creates a much larger burden for the corporation. I never sit on hold, and the letter takes about 2 minutes to write.
  • BigRedDog1669 4y ago
    I understand you mean well, but does this really create a larger burden for the company or change anything in the future? I've never had a letter result in anything.
    • thwayunion 4y ago
      They ignore the letter and spring to action when the AG comes knocking. The engagement with the AG's office does fire off internal processes that scale linearly, involve expensive labor, and are treated as urgent. If even 10% of customers did this it would result in some exec's attention.
      • BigRedDog1669 4y ago
        Can you give an example of something that was resolved for you by this? I can send a letter if it will do something but I can't convince 10% of the population to send a letter. I've sent messages to government offices and never got anything but a canned response and no action.
        • thwayunion 4y ago
          A fee for parking in a private lot during a period when they weren't supposed to be charging fees (free holiday parking sponsored by the local shops). Verizon bill for unreturned equipment (didn't ask for it, told them I was leaving it on my doorstep and not taking delivery, it disappeared, heard back a year later with a fee). TMobile bill. An incorrect water bill. A car dealership lying to me. Issues with one of those "order for ipad" airport places mentioned in the article (same issue: never received my food). Medical bill from an urgent care for some trivial thing that they told me they wouldn't charge me for. Some interest on a student loan that accrued because their billing system messed up. A bunch of other stuff I'm not remembering. I always just send a written letter and if I don't get a check in 30 days go to the AG. Works every time. Fixing their petty crime is not my problem.
• sidewndr46 4y ago
  I had the opposite from Spectrum. I document every single outage and call them monthly to ask for credits. Once month I got the bill and it was nearly 50% higher with no explanation. After contacting them they informed that where I was supposed to be receiving credits was in fact getting additional charges. Either Spectrum employees are dumber than the average 5 year old or this was an intentional act done in retribution.
  • toomuchtodo 4y ago
    This sounds like an opportunity to pair monitoring of your ISP service with chatGPT to ask them automatically for the credits? Maybe fire off a complaint to the FCC each time as well.
    • mxuribe 4y ago
      Note to self: Consider piloting a business to leverage ChatGP to conduct en masse robocalls against both the corporate entity that cause pain to consumers as well as robocalls on same topic to legislative and executive branches of relevant governing bodies (to overwhelm them to trigger more positive law changes)....hmmm
      • eastbound 4y ago
        I have a feeling corporations will use CharGPT first to handle support requests. You’ll have to detect whether you are talking to ChatGPT or a human.
        • code_biologist 4y ago
          I can't wait for my ChatGPT to talk to their ChatGPT and see who wins (ML providers I guess).
          • shubb 4y ago
            If they don't write it up to the refund button they won every time...
• mach1ne 4y ago
  Yes, and for some reason the world is shifting towards megacorporations which enhances this problem across the board. Companies take small but certain steps from producers of goods to some weird authoritarian symbiotic relationship entities with consumers. We’re well on track towards the world of Cyberpunk.
• popotamonga 4y ago
  i have a 5€/mo data simcard (500mb) i got many many years go. I have no use for it. To cancel it they put me through hell. My hour is valued at €200, i have no choice but to let them milk me for eternity. Or maybe someone comes up with a service for cancelling stuff/complain etc. I'de give them 50€ to cancel this crap.
• geodel 4y ago
  > I don't know what we can even do about this. Where's the government? They don't have my back. Well govt is also busy in developing more self service solutions. Anything from Airport, fast food, grocery stores, banks they are putting the work on to customers which previously provider would have done. Beside I think people are really excited about idea that technology and automation will fix human interaction problem. So that's what they are getting.
  • fieryskiff11 4y ago
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• User23 4y ago
  Amusingly, telcos do this to each other too. I worked for a back haul carrier and AT&T would send us a literal truckload of paper bills every month that looked just like your standard phone bill for calls that we terminated on their network. They consistently net over-billed by about 10%. So of course we had a data entry team whose job it was to enter every claimed AT&T charge into our system so we could then reconcile those with our Call Detail Records and dispute the overage.
• hammock 4y ago
  >a few months ago Xfinity "accidentally" overcharged me by ~$10 on a monthly bill. Of course now the ball is in my court--either I let it slide and fork over the cost of a breakfast out to their shareholders for no extra value, or I give up some of my valuable time to call them and go through the hell of phone customer service, a 10-15 minute commitment minimum. You can just submit a credit card chargeback in a few seconds online, and they will go through the rigamaroll. Likely that no further action will be needed on your part
  • jmcqk6 4y ago
    And then you get Xfinity canceling your internet without notice most likely. This is not a real solution.