9 ms·

I remember experiencing this in one of the German airports/airlines and having that exact thought. It was this fully automated airport, where the checkin is se

• lazide 2y ago
  It’s a way to fully automate a Brazil scenario. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film)] Since at least in that scenario, there were humans in the Bureaucracy that could (but didn’t particularly) feel bad. In this scenario, no humans need to be directly involved, which allows the scope and scale to be even more Dystopian.
  • noisy_boy 2y ago
    Of all the various useless laws that keep getting enacted, one that guarantees that every company needs to have a phone number, manned by actual human(s) with organic intelligence, advertised prominently on their products/advertisements, never gets passed.
    • lazide 2y ago
      Because that would cost them money, instead of forcing people to find their own workarounds (or die). Many parts of gov’t aren’t far off, and those are the really scary ones.
    • immibis 2y ago
      Germany has this law for commercial websites. Mostly it makes people afraid to have websites.
  • LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
    Brazil iz good. Becauz dirty dogz got plugged! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/mediaviewer/rm557755905/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/mediaviewer/rm557755905... Meow!
• m463 2y ago
  Many businesses build walls around themselves like this. Hiding the customer service number. Making an FAQ that is missing the common but time-consuming questions. Chatbots instead of people. I remember when amazon sent me a package once, said it was delivered, but it was nowhere to be found. There was no way to get help. They did have an FAQ at the time that said to check in the bushes. What was annoying was the search auto-complete had many variations of "package not found says delivered" Now, it is a little more filled out but still.
  • gregmac 2y ago
    I just switched ISPs, and the new one has one of the most obnoxious phone processes I've ever interacted with. I go through the usual hoops: press 1 for English, "we detected an account linked to the number you're calling from, is that that you're calling about?" ... Press 1 for support, press 1 for Internet, "no outages detected in your area. Most problems can be solved by rebooting your modem. Press 1 if you want to try rebooting." (Pause)... "thank you for your call click" First off, rebooting doesn't solve my problem. But I guess I have to try anyway? So I call back, this time I do pick to reboot, and get "your modem will reboot in the next few minutes, and could take up to 10 minutes to come online. If things still aren't working, try our online support chat" So, basically there doesn't seem to be any phone technical support (with a human), at all. Also, rebooting is offensive to me as a programmer. Kernel updates and memory leaks are the only reason you need to reboot. How absolutely shitty is modem firmware that the ISP actually spent the time to build this reboot system out??(Never mind that I personally don't feel like I've ever had a modem/isp actually problem solved by rebooting) Made me wonder if I should have switched.
    • auggierose 2y ago
      Why did you switch? Can't have been their reputation for support.
    • yetihehe 2y ago
      > (Never mind that I personally don't feel like I've ever had a modem/isp actually problem solved by rebooting) I had problems solved several times by rebooting modem. One time it was "reboot modem and access point in proper order", me naively rebooting them both at the same time didn't help, only phone support solved this problem. > Also, rebooting is offensive to me as a programmer. Hmm, I might be desensitivised from too much programming in erlang. It's implied that your program will encounter bugs or strange data and parts WILL be restarted, better account for that and plan on what to do on restart of each small part at the start of writing your program. > So, basically there doesn't seem to be any phone technical support (with a human), at all. Because it's cheaper. Those who don't have support can offer lower prices. When people search for trinkets, they only have information about what is supported, there is no good information about quality of device and support, high price also not always means better support. SO they just go for lower price and hope not to suffer too much.
• eloisius 2y ago
  I had a similar experience in Germany about a year ago. Train stations are mostly self-service now. The ticket kiosk ate my €50 and promptly rebooted. It didn’t print a receipt or anything. The only human I could find was a security guard. He told me to call the number on a sticker on the machine. The person who answered couldn’t speak English. My €50 is out there somewhere but it would cost me more than that to track it down.
  • larodi 2y ago
    That’s a sad experience and I would definitely try to chase them robots. Sadly even though German public transport fascinates with its ease of use and quality, though when it comes to human service you can find yourself in peculiar position. And particularly if you are not German and happen to be in one of those international cities there where Germans are fed up with visitor. You waive goodbye to your 50€ and keep a story to tell, that’s all. Sadly I don’t expect this all to get any better with robots and LLms and thing. We will be crying to meet a human sooner than later, and my hope is this far cry will eventually get us to the dawn of new era when you actually have people in the loop, just for humanity’s sake.
    • bryanrasmussen 2y ago
      >my hope is this far cry will eventually get us to the dawn of new era after the Butlerian Jihad.
    • olex 2y ago
      >German public transport fascinates with its ease of use and quality Ease of use maybe, although my parents and grandparents would like to argue differently. They are not as quick to work their smartphone, and the ticket machines are being removed everywhere to be replaced by apps that are much cheaper to run. This works fine for the younger generations, but older and less tech-savvy people are getting left behind. Quality though, no way. Every single time I tried to give ÖPNV a chance in the last 3-4 years I was either different degrees of late or didn't arrive at all without switching to some alternative method of transport on the way. Doesn't even matter if I tried local routes (Frankfurt and Darmstadt) or longer inter-city connections to Munich or Leipzig, it's all completely broken. People in my company routinely book connections several hours earlier than they need to be places to have a chance of arriving in time, and often are still late. Trains are overbooked, connections are late or often cancelled altogether, seat reservarions don't work more often than they do, WiFi on the trains never works... Many, many things have to change for me to reconsider my default of taking the car everywhere, and I don't think they will in any sort of a relevant timeline.
• lmm 2y ago
  At this point everyone needs to get in the habit of using small claims court. You can often do it online in a few minutes these days. Make a good faith effort to get your problem addressed, and record the fact that you've done so to use in your hearing if it gets that far. Then just file the claim. Generally they fold immediately, and this way you incentivize actual customer service in the only language they understand.
  • switch007 2y ago
    I do agree but also feel if people did this en masse, that system would get a rate limiter. After 2 claims per year you would be barred for being "vexatious"
    • immibis 2y ago
      Only if the claims are illegitimate.
    • maccard 2y ago
      Being realistic, if you have these sorts of issues more than twice a year there's probably something wrong and you should fix that. Everyone has a few of those stories, but the only people who consistently have them are likely looking for trouble and picking fights.
      • switch007 2y ago
        And that's exactly the line and slander they would use when they bring in new legislation to stop "abuse" of the system. You've proven my point
        • maccard 2y ago
          And ditto - you came to my comment to pick a fight with something a decent number of people will agree with me on. You didn’t have to, but you decided this was a hill to fight on. My experience in dealing with the public has been that there are a very small number of people who will frequently push the boundaries of what the system is designed for, will scream bloody murder when things don’t go as they want, and will employ a scorched earth policy on handling the fallout. As a private business, you have the option to tell those people to pound sand (which I got much pleasure in doing ), but as a public body or organisation you can’t, but you need to ensure that one malicious user doesn’t topple the system for the rest of the users.
• nh2 2y ago
  Germany is somewhat rubbish. I arrived at the train station in the night after 6 hours train journey. German Railways app shows there will be my final leg train in 45 minutes. I wait in the cold at night, sitting in the station building because it's warmer there. 5 minutes before departure I go on the platform. The local display shows no train, even though the all still shows it. I waited for nothing. Syncing the app with the train station? Somebody else's problem. In half an hour there should be a replacement bus for another cancelled train. There are no signs in the app or the station that indicate where that bus is to be found. You just need to know. Putting sings for replacement buses due to degraded service that's long planned and already happening for 2 months? Somebody else's problem. An old man asks if the bus will allow to catch the train connection at its destination. The bus driver bitches at him for asking that question -- not his job. Somebody else's problem. Training the bus driver that, being an official replacement of a train, he needs to know that, clearly also somebody else's problem than that of the German Railways. It's pitch black outside, the windows are opaque due to moisture, so I can't tell where we are even though I was born the area and lived here for 18 years. The bus driver makes no announcements about the stops, there is no display. Knowing when to request a stop to get off? Somebody else's problem. The bus is ice cold for an hour. When am old lady gets off and tells the bus driver that it was freezing all journey, he asks "well what can you do". Bewildered she answers "turn on the heating"? He didn't expect that. He seemed to think that everything except driving was somebody else's problem. This is just one night's bus journey story. I also got my SIM card deleted and a parcel was lost in the subsequent week. Documenting here the amounts of "somebody else's problem" I encountered in their customer support hotlines is somebody else's problem for me for now.
  • atoav 2y ago
    And the root of all that? Privatization.
    • RandomLensman 2y ago
      The German mail rail and track operator (Deutsche Bahn) isn't private but 100% state owned (and control sits with the federal government). They wanted to privatize it a couple of decades ago but abandoned it. There is still some hybridization between supposedly it being a business and also a public service left in the law, though.
• clktmr 2y ago
  I can provide another POV to that story. We checked in as a family of four, and we're assigned seats in four different rows, with a two and a four year old. Only when entering the plane we had the possibility address this to a human and we were assigned new seats. So this might be the reason you had to change seats.
  • rougka 2y ago
    they claimed they had to change planes though i had selected that seat when booking the flight, and there were no humans available to address such issues
• jowea 2y ago
  Does Germany have a consumer protection agency? I might have complained there after the flight.
• hinkley 2y ago
  Norman talks about how systems need a way to veto or override the automatic decisions to be humane. That book is now almost old enough to have a programming job.
• ilumanty 2y ago
  The experience is quite similar with DHL when you have a non-standard question. The chatbot is utterly useless and there is no way to contact a human being if you're not a business customer.
  • 7bit 2y ago
    There is a way, but it is difficult. Most companies don't want you to call. Operators cost a ton of money. And what choice do you have really? Choose a different parcel service? All others are worse.