Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

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I recently had to cancel an ongoing subscription I had with Equifax, which requires you to call by phone. Unbelievably frustrating. I had to dial the service at least 10 times. Each time, the automated responder would make me go through a very slow menu selection process, only to randomly fail to acknowledge either my correct SSN or zipcode or street number, which I entered using a keypad. As a consumer, I've had to enter info via phone keypad for as long as I can remember, and I've never run into a system (not even small local businesses) that was so randomly buggy.

I thought maybe I had the wrong phone number for cancellation. Turns out, when you google "cancel Equifax phone number", there are several phone numbers listed by Equifax itself, on various sections of its "help" pages.

Took me about half an hour to finally reach a human operator. Surprisingly, the cancellation process was quick with her with no haggling. But I imagine the process is so frustrating overall that a good number of people just give up.

Half a year back I got a check from American Express for $50-ish because of some accounting issue they had. Bank error in your favor. Unfortunately, the local meth heads stole it out of my mailbox and I only got the check stub when someone found it in the street and turned it in to the post office. So I called them up to ask them to reissue the check. Long story short, they dodged and weaved with their phone automation and outsourced call center until I finally gave up and wrote them a letter. Six weeks passed and right when I'd written it off, I got a check.

Only reason you were refunded money was because they originally errored in their favor. You probably would’ve received nothing but a class action was threatened by private or government actor.

Please listen closely, our menu options have changed

We are experiencing higher than normal call volume.

Every. Single. Day.

I would like to give executives the option to stop this or go to prison for this never ending nonsense. I think most would choose to stop.

Relatedly, I've been flying a lot more than usual in the last couple of months.

Every single flight, the boarding announcements start with something along the lines of "this plane is going to be more full than usual, so we're going to need to check some of your carry-ons".

Well guess what, United? Maybe if you didn't cram passengers into the fuselage like sardines in a goddamn tin can, you'd have enough room for everyone's carry-on luggage in the bins.

Even if most flights are not crowded, the distribution of people on flights is probably such that if your flight preferences are distributed in the same way that people are distributed among flights, you're more likely to be on full flights. For example, say flights either had 10 or 90 people on them, with equal probability, then 90 % of people are on flights that are "more full than usual."

I've learned that storage is rarely the issue - they do this to reduce boarding time to stay on schedule. I often board later in the line and there is still plenty of space. Really they should just ban carry-on rollers for non-elderly, able people, they're the ones people spend ages trying to jam in.

> Really they should just ban carry-on rollers for non-elderly, able people, they're the ones people spend ages trying to jam in.

I would agree, but they charge for checked bags.

At some point, when it happens day in, day out, day or night, doesn't it become the new normal call volume?

I just assume that they put this in regardless to get some amount of people to think "Oh well I better send an email instead...". Emails are cheaper to deal with.

And in emails they put in "We're experiencing a higher-than-usual volume of support requests and we encourage you to look at the FAQ instead".

Every. Damn. Time.

As has been pointed out in past threads, the typical HN reader probably only calls on the phone when something has failed or is unavailable on the website, but from the point of view of the call center, most of their incoming calls are going to be people who refuse to use the website for things that could in principle be easily done there. So they are always trying to cut that fraction down or automate it.

> And in emails they put in "We're experiencing a higher-than-usual volume of support requests and we encourage you to look at the FAQ instead".

To be fair, you wouldn't believe the number of people that will send a request to support before looking at the FAQ when the item (and resolution) is in the FAQ.

I would :) I also do CS for my company.

I honestly believe almost nobody reads FAQs, and the presence of an item in an FAQ is a symptom of a UX failure somewhere down the line.

And the inability to find it in the FAQ is itself a failure. It seems like almost no one is even trying, no wonder we tend toward monopolies.

Executives should go to prison for not staffing call centers properly?

I think what the parent poster meant is that there is a criminal element to wasting your customers' time on purpose in order to discourage them from, for example, cancelling a service.

There are laws around this in other areas, it's not unprecedented.

No. For lying to their customers.

Correct.

>>> Please listen closely, our menu options have changed.

You are missing the "as". Please listen closely, as our menu options have changed. I know it by heart and can hear the same voice over and over again in my head. Crap!

>>> Please listen closely ass, our menu options have changed.

That has got to be the default, right?

I swear some haven’t changed for years but they still say that, argh

Wouldn't it be nice to have that message say "Our options changed on July 1, 2018"? :)

We really need some kind of consumer protection against IVR gauntlets.

Interactive Voice Response System, to save a trip for others who didn't know the acronym.

Trip saved, thank you

> We really need some kind of consumer protection against IVR gauntlets.

My brain tried really hard to read "IVR gauntlets" as a description of wearables, like AR goggles, before I realised what you meant.

Certified mail letter saying that you want to cancel?

There's a thought. The evil of IVRs goes far beyond cancellations, though. Warranties, insurance claims, anything where the company "wins by default" admits labyrinthine IVRs as a dark pattern, and some of those are "interactive" enough that certified mail winds up introducing as much friction as the IVR itself.

The really evil ones hang up on you after you've been on hold for a fixed period of time.

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