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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.

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.

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

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.

I can't wait for my ChatGPT to talk to their ChatGPT and see who wins (ML providers I guess).

If they don't write it up to the refund button they won every time...

you just need ChatGPT to perform a reverse Turing test to guard against this condition

New! ChatGPT service fee. $3.50

Yeah, agreed, that's a predictable use case. But my silly idea would trigger annoyance with the hope of causing positive change. :-)

I have a feeling you'd end up net negative on ChatGPT Plus, at least. Then again, if that $20/mo is flat and Spectrum sucks enough, who knows?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Is there some kind of state-by-state explainer that describes the process, what the letter has to include, etc?

Here's my form letter:

Dear _,

I am writing regarding [describe problem].

The appropriate resolution to this issue is [describe solution].

[Usually the solution is cash; if it is cash:] You may credit this to the form of payment you have on file, or by sending me a check at [address].

If you have any questions, you may call me at [phone number] at [time when I'm always free on a weekday during working hours in all us timezones].

I will contact my AG's office if I do not hear back from you in 30 days.

Thanks, [Name]

Mail it.

All state AG offices have a form for consumer complaints on their website. Usually it's very easy to find. Don't overthink it. Mention the letter in your AG complaint, include a copy and the date that you sent it. They will contact the business and start a resolution process. Usually you'll hear back in a week or so.

Excellent and useful, thanks.

AFAIK, every state's attorney general's office will have an online site and/or form for filing complaint(s), as well as a postal address you can use.

You can free-form your own letter, though that might delay things somewhat from the AG's office, though the business / countereparty will typically get on their game quickly.

DDG "consumer complaint" + <YOUR_STATE_HERE> should work.

E.g., top ten states by population, covering over half the US population, first result is the corresponding state's AG consumer affairs office:

CA: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=consumert+complain+california> gives <https://www.dca.ca.gov/consumers/complaints/index.shtml>

TX: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=consumer+complaint+texas> <https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/consumer-protection>

FL: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=consumer+complaint+florida> <https://www.stateofflorida.com/consumer-complaints/>

NY: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=consumer+complaint+new+york> <https://dos.ny.gov/file-consumer-complaint>

PA: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=consumer+complaint+pennsylvania> <https://www.attorneygeneral.gov/submit-a-complaint/consumer-...>

IL: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=consumer+complaint+illinois> <http://www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/consumers/filecomplai...>

OH: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=consumer+complaint+ohio> <https://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Individuals-and-Families...>

GA: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=consumer+complaint+georgia> <https://consumer.georgia.gov/>

NC: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=consumer+complaint+north+carolina> <https://ncdoj.gov/file-a-complaint/consumer-complaint/>

MI: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=consumer+complaint+michigan> <https://www.michigan.gov/ag/complaints>

Cool, thanks for detailing that. I didn't know you could do that.

You are my hero!

What does your letter generally say? How do you find the right person and address to send it to in order to get it read or maybe get a response, not just insta chucked?

I included a form letter in a sibling thread. Don't overthink it! Just state the facts and make a clear and reasonable demand with a timeframe for them to meet your demand.

> How do you find the right person and address to send it to in order to get it read or maybe get a response, not just insta chucked?

Meh. They almost always ignore the first letter. The important point is that the AG's letter makes it to the right audience. If there's a legal dept send it there. Otherwise just whatever address you can find.

For convenience, here's a link to that comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34618901

This is a fantastic idea. Silly question but do you send it via email or snail mail?

Snail mail. Emails will immediately become helpdesk tickets and the onus is thrown right back onto you. There is no way to turn a snail mail letter into a helpdesk ticket. (Or at least not one that you're forced to interact with via email)

This sounds great, even a moral obligation! Does anyone know if a similar course of action exists in Spain?

If everyone did this, it would shift the burden from overwhelmed customer service reps, to overwhelmed paralegals in the AG's office. And those people are paid with our tax dollars, which would mean the taxpayer is paying a penalty for poor customer service from every company.

Of course, if everyone did this, then hopefully it would also cause the company to fix their issues before it got to the point of overwhelming the AG's office. But doesn't it sound a little... centrally planned? communist? ... to need to tattle to the AG for every minor complaint you have with a company? I mean, great that it works, but it seems like a broken and unsustainable system.

An AGs office can fuck you up big time. Ruin execs lives. Wipe out LPs and their progeny. Destroy family names that go back to the revolutionary war.

You are correct. Capital adapts. Class war is a dialectic. This is just a micro tactic. Draw blood, retreat, regroup.

That sounds like exactly the kind of place I don't want to send a bunch of petty complaints with a return address.

AGOs handle consumer complaints. It's literally in their mandate in most states. I've had nothing but friendly and helpful interactions with two different AGOs.

> petty complaints

Petty crime is still crime.

I wonder if there's a startup here. Briefly: You upload your bills, we resolve disputes for you. Common problems get collectivized/turned into class action suits.

I've used things like Rocket Money, but their approach is to renegotiate bills and skim a little off the top. This could be more of a feeder for law firms that specialize in class action. Or, maybe it would have an in-house legal team.

I mentioned this very idea to a financially-savvy friend, and his answer was that credit-card companies already provide this service in the form of chargebacks.

That's true. Maybe this idea would appeal to people's sense of moral righteousness, though. Looking out for their fellow consumers :)

Absolutely this.

If the hold queue is more than a few minutes, you can't get the issue resolved, etc.:

1. Put it in writing.

2. Write your government's consumer advocate (usually the state AG's office in the US).

It's possible to escalate above and beyond this, but these two steps alone are often startlingly effective.

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.

>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

And then you get Xfinity canceling your internet without notice most likely. This is not a real solution.

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.

> 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.

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.

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-order...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Almost like the CFPB?

https://2020.elizabethwarren.com/cfpb

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.

Agreed, but it's never a 15 minute phone call...

OP said they got it resolved with a 15 minute phone call. I was just assuming they were telling the truth...

minimum

They were clear on it taking 15 minutes:

In the end I got the charge reversed, cold comfort, I was out a quarter hour...

This feels like a bad faith comment. You could have commented on systemic issues with these corporations but instead you fixated on one example.

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.

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 :)

The OP said that was at a minimum:

> ...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.

Anecdotally, I find the 15 minute time frame to be the minority of the calls. But, 15 minutes is not a trivial amount of time, especially if that need comes in the middle of doing something else important.

Edit: I see you're other comment where you were referring to their one particular instance but everyone else is talking about the general problem.

My wife had a 4 hour three way call with a hospital and insurance to fix a $100k bill. Came out to $0 in the end.

Yeah, see there it's well "worth" it. I'm assuming it was there error, and still there error, and you still paid in 4 hours of your time to fix it, of course.

A COVID test has substantially fewer 0s on the pricetag, but that's the death by a thousand paper cuts that the article describes. It'd be nice to exchange money for service.

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.

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.