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Comment by daneel_w | Hacker News Reader

"Once again this is Maria Kyla." - just in case anyone had any doubts. For some reason the mere tone of the support person's communication makes me think of chinese eBay/Ali-X retailers' made-up names used in support requests in order to appear more appealing and "familiar" to western customers. During my 7-8 years of buying stuff off of AliExpress I've been on the thankful receiving end of support from "Windy" (Wendy), "Marry" (Mary), "Magret" (Margaret) and "Amily" (Emily) to name just a few.

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That's not the issue though, that's just a simple courtesy, would you be happier if they used their original name, perhaps in unreadable (to me) chinese characters?

On amazon you get company names and addresses like shenzhenshihenghongxingkejiyouxiangongsi at LONGHUAQUGUANLANJIEDAOGUANLANHUANGUANZHONGLU370HAO.

and it is perfectly readable and can be translated back into chinese, for instance this can be translated into 深圳市恒宏兴科技有限公司 at 龙华区观澜街道观澜湖安关中路370号

but it did look like someone touched their yubikey by accident.

Yeah, people tend to not be as happy with someone they can't see as a person--and not being able to say their name is part of that.

Absurd statement in the context of chat/e-mail support. Of course you're not gonna get to see what the staff looks like. And no customer ever became happier nor felt more "connected" with the advent of first-name basis support staff in chat/e-mail instead of anonymous styled "you're talking with Support, how can I help you?", just like no customer is ever impressed with sales people gussying them up by repeating their name during conversation. It's just product packaging, not a support quality bump.

No, nor would I be sadder. Most of them do present their names in kanji, and it makes absolutely no difference at all to how the e-mail/chat support errand will progress.

eBay outsource their customer service to Filipino workers.

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