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Comment by metadat | Hacker News Reader

Yet another case of support channels only opening up for escalation via super high-profile and publicly visible social media, where it becomes an existential risk to the business in terms of potential backlash and potential fallout in the form of widespread platform abandonment.

There has to be a better way than only special cases.

Why aren't systems designed to compensate for the imperfection of human beings from the start?

Edit: @Walterluvian, thanks this explanation makes sense. Also, thanks for all your wonderful, thoughtful comments in general. Always get excited when I see your handle, you rock.

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I don't follow. No special support channel was opened up here. The u/AWSSupport user just linked them to the standard "get account support" link that everyone else uses.

I'd also note that a special support channel isn't really needed here. This situation (lost access to account due to owner no longer being available in some way) is a common situation that AWS Support is pretty good at handling through the standard channels.

Can confirm. Dealt with the exact same issue when a company founder died on a project. AWS was even lenient on the bills for a couple months while the company sorted out the financial cleanup and inheritance matters.

They can be. That’s not really in question. It’s just not worth it for Amazon or others to be bothered.

The only business case I can come up with for the considerable cost of human support is, “customers will think we suck a bit less.” But that may not convert into dollars.

Your first point is simply reality. If your largest customer had a major issue, you're going to prioritise that over a much smaller customer. It's just how we prioritise ourselves, something needs to give and not everything can have the same level of hypercare.

If you have 1000's of support tickets, what approach do you take to prioritising them? First in first out doesn't work if your 500th ticket globally is a major customer.

I would argue that in this scenario, AWS can be setup to provide access to another in the case that someone passes away or goes AWOL.

*From someone who worked in customer support for a large Telco. You wouldn't believe some of the crap people need support for.

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