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Comment by quartz | Hacker News Reader

> "Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives—including a chatbot," Rivers wrote. "It does not explain why it believes that is the case" or "why the webpage titled 'Bereavement travel' was inherently more trustworthy than its chatbot."

This is very reasonable-- AI or not, companies can't expect consumers to know which parts of their digital experience are accurate and which aren't.

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Forget about digital experiences for a moment. Forget entirely about chatbots.

> Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives

That includes EMPLOYEES. So they tried to argue that their employees can lie to your face to get you to buy a ticket under false pretense and then refuse to honor the promised terms? That's absolutely fucked.

I have had this happen in a sense.

I once booked a flight to meet my then-fiancee in Florida on vacation. Work travel came up unexpectedly, and I booked my work travel from ORD > SFO > TPA.

Before I made that booking, I called the airline specifically to ask them if skipping the ORD > TPA leg of my personal travel was going to cause me problems. The agent confirmed, twice that it would not. This was a lie.

Buried in the booking terms is language meant to discourage gaming the system by booking travel where you skip certain legs. So if you skip a leg of your booking, the whole thing is invalidated. It's not suuuuper clear, I had to read it a few times, but I guess it kinda said that.

Anyways - my itinerary was invalidated by skipping the first flight, and I got lucky enough that someone canceled at the last minute and I could buy my own seat back on the now-full flight for 4x the original ticket price I paid (which was not refunded!).

I followed up to try and get to the bottom of it, but they were insistent they had no record of my call prior, and just fell back on "It's in the terms, and I do not know why you were told wrong information". Very painful lesson to learn.

I try and make a habit of recording phone conversations with agents now, if legal in where I'm physically located at the time.

In the US at least once that notification that "the call may be recorded for quality assurance " happens, both parties have been notified and you're good to record regardless of the state you are in.

What do you use for recording your calls?

I used to use a couple of apps like Cube ACR, or Call Recorder Pro, but these no longer work, and I'm skeptical of the workarounds to get them working again.

Given the new restrictions in Android 10, probably the way forward is a passthrough device which uses 3.5mm connectors to MITM the audio. I haven't found one which is a sure bet yet.

It's ridiculous both iOS and Android largely have no way to record calls/try to prevent it, especially when some of us live in jurisdictions where we are well within our legal rights do to that very thing.

The motorola android I have has phone recording in the stock phonecall app, so I just use that.

Nothing like that on the Samsungs I've owned. Next phone will be a Pixel, so we'll see.

> Next phone will be a Pixel, so we'll see.

Pixels don't have call recording enabled (in most regions?). It's frustrating that I'm forced to use a third party app to provide a feature that the phone app should have built-in, but Google decided I can't be trusted with.

EDIT: It used to be geo-blocked, now it's "This feature isn't available on Pixel."

In an active call, tap the 3 dot menu up at the top right, you should see the option to record.

That just gets me an option for "Start RTT Call". Nothing like call recording.

I'm on an S10e, which is not that new, so that could be part of it. I bought an older phone, because I really like my top grain leather case, so I wanted to get a phone which fit the case more than I wanted a more cutting edge phone.

At least GrapheneOS does have a built-in recording function.

It's inconvenient, but I've observed journalists who recorded calls by putting the phone on Speaker mode to increase the volume, and then used a second device (such as a laptop or iPad) to record the call.

Is that actually true? I always thought that was one of those internet sayings that had no basis in law, ie one party, two party protections etc...

It is. There's good information linked here.

https://recordinglaw.com/party-two-party-consent-states/

> They tried to argue that their employees can lie to your face to get you to buy a ticket under false pretense and then refuse to honor the promised terms. That's fucked.

Pretty standard behavior for big companies. Airlines and telcos are the utter worst... you have agent A on the phone on Monday, who promises X to be done by Wednesday. Thursday, you call again, get agent B, who says he doesn't see anything, not even a call log, from you, but of course he apologizes and it will be done by Friday. (Experienced customers of telcos will know that the drama will unfold that way for months... until you're fed up and involve lawyers)

I had a problem with Verizon FIOS that went on for more than half a year, where they'd charge me for a service I wasn't signed up for, then I'd call in to complain and demand a refund, then they'd refund me and apologize profusely and swear up and down that they had fixed the problem for sure and that it would definitely not happen again, then it would of course happen again the next month, rinse&repeat.

Finally I filed an FCC consumer complaint which then forces a written response from the company within 30 days. I got a call a few days later from someone at Verizon's "Executive Relations" who fixed it immediately. It was such a frustrating dance, but the real trick is that when this happens don't mess around with a hostile company. Just go directly to the regulator agency they're required to answer to.

I had this happen with Rogers! Another loved and treasured bigcorp in Canada! Called to tell them I was moving in 2 months and to cancel my service and the agent says, oh well if you want to still have internet in the mean time, you'll have to call back in two months when you move. Ok. Great. I do that. Agent number 2: Well you didn't cancel with X many days of notice so there's a cancellation fee now on your acoount. Pay up!

I suppose agent 1 was jerking my chain so he wouldn't take the hit on his retention metrics so I don't blame him 100%. I blame Rogers bullshit system of incentives for their employees and their bullshit contracts they force on consumers who have little to no choice in the market here.

I bet if we removed the requirement to get a lawyer and file a lawsuit that those behaviors would vanish real quick, if all you had to do as the wronged consumer was report to an authority that Company X is doing business dishonestly.

You are probably not wrong, however take note that this is exactly the line of thinking that led to the DMCA. Beware the law of unintended consequences.

To misquote you.

"I bet if we removed the requirement to get a lawyer and file a lawsuit that those behaviors would vanish real quick, if all you had to do as the wronged copyright holder was report to an authority(the hosting service) that Company X is infringing on your copyright."

It also led to things like easy small claims court, consumer protection agencies and DPOs which protect consumers against corporations here in Europe without them having to shell out thousands of euros for lawyers and court cases.

Do all the upsides outweigh all the downsides, such as DMCA?

Point to you there, but also I would never in a thousand years trust a company, especially a publicly traded one, with that kind of power.

> I bet if we removed the requirement to get a lawyer and file a lawsuit that those behaviors would vanish real quick, if all you had to do as the wronged consumer was report to an authority that Company X is doing business dishonestly.

They can still appeal the decisions of the authority in the courts of law. They will just get the authority disbanded altogether. Previously, on hn `Amazon argues that national labor board is unconstitutional (apnews.com)` https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39411829

In Germany, we have the Verbraucherschutz as a low-level institution to handle such claims. They can and do consolidate such reports and can file lawsuits if there is evidence of systemic misbehavior.

You can file in small claims without a lawyer.

I think I could price for a few tens of thousands of dollars a service that creates a bunch of such wronged consumers. There are a bunch of homeless people in San Francisco we will represent. To make it easy for someone on the streets to be able to complain, we actually operate as a non-profit that advocates on their behalf for having wronged the company. You could use my service to attack another company on demand, but I advise that you do it at critical moments. Ideally, two weeks before a big launch or so should do it so that we have enough time to stagger out sufficient number of complaints.

This isn't a new business idea. There are law firms that specialize in consumer class action suits, and part of their skillset is finding lots of wronged consumers to represent.

Signing up homeless people by the hundred isn't exactly the gold standard of what these firms do, but it's not a million miles removed.

Fortunately, in this case, the consumer had enough proof of what happened and the court rightly told Air Canada to get fucked with that argument.

I can sort of see it. On the one hand, it's reasonable to hold them accountable when an employee gives you the wrong discount. But if an employee, on their last day at work, decides to offer the next person calling all of the seats on a single flight for just $10, I think we'd all agree that it would be unreasonable to expect the airline to honor that offer.

It's the degree of misinformation that's relevant.

> But if an employee, on their last day at work, decides to offer the next person calling all of the seats on a single flight for just $10, I think we'd all agree that it would be unreasonable to expect the airline to honor that offer.

The airline is free to go after the lying employee for compensation if they find out too late. It is never acceptable for the airline to cheat their customers.

Standard for airlines

I once ordered a gift for my father for christmass. The order page indicated that it would arrive on time. When it didn't arrive, I requested a refund. They then pointed to their FAQ page where they said that orders during the holidays would incur extra processing time, and refused the refund.

I wrote back that unless they issused a refund, I would issue a charge back. You don't get to present the customer with one thing and then do otherwise because you say so on a page the customer has never read when ordering.

They eventually caved, but man, the nerve.

This actually sounds like an interesting case to me because the details make a huge legal difference in my mind. (But IANAL, maybe I'm entirely off base here.)

E.g., did they tell you the shipping date after you placed the order, or before? If it was afterward, then it can't have invalidated the contract... you agreed to it without knowing when it would ship. If they told you before, then was it before they knew your shipping address, or after? If it was beforehand, then again, it should've been clear that they wouldn't be able to guarantee it without knowing the address. If it was after they got the address but before you placed the order, then that makes for a strong case, since it was specific to your order and what you agreed to before placing it.

> If it was afterward, then it can't have invalidated the contract... you agreed to it without knowing when it would ship.

> Sellers have to ship your order within the time they (or their ads) say. That goes whether they say “2-Day Shipping” or “In Stock & Ships Today.” If they don’t give a time, they must ship within 30 days of when you placed your order.

from the FTC https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-do-if-youre-billed-th...

I believe that's referring to "shipment" in the sense of "when this gets mailed", not the arrival time like we were discussing? I guess it might depend on where the delays were incurred, and what exactly was promised.

Why would they tell the date after placing? Every online shopping I ever used shows the shipping date together with shipping price and shipping options if there are any.

If they're going to ship immediately, then they can know before you place the order. If there's another entity involved (third party seller, backorder, etc.) then they might not be able to know when it will be shipped with much certainty.

I expect employees to know the correct answers and give them to me. When an employee says something that contradicts other policy pages I'm expecting that to be a change to company policy to me - they represent the company.

If the company doesn't agree to that, then they need to show the employee was trained on company policy and was disciplined (on first offense maybe just a warning, but this needs to be a clear step on the path to firing the employee) for failing to follow it. Even then they should stand by their employee if the thing said was reasonable (refund you $million may be unreasonable, but refund purchase price is reasonable)

This is especially true since, as it comes to refund policies, businesses make it exceedingly difficult to sort through the information.

It’s not the consumers fault that the AI hallucinated a result (as they are known to do with high frequency).

This line of argument is crazy and infuriating. "Air Canada essentially argued, 'the chatbot is a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions,' a court order said." Do they expect people to sue the chatbot? Are they also implying that people have to sue individual agents if they cause a problem?

> 27. Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives – including a chatbot. It does not explain why it believes that is the case. In effect, Air Canada suggests the chatbot is a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions. This is a remarkable submission. While a chatbot has an interactive component, it is still just a part of Air Canada’s website. It should be obvious to Air Canada that it is responsible for all the information on its website. It makes no difference whether the information comes from a static page or a chatbot. > https://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bccrt/doc/2024/2024bccrt149/202...

Real legal comedy. Since this was in small claims court maybe it was an amateur on Air Canada's side?

If they could reasonably expect to be able to hire people who would agree to accept all liability incurred during their work for the company, they absolutely would.

Same with chatbots. Even better, because once it's "trained", you don't have to pay it.

There's a few instances of expecting digital entities to shoulder the entirety of legal liability here in the last few years; DAOs are another example of this in the crypto space.

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