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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

While I generally agree with your premise, the problem is that when companies realize they can make more money through "old big company incompetence", at best it means they have no incentive to improve, and at worst in means they can maliciously overcharge and then just blame it on "incompetence".

I really think government needs to enact laws that make companies compensate people for their time when they have to deal with bureaucratic nightmares like this. Right now companies just get to externalize the costs of their fucks ups onto everyone else.

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I remember, back in the last century, a TV station did a test, where they went to a whole bunch of supermarkets, and brought stuff. Some was on sale, some was not.

What they found, was that every (100%) error in price went to the favor of the company. Not one single error was in favor of the customer.

Often, the stores were good about correcting the error, but the cashier could never do it. They always had to go to the service counter.

At least locally pricing errors are always decided in favor of the customer. Of course you have to notice it but you're always entitled to the lowest advertised price on any item.

I think you are misunderstanding the comment you replied to. They are saying that whenever a customer at a grocery store checkout was charged an incorrect price, the price was always higher than the advertised price, never lower.

Yes, customers that notice it can have it corrected to the accurate, lower price. But the problem is that whenever there were "whoopsies", it's hard to just believe it was just a bug or well-intentioned mistake when there were never mistakes that would have resulted in a lower price.

My favorite is the new "digital coupon" version where just having the loyalty card isn't enough - you also have to have the app, add the coupon to your account, and HOPEFULLY by the time you reach the register that coupon has "posted" and the register applies it for you lol.

And good luck if whatever crappy barcode scanning library they picked up out of someone's trash doesn't like your phone... I'm not salty

Massachusetts regulation addresses this particular misincentive with a "one item (per customer day) is $10 off" when a food store/department scanner/checkout price isn't the lowest of advertised/display/sticker/scanner price. My own supermarket experience is of a clear sign posted by the cashier, and of hassle varying from the cashier handling it routinely and quickly, to trick question "So you want ${scanned - correct} back?", to waiting for a manager type and initialing/signing something simple.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/massachusetts/202-CM...

Yep compensation for time must be required. Insurance companies, particularly in healthcare (Aetna especially), love subjecting customers to repeated calls with hour long wait times. They hope to just exhaust you from getting a claim honored.

Yes. This is why I find Hanlon's Razor annoying (" Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"), as it doesn't consider the higher order effect of what happens when the malicious are aware of the adage and willing to pretend to be incompetent.

One obvious example: OneTrust cookie banners. They're nearly all misconfigured to have the "Reject Cookies" button greyed out or missing (or a link to a little minigame) and the "Accept Cookies" button prominent. Are all companies simply so incompetent? Is OneTrust (easy; no, it's correct on their own website). Or are they deliberately and maliciously breaking the law and when challenged will just do the wide-eyed "oh gosh, I'm such a silly-billy clutz with these things tee-hee"

How about the gaslighting that happens from couriers around missed deliveries (we tried but you were not home) when no damn delivery attempt was made?

Agreed. Also worth noting that Hanlon’s razor was not originally intended to be interpreted as a philosophical idea in the same way as Occam’s:

> The term ‘Hanlon’s Razor’ and its accompanying phrase originally came from an individual named Robert. J. Hanlon from Scranton, Pennsylvania as a submission for a book of jokes and aphorisms, published in 1980 by Arthur Bloch.

https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/philosophy/hanlon...

Hopefully we can collectively begin to put it to rest.

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