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Comment by imabotbeep2937 | Hacker News Reader

This is true of literally everything in the new economy.

Internet? Wait until the moment your "promo" cost ends and your bill goes from $80 to $150, threaten to quit, oh wow magically you can have $80 again and a free mobile phone line.

Any subscription service is like this. I sometimes grab a Blue Apron when it's 65+% off which is anytime I want. My ex used to do this with clothing subscriptions, up to 80% off.

There are laws against things being "always on sale". But now they're just being used to punish lazy customers who don't keep up on their promos. Only lazy or ignorant people pay the "real" price.

Oh hey would you look at that, another billion dollar IPO with no plan for profitability went bankrupt. Weird.

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I had T-Mobile starting in ~2003 and it included unlimited tethering.

After they introduced the Netflix included offer I inquired and they offered an "upgrade" that they swore up and down would not change my current service.

After agreeing, I was traveling and tried to tether and boom nothing. Their upgrade that would change nothing got me out of this grandfathered situation. Over time the cost of Netflix resulted in a higher fee for Netflix and ultimately I pay more for less.

Can't trust any company not to do anything in their power to squeeze another dime out of you.

Why accept oral promises when a contract with the term is definitely available? I guess you didn't record the conversation so why not giving the papers a look?

It's a lesson we all have to learn at some point, that was mine.

Recording calls is always tricky because of party consent rules, although telling people you're recording probably puts some guardrails on behavior.

"Your call may be recorded for quality assurance," is ubiquitous when calling the official sales/support number for any US company.

However, every single one of those call centers _also_ instructs their employees to hang up immediately if they are told (or have good reason to suspect) that the _customer_ is recording the conversation. It sounds hypocritical (and it is), but this rule comes from the company's legal department, whose sole job is to shield the company from legal liability.

When I’m recording (usually using the Rev app on iPhone if its not particularly sensitive or legally confidential information) I always start the human conversation with something like “hey so this call is recorded right? Thats what the message told me when I picked up. Just double-checking that we should consider this call to be recorded?”

I figure that it is completely legally unnecessary but it guarantees there’s an understanding between all human participants to expect a recording, which brings it in line with my own personality morality when conversing with an “innocent / relatively powerless human” (my morality exceeds the ethical and legal framework we operate in).

You don't have to tell them. You're dealing with the company, not the individual employee. If the company is recording the call, so can you.

I can't find an app that lets me record both sides of the conversation on Android. Only my side. When I looked into, it seems that Google has disabled that part of the API that apps cannot record both sides of a conversation.

Does anyone know of a reliable way to record conversations?

I got around this by paying for a VoIP line and running 3cx to utilize it, 3cx can record calls. I've never actually done it - not even to test - because right around the time i got it set up covid hit and the people i used to spend 1-2 hours a day talking to on the phone about tech and other interesting things stopped having to drive to work so my phone usage is now down to maybe 4 hours a month on private calls that no one else would be interested in.

Technically i've been paying for a voip line for 20 years, and shoehorning it into 3cx was mostly to allow my young kid to be able to call his aunt or someone who isn't on our PBX (grandma and grandpa and his siblings are, already).

believe me i was really annoyed when android stopped being able to reliably record calls. Another alternative that i did actually use is a 3 channel breakout connector on my cellphone, a DAC/ADC, PC microphone and headphones. You could tell the OS to "monitor" the microphone, and record mix (remember those days?). Or now-a-days you'd have to use VAC(virtual audio cable) or something to manage the routing. Speaker out goes to mic in on phone, and vice versa, hit record on your PC, and both the remote side and your side will be recorded. I never got too deep into this because it's a huge hassle unless you have a phone just for this; but multi-channel recordings would let you have synchronous audio, for, say, correct transcriptions.

Can't you just put it on speaker?

Many states in the US do not allow calls to be recorded unless all parties on the call consent to being recorded. There is no distinction (that I am aware of) between companies and natural persons in those laws. In those states, you can _technically_ record a call without consent, but my guess is that if you try to use it as evidence, you open yourself up to being prosecuted for wire fraud or somesuch.

There are more "one-party consent" states than two-. Notably for HN's crowd California requires all parties be aware: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_call_recording_laws#One...

I am in NY, a one-party state, so I record most important calls for use later.

> You don't have to tell them. You're dealing with the company, not the individual employee. If the company is recording the call, so can you.

The whole point of "this call may be recorded" is to establish consent between both parties. In two-party consent states (caller or recipient), you still have to establish consent to record.

If you're calling from a 1-party consent state to a 1-party consent state, you don't have to tell them, although I don't know how that works legally with call center routing.

If they’ve already told you that they’re recording, hasn’t consent already been established? You don’t need to ask again. It’s not like they’ve gotten consent for themselves to record, but not you.

My understanding is that intent needs to be established for any recording. If you establish consent and the second party records without consent I'm not sure where that stands but the spirit of the law seems to suggest every party must consent to every recording.

"This call may be recorded..."

They don't specify that it may not be you that records it. They are consenting.

> They don't specify that it may not be you that records it. They are consenting.

My - not a lawyer - understanding of consent laws is they're tied somewhat to privacy expectation laws.

If I tell you I am recording you, your expectation of privacy is lessened. But mine isn't, necessarily, because I control the recording and its potential dissemination.

They aren't telling you that they are recording. The exact phrasing is normally, "This call may be recorded", not "X Corp may be recording this call"

The former can be interpreted as explicit consent to record the call, after all they provided the consent, but you actually haven't.

> They aren't telling you that they are recording

Right but that's less important than telling the other party that anyone might be recorded. Because, again, spirit of the law, it loosens expectations of privacy.

Given there are only two parties on the call, only one needs their consent solicited anyway.

I’ve worked for those call centres and they don’t tell employees to hang up if it’s being recorded by the customer, because the company is already recording everything and trains their staff to operate as such.

“Cool you are recording too, IT will be happy we have an offsite backup” That’s been recorded!

For anyone who might not be aware, this is true for most companies. Any changes to your plan will usually require the removal of any grandfathered features, regardless of what the tier 1 CSR tells you.

> "always on sale"

Lenovo is great at this. Their absurd $3,000+ laptops are conveniently priced near market value after their perpetual 50% off LENOVOJUNE, LENOVOJULY, etc. coupons are applied. You don't even have to do work to use them, they're usually automatically applied at check out.

Talk about cheapening your brand and pandering to people who only buy things "on sale" out of principal. It almost feels insulting to the customer.

This is one thing Apple does right - there are no sales or discounts, it costs what it costs regardless of which US holiday is approaching.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/th...

Apple devices go on sale on other platforms (I only look at Amazon, but it must be the same for any other retailer), that's how they differentiate.

As device registration and customer support still goes through Apple, it makes absolutely no difference wherever you buy it, and anyone looking for a lower price will wait for Prime day or any other bigger sales in the year.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/17/24104233/the-m1-macbook-a...

Exactly. When I bought a pair of USB-C AirPods Pro recently they were 70 dollars cheaper from Best Buy vs Apple's website and I was able to add AppleCare with no issue.

They appear to currently be 60 dollars cheaper and have been in a sort of perma sale of varying degrees for the last 6 months (not unlike the Lenovo example).

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sku/6447382.p?skuId=6447382

It’s a marketing tactic way broader than the “new economy”

You know coupons in the newspaper? They serve exactly the same purpose. Some people take time and effort to cut them out every week. Others don’t and pay full price.

It’s a way to make customers who are willing to pay more pay more

Edit: referring to the “always on sale”, not to the cancellation promotions

> Internet? Wait until the moment your "promo" cost ends and your bill goes from $80 to $150, threaten to quit, oh wow magically you can have $80 again and a free mobile phone line.

Careful though. Companies are catching on to the "threaten to cancel" trick. Last time I tried this with Comcast, the support rep put me on hold, and then instead of sending me over to the "retention" specialist, just canceled my service and asked if I needed anything else. Oops..

There's no need to be worried about it. Don't just threaten, actually switch when a competitor is having a promo and stop worrying about it. I switched internet service between a few providers almost every year for quite a while. It saved a lot of money.

In the vast majority of America, there is no serious high-speed internet competition.

The they never had the option to threaten to quit and don't apply to this discussion anyways.

up until 2022 i had 2 options, dialup, or 5mbit DSL. I don't consider hughesnet workable for anything other than email (seriously, 1500ms latency on a good day?)

As siblings comment, this only works if you're not a captive audience.

All this back-and-forth about promos and cancellations is just the latest form of haggling; there's nothing new under the sun.

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