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Comment by CamperBob2 | Hacker News Reader

I said it before and I'll say it again, for opportunities open to the entire world on the internet, adding monetary friction is the only way to filter out serious people from bad actors doing spray-and-pray hoping they make some money or get that job through weaponizing AI bots and sucking all the air in the room.

So many problems can be solved that way, including customer support. Instead of having to post a sob story on Twitter and HN when the AI at BigCo bans my account for no reason, why not charge me $100 for access to human support that is empowered to triage and escalate genuine issues? Then, issue a refund if the problem is on their end.

I don't understand why this isn't a thing.

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$100 is way too much. Maybe $5 to get people to spend 30 seconds on google to solve the easy problems instead of calling. But I wonder if even that would be enough to significantly incentivize claiming everything is intended behavior / user error just for another revenue stream.

$100 for someone in SV isn’t much. $100 USD for someone in Africa, India, some parts of Asia could be a week or even months salary.

You could probably adjust the cost per region, but then you open yourself up to spam bots again because it’s trivial to spoof one’s location.

>$100 for someone in SV isn’t much. $100 USD for someone in Africa, India, some parts of Asia could be a week or even months salary.

That's kinda irrelevant. A Macbook Pro is still around $2k USD whether you're in US, EU, LATAM, Africa or India. They don't sell it cheaper to people in developing nations just because they earn less money.

You do know that there are ways online without a MBP?

And that developing countries do have access to the internet too.

That's offtopic form what I was replying to.

Then that would make your comment off topic from what everyone else was talking about.

My guess is there is no easy way to deal with chargebacks and they would probably be bad.

It would almost need to be analog. Fill out this form and drop it in the mail with 10 bucks inside.

Placing holds on money on a credit card is totally normal. Hotels do that all the time.

My guess is there is no easy way to deal with chargebacks and they would probably be bad.

Sure there is. That would be casus belli for a real ban.

It’s hard to forecast this. Support calls occur chaotically. So staffing to support them is difficult to do in a way that keeps a steady margin.

I wonder if transaction costs get in the way. Someone has to pay the payment provider in both directions.

Then who arbitrates the inevitable dispute over whose end the problem was?

For the times when it actually saves the company from going through arbitration, $100 is cheap.

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