The Grand Illusion
Most people seem to like the combination of the internet and electronic communication, but what happens if that’s all you’ve got, and something goes wrong? And you can’t get a real person to even address the problem, no matter what you try?
Think that’s an unfounded worry? A skeptic’s dystopia that can’t happen?
Let me tell you about our struggle with a meal delivery service called Tovala, that delivers meals for quick preparation with a computerized oven/broiler. Weekly, you select what you want from the menu and the meals are delivered the following week.
Some six months ago, we signed up for a food delivery system from Tovala. While there were a few meals we didn’t care for, the system worked reasonably well, and it definitely cut down on meal preparation time.
But the warning signs were there early. In March, my wife asked the electronic system to skip a week. That was an option on the ordering schedule. The system took the instructions, but we still got and were billed for the delivery of another week’s worth of food.
When the university semester ended, and we had more time, we paused meal deliveries for the summer, an option available on the online ordering system. But the following Wednesday, we got another order. We persisted, sending an email to Tovala, asking to stop meal delivery service. But the next Wednesday, we got another delivery, for which we were billed, even though the Tovala system indicated that our orders had been suspended indefinitely.
I tried to call the company, but could only find one telephone number, which had a recording telling me to use the on-line service or email Tovala. We lodged a complaint by email and got a response saying that deliveries had been suspended. We emailed the customer service section of the credit card company asking that charges from Tovala not be honored, but there was no response to that.
We thought the problem had been resolved when, the next week, there was no delivery from Tovala. Except the following week, there was another delivery, for which we were billed. So, we finally got a real person on the line, but only from the credit card company – who informed us that there was no record of our request to stop payment to Tovala, but who promised to look into the matter.
That didn’t work, either, and the next week we got yet another shipment.
After another hour of internet searching, my wife finally found a number that connected to a real person. That real person insisted that the order hadn’t been cancelled. My wife persisted. The real person actually searched and discovered that, for some reason, my wife had two accounts, and that they’d cancelled the inactive one. My wife definitely never signed up for two accounts, and we never received two orders. In any event, the real person promised that both would be cancelled.
Finally, this week, we didn’t receive a shipment of food we didn’t want and hadn’t ordered. I’m still a bit worried that, despite it all, we might get a shipment next week.
But my question is: How many people are going to be overcharged, hurt, or worse by electronic/AI systems with no way to get to someone who can actually address the problems? We’ve spent hours dealing with this problem so that a company can save a little money, and it’s cost us not only time, but dollars for meals we weren’t around to eat, not to mention the waste of food.
So far as I can see, these systems are too often one way — cost saving for the company and endless hassles for the customer.
That would be a company being shady, good product or not, and trying to set it up so you can’t cancel.
The issue is, no matter what they get extra money this way and don’t care about the impact for you.
If you tell the Bank the truth (that you did order but had asked them to stop) There’s no issue from the Bank’s perspective, you gave them your card number, thus authorizing the charges. (Though I’m confused the bank didn’t offer to set up a new card number and close the old one).
If you tell the bank they’re un-authorized or fraudulent, then when the bank tries to go after the merchant the merchant has proof of delivery to the address attached to your card. The bank loses the money.
Either way, Tovala gets extra funds. 15 years dealing with Fraud Investigations for Discover Card showed me a LOT of how online businesses choose to operate.
Yeah, that’s one reason I use credit cards for most automatic payments – you can always revoke or de-authorise payments directly with Visa or Mastercard’s fraud department and they’ll take it up with the supplier. Worst case, declare the card stolen and they’ll stop all payments and reissue you a new one. They don’t like it, and you take a small hit to your rating but it stops the bills.
If you have direct debits, the payments can keep being withdrawn from your bank account indefinitely until the supplier decides it is ok to stop – your bank will not let you cancel them.
Just to clarify, reporting fraud does not ding your rating. Regulation Z has very clear requirements for credit fraud and how it’s handled.
The issue here is that it’s not fraud if you gave them the card number. Many banks won’t look into it heavily, but you never know. And in general it is dishonest, though I don’t fault people.
It’s a bit different in the UK – it falls under the financial ombudsman’s office when cancelling CPAs and direct debits. The consumer should always be able to cancel. The banks are supposed to help with both, but don’t always. Visa and Mastercard are bigger than the banks, they just terminate the contract and pass the issue down the chain to the card provider, hence why the ding on the rating which fades after a few years.
Obviously not an expert on UK law but. Visa and Mastercard are not the step above the banks. Visa and Mastercard are payment networks. The bank is running it’s own card and paying Visa or Mastercard a fee to use their network and logos. Any decision a bank makes is theirs, not something Visa or MC is dropping on them.
A help desk or customer service person is fairly low on the scale; but they still need to be competent. In addition to cheapness, there’s the problem of finding competent ones that can solve at least simple problems without having to refer them, at a price that the financial folks don’t cringe at.
And given that someone on customer service is almost only dealing with people who are already annoyed, it’s probably a bit draining to be dealing with calls like that all day. So only a few of them will do it for a long time; many will upgrade their skills and move on.
I recall IBM repairmen in the 70’s and 80’s: they had a full-blown diagnostic flowchart book for whatever they did, which had already been analyzed to death, so that following the path through it would lead to “replace/reset/reconnect this part”. Someone who can simply follow one of those with reasonable skill can do quite a bit (and showed up in shirt and tie, but tucked in the tie before getting into equipment, so as not to be strangled), but preparing those must be a high skill indeed. But even with all that, customers failed to think, and ended up paying for service calls and travel time to put the plug back in the outlet.
So there’s three sides to it (business, employee, customer), probably; and while there can be decent and capable people on each, there can also be jerks.
Except for small local businesses (and not all of them), service has become almost a lost art.
Most initial phone customer service workers are literally not allowed to divert from their script. Their job is to appease the customer, determine the problem and clearly log it through to another team who can actually do something. If they divert, they get punished by their internal management who monitor their calls. They’re effectively a lightly trained call filtering service, who by virtue of living overseas work during their daytime so are cheaper than paying out of hours rates locally.
Having an actual effective service desk is an expensive proposition, and requires a lot of hands on management, especially since your good people will regularly get promoted up and out so you’re constantly training new ones, half of whom are idiots. And covering out of hours calls will triple your costs. Fortunately for us we have a few senior people who are great on the phone but lousy in person, so they’ve found a good long term niche that suits them well.
There was a short-lived sitcom about a call centre in India, mostly forgettable, but I do remember an exasperated operator saying something like: “Sir, you have asked to speak to a manager, someone who knows what’s going on: I’m afraid you’ll have to choose just one of those …”
More and more it seems like late stage capitalism is hardly distinguishable from late stage communism. Every good or service is locked behind a wall of bureaucracy and even the most mundane changes require unnecessary authorizations. For example, I was almost unable to see a doctor for acute back pain because I had previously seen a doctor at another office within the same organization and the bureaucracy had a problem with me paying for an appointment to see a doctor who had an open appointment slot. How having a doctor sit on their hands for an appointment slot while annoying a patient who needs the slot is good for business, I have no idea. Add in that it takes three automated messages and two menus to even talk to the bureaucrats and it’s starting to seem like corporate bureaucracy is trying to rival the USSR. And that’s a relatively easy interaction. Making a small phone plan adjustment takes 6-8 hours. Most amusingly, a friend of mine was turned down for a job because he only had three years of experience in a software program which had come out three years ago. The job posting required five years of experience, and apparently reality can stick it’s head where the sun don’t shine.