I haven't lost a customer service fight in seven months

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• Hacker News
• A smart but wrong path to solve the problem. We need competitive markets that would force corporations be responsible instead of an extra layer of complexity in the already complex consumer world.

  I applaud to the author for creativity and I'd be tempted to try (elements of) it in practice next time, but I don't see anything good coming out of it at scale.

  by dgudkov
• LLMs are a great equalizer. I had no idea how much of the world runs on ignorance of one's own rights and how much administrative burden is used adversarially. Now my learning is greatly accelerated. I hope it's the same for more people than not and we will end up with a more just society.
  by paweladamczuk
• I applaud you. Over the past year, more than a few companies have become impossible to deal with over issues of their own causing, and issues that never would have come up in previous years, now do. They just don't seem to care at all anymore, and seem completely checked out.

  In the past year, I've had to spend quite a few hours just finding replacement parts and solutions for issues manufacturers were responsible for and would have handled previously. I may have to reevaluate and have AI handle more of these matters.

  by ocd
• Mostly this leaves me concerned about an escalating war between companies intentionally introducing friction into their customer service pipelines to discourage expensive customer behavior, and customers increasingly relying on more and more AI automation to deal with that friction.

  In a perfect world this would cause the intentional friction to be less and less effective, while laws and regulations stop the companies from implementing more and more aggressive policies/systems, leading them to go back to the fastest possible pipeline to capture those savings if nothing else.

  But I am worried that is not the world we live in and I am going to try to return some shoes I bought in the wrong size and be asked to do some integrals before I am allowed to.

  by blobdole
• I got 900 euros refunded for a delayed flight with the help of Gemini. It was a two step process first to raise to Turkish airlines who refused, and then fill in a form in Turkish to some ombudsman with a bunch of screenshots/proof and citing the rules. I would not have the cognitive space to deal with it alone.
  by irpap
• I had a dispute with Canada Revenue Agency and won. A good part of a decade ago now, I got into contracting for a couple of years. The accounting lackeys at S_____ W_____ in Richmond, BC, Canada paid me using cash method accounting. They marked down payments to the date they actually paid. That was often late, so for instance December money would end up in January, and since that's when the money changed hands, it was now next year's income. They reported it this way to the CRA (unbeknownst to me, who would not suspect such a practice at this level of business). In one year, November and December payments were paid in January, and accrued to that year's income from their side.

  In my self-made accounting system, written in a self-made Lisp, I used accrual accounting, associating all transactions with their correct dates, and remitted taxes accordingly.

  This resulted in some amount owing (looking like underreporting).

  I used reports from my accounting system to document my case, and they agreed with me: I did my accounting and reporting the right way, and that company should not be using cash-based day-money-changes-hands accounting.

  by kazinator
• I saved about $65k this way, having Claude guide me through the process of assuming the (very low interest) mortgage on my house instead of having to refinance it under current rates. When I first contacted the mortgage servicer they said my loan wasn't eligible. I used Claude to do the research citing why my loan did qualify, drafting the letters and request packages with all the supporting evidence, directing me to the proper government complaint portals when the lender still tried to stymie the process. Cost me about 5-6 hours of time over all and will save me >$60k over the course of the loan.
  by obelos
• I wonder what kind of life the author has in order to start 9 disputes worth $12k in just 7 months.

  The only dispute I had in the last year is some $3 tweezers I ordered on Amazon that never shipped, and Amazon automatically reimbursed the money.

  by uniq7