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- Hacker News
- Reminds me of an executive at my company who has sent extremely inflammatory, needlessly escalating, LLM-generated messages to one of our vendors in support threads (for problems she simply does not understand, any prompting she does I'm sure is just to have her AI agent coerce a concession/credit). I recognize that there are companies with scummy billing practices, but people like this don't seem to care that there are human beings on the other end of these things who are scrutinized as though they are interacting with another human being.
- So I understand that the title is a bit inflammatory, but there's a whole section on exactly this, "Am I the Karen Now?". I'm never rude to a rep - they're just following a script to get paid. However, I don't extend any courtesy to the company's AI support bots optimized for stalling and maximizing profits.
Having being on the receiving end of many walls of AI-generated slop. I stand by every message I send, read it thoroughly, and keep it short and precise as to not add to the slop pile.
by dimitri-vs - I remember one of the disputes an LLM helped me with. The human beings on the other end threatened me with mall security and I had to record them (legal where I live), write to the company's HQ and to the consumer ombudsman to get a refund honored. In the end they had to concede. I would have given up before LLMs: finding all the relevant case law and statutes cost 10 times as much effort back then.
I have a feeling that some people were sheltered by the system in their belief that they don't have to take responsibility for what they sign with their own name. I had zero issues with LLM writing so far, I think it's because I always pay lots of attention to what I sign with my own name, no matter how exactly it was written. People like the person you describe, ones willing to apply the tech mindlessly, get found out. Maybe it's ultimately for the better.
- Im sure I saved a few thousands of dollars when one of my 3 solar inverters failed, chatgpt read through the documentation, my power configuration and pointed out that i could safely reroute the connections from the failed inverter to one of the two inverters. Seeing they are high voltage lines, I opted to work with the original installers, who were reluctant to do so, and was pushing to just get a brand new model, after a few back and forth with chatgpt providing the exact documentation that it was safe and within the limits of each inverter, they agreed to do so, for a few hundred bucks. (which only took less than an hour)by e808
- How many of the 9 ended with an actual human on the other side
Asking because from the seller side a lot of that friction is on purpose, and I'd expect companies to start answering agents with agents
by miguelfrreg - Great content! Inspires me to do the same thing since I am constantly dealing with things falling apart like this. I recently did one manually after putting it of for too long. Get Delta (airline) to go from "here is a 200 dollar bag to replace your 400 dollar bag we damaged" -> "Here is a 450 dollar eCredit".
I would try focusing on building a more unique style of writing, this feels like it went through heavy alignment to Claudes distribution. For the general audience maybe they aren't that sensitive to it yet, but for those that have to use LLMs at work, having to read more of it is grating.
by hankbond - Appreciate the feedback on my writing. I never let Claude add its own opinions or interpretations to what I write, but I do use it for improving the clarity of what I want to say. Problem is that I enjoy the way Claude (Opus 4.6, Fable) writes and I'm unintentionally starting to adopt its style so the line is starting to blur.by dimitri-vs
- 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.
- 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 - Laws would not fix the root cause, which is: world became too globalized, and that brought an onslaught of bad actors. Unless some sort of social score system is introduced, it will be very hard to make a quick decision whether someone makes a claim in good faith. But then everybody loses their privacy and ultimately their agency, which arguably many of us already lost to google and facebook. I don't think there is a simple soilution.by kova12
- Mostly they'll just add to their prices to cover the cost. Ultimately even if AI armchair lawyering is very bad companies are going to find it easier to eat the cost of more $12 refunds than dealing with inbox spam from AIs even more relentless than the vexatious humans they generally pay to go away
(yes, they can and do use AI to handle some of that themselves, but they need some humans in the loop at some point to ensure they don't get prompt hacked into offering much more significant compensation or to confirm that the legal threats issued by Claude are indeed not applicable, or to get mobs of angry agents to leave their executives alone on LinkedIn)
by notahacker - Agreed. The problem is we are already there. This is a similar theme to the front page story today about malicious code and Google’s automated response
As you look at everyone’s healthcare, we have every provider adopting an agentic billing solution and every payor adopting an agentic dispute solution. Two AIs fighting over their $200 payment while my deductible is $5k
by chrisgd - 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 - Think of how bad the average big company is, and realize half of them are worse than thatby gib444
- I mean…did you read it? Half was pre-exiting debt owed to the IRS from before the seven month period, auto repair, and medical bills for their wife are the big ones, all of which are within normal for an average Joeby brandonpaiz
- Granted, the total is a bit of a reach as "disputes". The bulk of it was IRS + insurance claims. The rest were companies not giving me what I very clearly paid for.
A year with only a $3 problem in it sounds nice, honestly.
by dimitri-vs - I've not had disputes worth that much in nearly 40 years on this earth. Makes me wonder whether this is just some exaggerated nonsense. The article is certainly written by an LLM.by IceDane
- An American who interacts with health insurance can easily do that. Insurers will literally try not to pay just because some percentage of people give up.
I went to the dentist recently. They wanted to do a "deep cleaning". cost: somewhere between $0 (covered) and $5k (fully out of pocket). I asked the obvious: that's one hell of a range. "Depends on how much the insurer will pay." They weren't happy when I demanded to know that number before committing, as it takes them hours on the phone.
by x0x0 - Start a SaaS and you'll discover there are a lot of them leading this life.by plantain
- If you leave off the IRS one, I run into little issues all the time. I tend to take the time to fill out the form on principal.
I recently switched car insurance carriers. My old carrier required a phone call to my agent, which I made, but then they never stopped billing me. It took more phone calls to sort it out, I was right in the end. I ended up with a check rather than a bill.
Maybe I'm old and jaded, no corporation is going to take advantage of me without a fight.
by annoyingnoob