Besides, there is no way to know in advance that you will have a problem that requires a phone call.
While this is true, it's not an argument for a blanket regulation that requires all businesses to provide human phone support. The cases you describe (a business unwittingly publishes contact information that you have kept private, or a credit reporting agency that has incorrect information about you) are specific types of situations with legal implications, not just a general "I want something from this business that it's not giving me".
> there is no way to know in advance that you will have a problem that requires a phone call
There is no way to know in advance lots of things. That's why we all need to be prepared to accept tradeoffs. For example, that if you want a product or service that a particular business provides, and they don't offer human phone support, you have to decide whether you're willing to use the product or service with that limitation.
> we all need to be prepared to accept tradeoffs
Do we "need" to be? This is why we have laws. We don't "need" to accept that murder will happen, for example. We can legislate that no, you can't just kill someone because you feel like it. Similarly no, you can't just not answer the phone because you just don't feel like it.
In many cases, yes. Not everything in the society you live in is going to be arranged the way you want. That's just a fact of life.
> you can't just kill someone because you feel like it. Similarly no, you can't just not answer the phone because you just don't feel like it.
These cases are not at all equivalent. You don't have a right to have everyone answer your phone calls the way you have a right to your life.
The fact we don't have this right is a problem, and that is the point here: we should. There are many other rights Americans enjoy, and the wealth that companies enjoy here is more than enough to balance out one requirement, especially in the light that the requirement would benefit most businesses anyway.
To draw another analogy, think of anti-monopoly laws. To the standard businessman, they "suck." But on the macro level, for most citizens, and even for most businesses, they are good.
Sometimes, sure. But we're not discussing "sometimes" in the abstract. We're discussing a particular kind of situation.
> The fact we don't have this right is a problem
The fact that we don't have what right? The right to demand support from businesses that say up front that they don't provide it? No, I don't agree that we should have that right. As others have said, all that will do is make it much harder to start a business.
> There are many other rights Americans enjoy
Not everything that is claimed to be a "right" in today's American society actually is. The actual rights embodied in our Constitution and laws are not rights to demand that other people do things for you. They are rights to have other people, and the government, not do things to you that deprive you of your liberty, like jail you for speaking your mind or search your house without a warrant and probable cause or force you to testify against yourself. To compare those things to a business not providing you with the support you think you're entitled to, when you haven't paid for it and the business explicitly says it doesn't provide it, and say the same kind of "right" is involved in that case, is ridiculous.
If you really think it's a problem that businesses offer products and services but don't provide the support you want, here's my suggestion to you: start your own business that does the things you complain that other businesses don't do. I think you will find it a very enlightening experience.
> To draw another analogy, think of anti-monopoly laws...on the macro level, for most citizens, and even for most businesses, they are good.
No, they're not, they're terrible. The main effect of their application has been to make products and services more expensive for consumers, not less. The "monopolies" that were driven out of business or forced to break up under such laws (e.g., Standard Oil or Alcoa Aluminum) got their huge market share by providing their products more cheaply and in greater quantities than any of their competitors. The anti-trust suits against them were not instigated by consumers who weren't being well served (there weren't any); they were instigated by the competitors, who found it much easier to get the government to invoke laws to their benefit (and to the detriment of their customers) than to actually compete.
And as I said, this rule would only apply to companies of a certain size and revenue.
> The actual rights embodied in our Constitution and laws are not rights to demand that other people do things for you
Not true. First amendment guaranteeing right to exercise your religious choice is useless if nobody is out there enforcing that right, protecting it for you. Its very existence demands someone protect it for you. If they don't... well, you don't have that right anymore. The fifth amendment guarantees your ability to use a grand jury. What use is that if the jury simply refuses to serve you? Answer: They're not allowed to not serve you, thus they are forced to do something for you.
Monopolies are bad for consumers because no one can compete with them effectively. To offer "just compete with them" as a solution is just ignorant to this concept. With scale comes efficiency, and when you are efficient enough, you don't need to compete anymore.
> start your own business that does the things you complain that other businesses don't do. I think you will find it a very enlightening experience.
It wouldn't be Hacker News without an assumptive, sneering remark like this. Consider that this is a website full of startup entrepreneurs and that maybe you can't safely make this assumption after all.
Your reasoning is specious. The government is only obligated to protect particular rights under the Constitution, not any "right" you dream up. A grand jury is not serving you; it's serving the government, in the course of the government protecting your rights. If we want the government to protect our rights, of course we have a duty to do things like serve on grand juries. But that is not a service to the individual defendants; it's a service to us as a society, through the government.
> Monopolies are bad for consumers because no one can compete with them effectively.
If no one can compete with them because no one can offer the same products and services at an equally low price and in equally large quantities, that's not bad for consumers. That's good. What's bad is when the government steps in at the behest of the failed competitors to break up the monopolies, raising prices, lowering supply, and making things worse for consumers, as in the historical examples I gave.
If no one can compete with them effectively because they've bought special privileges from the government (which is often the case--for example, that's how railroad barons in the US in the late 19th century avoided competition, by getting the government to give them exclusive rights over particular routes), that's a reason to have less government regulation, not more.
If no one can compete with them effectively because no one is even trying, then someone should try. For example, if having guaranteed human phone support is something valuable to customers, then customers will pay for it. So there's an obvious business opportunity (and all the startup entrepreneurs you refer to on this site should be champing at the bit to take it). If it's not valuable enough to customers for them to pay for it, then why should the law step in and require it?
> A grand jury is not serving you; it's serving the government ... it's a service to us as a society
These are contradictory. If it's a service to the society, it's a service to me as well, as I am part of the society. True, not "just" me, but I also never advocated for any right that applied to just me. The discussion was always about creating a right for everyone to discuss with (reasonably sized, reasonably financed) companies, their reasonably-chosen concerns.
> If no one can compete with them [...] that's not bad for consumers. That's good.
Yes, individual transactions become cheaper when the business is large. However, choice is greater when the business is small, because then there are more competitors. We can agree that it would not be efficient for the economy for every establishment to be its own business, meaning that every hardware store and every restaurant was its own corporation. However can we not agree that it is also not efficient when a very large business goes bankrupt and we either have to urgently reshuffle the economy and/or bail them out?
And additionally, do you not think predatory pricing is a thing? This is something recognized to be used by institutions such as Wal-mart and Amazon.
> if having guaranteed human phone support is something valuable to customers, then customers will pay for it.
How would I even tell the company I want this feature, if I can't get through to them on the phone in the first place? How would they know it's wanted, if they never hear from anybody? And if they can't even answer to people who have paid them for their core product, why would they to anyone else?
You're quibbling. The grand jury has to do its duty regardless of how the defendant has behaved. A business does not have to give you what you want regardless of how you behave. These two things are not in the same category, no matter how you try to twist words.
> The discussion was always about creating a right
Yes, "creating" a right that currently doesn't exist, just because you feel entitled. That's not how rights work.
> choice is greater when the business is small, because then there are more competitors.
And the best way to discourage such choice is to pile more and more regulations on businesses. If you want more small businesses to provide choice, you need to make it easier to start a business, not harder. All these "rights" people think businesses owe them have a cost. If you as a customer are willing to pay the cost, then it's not a matter of "rights" at all; it's a straightforward business transaction, value for value. If you as a customer aren't willing to pay the cost, where is it supposed to come from? Things like grand juries ultimately get paid for by all of us as taxpayers. Are you willing to raise your taxes so the government can pay for phone support for all businesses?
> We can agree that it would not be efficient for the economy for every establishment to be its own business, meaning that every hardware store and every restaurant was its own corporation.
No, I don't agree to that. What size of business is most efficient in a free market gets decided by the market. What size of business is most "efficient" in our current society, which in many ways is not a free market, gets decided by lots of things, most of them having to do with various ways the government interferes in the economy. See further comments below.
> do you not think predatory pricing is a thing?
No, I think it's a buzzword used by people who have a political axe to grind but don't understand basic economics.
> This is something recognized to be used by institutions such as Wal-mart and Amazon.
And claims like that are, as I implied just above, bogus. Wal-mart and Amazon have the market positions they do for two main reasons, one good and one bad. The good reason is that they make use of economies of scale to provide products and services at prices nobody else can match, which is good for us as customers. The bad reason is that part of what enables them to do that is taking advantage of government interference in the economy (such as cheap loans for building facilities like warehouses and distribution centers that they can get but mom and pop small businesses can't) and bullying their supply chain in various ways that often cross the line into regulatory violations, but of course those regulations aren't enforced the way regulations are enforced against small businesses who don't have deep pockets and lots of lawyers.
> How would I even tell the company I want this feature, if I can't get through to them on the phone in the first place?
This is silly. Do you call companies on the phone to tell them about all the things you would like them to provide? Of course not. Nobody does.
Companies don't adopt these business models because they don't know that support is a valuable service. They adopt these business models because they don't think they can provide the support people would want at a price people would pay for. And in many, if not most, cases, I suspect they're right. That's not something that can be fixed by government regulation. It can only be fixed by either customers changing how much they are willing to pay, or some innovator (like, oh, I don't know, a startup entrepreneur on HN) figuring out how to provide that kind of support more cheaply and selling it as a service.
For every right, before it was created, it didn't exist. This seems tautological. Why would it have been created if it already effectively existed? The whole idea of rights is that it legally enforces something that wasn't any kind of guarantee before, and its absence caused all kinds of problems.
> No, I don't agree to that. [...] What size of business is most "efficient" in our current society, which in many ways is not a free market, gets decided by lots of things, most of them having to do with various ways the government interferes in the economy
You were just arguing that a monopoly is the most efficient thing to do business with on account of how it's cheaper. So now you are saying that it isn't necessarily. So I can only assume this means I can now argue that just because something became a monopoly, does not mean it is the best entity to do business with. And yet, it is a monopoly, indicating a non-ideal situation for the consumer, because there are more efficient ways to spend your money, but because they're a monopoly, you can't spend them that way. Hence how it's not ideal for consumers.
> This is silly. Do you call companies on the phone to tell them about all the things you would like them to provide? Of course not.
What do you think a user research call is? How do companies build their backlogs at all? Normally not by not talking to customers or potential customers.
> they don't think they can provide the support people would want at a price people would pay for.
This is the exact problem. Companies don't know the exact value of providing phone support because it is hard to measure. It's especially hard to measure at a societal level. At the very least, lack of phone call becomes an externality like pollution.
What if people's basic rights weren't "created" by anyone? What if they just have always existed? Or at least have existed at least as long as human societies have?
This is pretty much the view the Founders of the US had. They did not view the Constitution as creating rights but as acknowledging that people already have certain rights and requiring the government to respect them.
> This seems tautological.
I think you need to expand your thinking. See above.
I don't have anything further of substance to add to the discussion at this point.
Because when it comes down to it, people don't care about speaking to a human when they can get a product or service for less than the competition. Both corporations and consumers min/max their expenses, at the cost of service or humans.
It's one reason why I'm in favor of nationalizing things or keeping things nationalized; take away the drive for min/maxing profits and change things into a public service, and (in theory anyway) things will improve for the better.
I have a business in NJ where the state unemployment department has made an error. After hundreds of phone calls and multiple physical letters, we have received no response in over 16 months. The issue is still outstanding. Governments are no better than businesses in this matter.
You can call them the minute the offices open for a month straight, and get the same “high call volume, call back next business day” message.
The solution is to get a state politician’s ear who back channels their way into getting a government employee to take up the problem. But that is the same as getting a post to top of twitter/Reddit/hacker news and hoping a google employee decides to act.
In fact, my girlfriend's state job involves working with people over the phone to fix problems and help them get what they need, and she's great at it.
A reminder about state governments; You get exactly what you vote for, and no more.
The more you nationalise the more communism you have and if you have too much you die as we all know. Its a meter god put to balance Pvp in the endgame.
> History has proven this to not be true.
Norways energy grid is nationalised and it is one of the best investment funds in the world
Meanwhile the UK privatised trains in the 70s and has the oldest, slowest and most expensive trains in europe.
History exists outside of 1970s america vs soviet russia stereotypes
You might want to lookup what the word if means.
As a prime example look up peoples common complaints about airlines and then ask them why they don’t just fly first or business class, in most cases a cheaper price is favorable to most of the people complaining about airlines. I have a feeling that whatever services this guy is complaining about that a company offers a product that is much higher priced that includes knowledgeable and helpful support that they have simply chosen not to buy.
The cost of customer support is much, much bigger than people realize. For a low-margin business, a single customer support interaction might wipe out an entire year of profit.
Even the most optimized ad-supported companies like Facebook have revenues (not profits, that's before expenses) in the range of a couple dollars per user per month. A typical ad-supported business might have profits as low as a couple pennies per user per month. A single customer support interaction that takes 5 total minutes could take years to recoup.
I know people want to speak to someone, but the reality is that they like their $0 services even more.
Besides, we really aren't talking about low-margin businesses. If you are a low-margin business, chances are, your overall impact on society is not that high, and the importance of regulating you is not high either. If we introduced regulations like this it would be restricted to businesses of a certain headcount and revenue, probably.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2476867112525530?id=3...
The cool thing about having real, talented human beings doing that job instead of some undertrained call center? We treated them as part of our Fraud department. Someone calls in and tries to illicitly get access to cards they don't own, and the support agent had the training and knowledge to often be able to spot that and prevent it.
We didn't charge customers a cent for this privilege.
Obviously, we need to avoid abuse especially automated abuse, and this in turn becomes difficult.
So... perhaps it makes the most sense to roll this issue into regulation against dark patterns.
Or... fund an organization exposing dark patterns and helping consumers choose companies that avoid them.