I had the same problem trying to get in touch with American Airlines to cancel a flight. They would NOT give me a phone number. I had to online chat with AI. It was a nightmare.
And now it just got worse for us, because the guy who was supposed to come fix our fridge with the part they ordered a couple weeks ago just called to say he can't find the part. It never got ordered. And when my husband asked to speak with the manager or someone higher up, he said there's no one but "Samantha" the AI. We paid $550 already to have this fridge looked at and a part ordered, and now we have no idea if it's even going to get fixed. And we have no fridge for the foreseeable future.
Did the guy give you the part number? If so let me have a look. Sometimes this stuff is easier to do yourself. Also, there are probably locals on Facebook marketplace who do these kinds of jobs for cash. They fix stuff like small appliances and small motors. Just look up guys selling old fridges and see if they do repairs. Way easier than dealing with corporations.
Right now we're just trying to get them to refund us the $550 we spent for nothing. My husband is being given the run around, on the phone endlessly. I think he just wants to buy a new fridge at this point. But he wants his money back.
My husband drove all the way to the Sears repair storefront listed online, only to find out there is no such thing anymore. It's something else entirely. We've come to realize that these Sears employees are working from their homes with no one to direct them but the faceless entity "Samantha."
OK so let me throw a counter argument to this. I own a service company. I have 6 employees. The amount of many basic employees costs now is MORE THAN double what it was in just 2019. When I raise my rates on my customers they get mad. Im charging more and making much less than a few years ago. I own the business and run it and have employees making more than me. People will not work for $16-17 an hour any more for entry level work. You need to pay 23-24/hr for entry level. I pay 40% of their salary in taxes and benefits. So for someone who used to make 33k a year and cost me 45k a year, now they make $54k a year and cost me 75k!!!... When my cost to employ someone goes up over 50% in 4-5 years, I can't pass all that along to my clients which means I pass some on to them, and I take a big reduction in my pay. I have all the risk and I make LESS than I did 4 years ago. So when you complain about AI and replacing people, remember, people are WAY more expensive and when that expense is high prices for everything goes up. The cost of my labor is up huge, cost of my materials has doubled in some cases because their costs have gone up too. It's a never ending cycle.
It seems we've all been put in a hard place. Whoever is pulling the strings in this world is pulling us all down together. AI replacing people more and more is going to create mass poverty and reliance upon the government, if people can't get jobs. Oh well, Elon Musk says AI will run absolutely everything in 5 years, so I think we're past the point of no return. It seems we all just need to buckle up spiritually.
OK so no AI, and we have to pay ev er increasing wages, means the cost of your goods and services is going way up. So yes you are right, no win situation. Me personally, I want to hire good people, pay them a good wage so they can provide for their family and get to church as much as possible. But if I lose all my clients because my prices get too high, now what. They are out of work too.
I think from this conversation AI is being used to mask the problems with inflation. AI is the equivalent of cheap labor, it is used to keep costs down. Everything should be getting way cheaper due to AI, but it isn't. Instead the costs keep going up.
Unfortunately. The most important thing to me is not my client, it is my employee. Because when they are happy, they want to keep their job and they will keep the client happy. But man, it is tough situation to be in
Really the main problem for me that I run into with companies using AI is that I can no longer be put through to an actual person when I really need to talk to one to explain my situation. It's such a horrible feeling, being trapped in an endless loop with a soulless machine that can't comprehend the nuances of what I'm saying. It is also incapable of feeling or empathy (even though it uses human expressions and attempts real voice inflections, which makes it even worse) which is so important while working out stressful situations. I just feel like there should be an actual person that can take someone's call when they desperately don't want to talk to AI. Maybe that's different from your company, where perhaps you have someone able to talk to your customers? In this Sears repair company, the workers themselves were telling me as they worked on my fridge that they had to rely on and do everything through "Samantha" the AI, and they were very unhappy about it.
Thank you for telling us. I will pray to him. He was a mystic, and a very saintly priest. He predicted I think about an antipope. But I’m not sure.
