Comment by duxup
1 day ago
Oh man we had a person leave unexpectedly who controls our Apple organization for our dev accounts. I'm several months into me making requests, getting responses at least a week later for each email where the responder ... didn't really read my message. Then they ask for documents ... but they forgot to send me the secure link ... another week+ for them to do what they said they were going to do. Now one of my documents didn't include a sentence they needed ...
One of the requests was for a business card ... I haven't had a business card made with my name on it in 20 years.
The amazing thing is that I bet scammers working this system can get through this faster than I can.
At this point they should just give me control because no way would some scammer fail this much at this ungodly process.
Scammers can definitely get through it faster than you can. Whenever you attempt to address abuse in a system by increasing the complexity of that system, you implicitly bias it towards those with the time and inclination to study it, which always includes those with intent to abuse it, and generally does not include your users.
I'm in a similar boat...and over the weeks where i have been sending the requested docs/files...Apple reps come back and state that one of docs i sent them was not valid...so i ask them to clarify their "definition" of the doc..and they just either reply with unhelpful comments, or delay a little and delay things further. When someone asks for a copy of a payslip and you send it...but then Apple says its not a payslip, i genuinely am sad about the overall state of the world...I dislike apple and all these big tech providers for their abusive control/power and at the same time vast layers and levels of incompetence. :-(
I’ve been shocked by the poor support.
I didn’t expect speed but what I’ve experienced has been what feels like bottom of the barrel outsourced support you get from some no name brand company….
Structurally all these companies have adopted the approach that the anti-fraud team is it's own world, that should be uninfluenced. So you can't talk to them on the phone, even customer support can only email them; the only feedback paths are ones under their own control. It also seems likely that each subsequent reply is processed by a different operative; for companies of sufficient size, that's probably enforced programmatically.
This all helps make them immune from manipulation by "social engineering" or other forms of influence. But of course it also means they have virtually zero incentive to give a shit about the customer.
There are obviously many ways that they could improve customer experience, but giving them an incentive to do so, without opening the door to influence, is a hard problem.
Personally I think it should be the law that you can put up a bond to get to accelerate the process. Unfortunately the amount potentially at risk is probably larger than some customers accounts, at least at places like AWS where their services can trivially be exchanged for cash. So in many cases a bond would be over the customers means. But if any customers can afford it, it would provide a feedback path.