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Comment by retrac | Hacker News Reader

It's not when the user falls down a weird gap in the architecture that is frustrating and dehumanizing. It's that there's almost never a way to get ahold of a human to explain what's broken. There is apparently no straightforward way to simply contact Facebook support. I'm not sure they even have support.

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The frustrating thing is, if they had a support team, they'd be inundated with really simple questions. A few years ago an article discussing some new Facebook login feature became the top search result for "Facebook login". What happened next? Thousands of comments on that article in the lines of "I want to login to Facebook, why am I seeing this page instead, please give me back my Facebook!". Google started offering an open-to-the-public question and answers on search results, and some people think that's the place to book a restaurant table after googling said restaurant.

There's some article that said 90% of computer users are below proficient, they have their routines but get totally lost if something doesn't work...

OTOH, having no support isn't the answer either, especially if the issue is actually on their side, and the user is genuinely inconvenienced.

Perhaps it is time to charge for advanced support like AWS. If you want priority support for Facebook where stupid questions are entertained and your hand is held, 99 dollars a year. Considering the value of social media these days, it is not too much to ask, especially if you are an enterprise customer. For everyday customers with non-critical problems that can be solved by Namecheap-style support teams in Eastern Europe, 5 dollars a month.

I don't want support for 99 dollars a year. I'd be happy with $1 a minute or whatever. It's fine to discourage 99% of the support calls normal companies get. Just have something for extreme situations.

And refund if it's their issue, basically a bug bounty with a PEBKAC cost.

If a company like Facebook offered paid support, the press would rush to denounce them for it.

It would also probably generate more support scams.

Instead of a recurring support plan just charge up-front per ticket, something like 50$ or so. The fee is refunded if the issue is on Facebook's fault.

This would solve the issue of monkeys wasting support's time while offering a way to get support for those who know what they're doing and are happy to put their dollars on the line.

> The fee is refunded if the issue is on Facebook's fault.

Does this model actually work? I'm sure there are some reputable companies that could make it work, but I'm not sure I know anyone who would trust Facebook to get this right.

It seems it would need an independent reviewing platform, which would act like a court.

One could crowd-source it, but there's probably a high chance of brigading...

I would think companies that collect so much user data would have some idea of which users are proficient and which aren't..

Just offer support to the proficient ones.

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