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Comment by russellbeattie | Hacker News Reader

> The quality of service seems to be deteriorating everywhere.

Given that it's generally accepted that the U.S. economy is no longer based on the production of goods, and is mostly a service economy now, this doesn't seem to bode well. I wonder if this is like a normal vicious cycle which will eventually be broken, or if this is a permanent change?

Based on personal experience living in Europe, a society can function quite well even with a pathetic level of customer service. This might be the new normal.

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> Based on personal experience living in Europe, a society can function quite well even with a pathetic level of customer service

I don't know. In my experience customer service in Europe is better than it seems. In the US my customer service agent will tell me very smilingly that unfortunately there is nothing they can do for me right now but is there anything else they can help me with?

In Germany where I lived before coming to the US, whomever answers the phone will take the time to point out why it is really my fault we got into this mess in the first place but will then grudgingly tell me that by exception they can fix it just in this one instance.

It probably depends upon the company. As much as I dislike Amazon, their customer service is outstanding. An anker headphone I bought also had excellent customer service.

Zelle blocked my phone number (verizon, not some burner number) as ineligible out of no where after using it them for a few months. They said they can't tell me why and there's nothing I can do about it. I almost threw my phone against the wall.

Well there is something you can do about it, but you probably don’t want to. You can start an arbitration hearing with AAA. Zelle pays the fees.

I am surprised when people say Amazon has a good customer support. Either I had bad luck at least 10 times or everything else must be even worse.

Like a 2$ refund I never got because they sided with the seller even thought they did not even have postal tracking as promised.

Or the bill for Amazon warehousing I get yearly because I am stuck in their registration loop as they don't like my CC. If I asked them to stop billing a unfinished account they just answer with canned responses. Going on for several years now.

Or the time they suddenly merged my accounts and erased my ~5$ left in credits. Because apparently I should use the same account for private and business

> Based on personal experience living in Europe, a society can function quite well even with a pathetic level of customer service. This might be the new normal.

How do you mean? I've always much preferred European service to American service. But then, I also loathe interacting with waiters as if we're old friends or something and get unbelievably frustrated when someone tries to bag my groceries.

Try getting anything done with a French or German bank. American customer service is several levels better than my experience with European institutions.

We have been using self checkout for a few years here in Australia, and the thought of having to even go through a normal checkout with a cashier now kind of yuck.

I don't relate with that yuck.

I prefer a human cashier. And also a second person to do the bagging.

Why is that?

Generally curious as I prefer to just self checkout and save the cashier the effort

Way faster for everyone. Most people are really bad at bagging groceries, and it slows down lines.

Couldn't the second employee cashier and save even more time?

Also for example WinCo which doesn't bag has 2 endpoints per line for it's treadmill of food they check out one person shoving order number 1 to endpoint one then use number two. One really slow person can't slow matters down.

That fails to account for drastically reduced space and operating costs of self-checkout machines. In my experience one cash register is generally replaced by 3-5 self checkout machines. Even if the cashier is twice as good at scanning and bagging the self-checkout will have much shorter lines and as a result will be much faster.

I just like being served. The more effort expended the better.

Funny enough, in Germany cashiers never do your bagging. Germans would find cashiers bagging their stuff weird.

It used to be that way in USA. But in the course of businesses squeezing more out of less the cashier now does double duty. He just has to work harder.

We see a lot of that here.

> But in the course of businesses squeezing more out of less the cashier now does double duty. He just has to work harder.

It's always nice to get an ideological dig in, ain't it?

In Germany, the businesses 'squeeze' the customer instead. There are no baggers, customers bag their own groceries.

You have to bring your own bags in Australia too

Getting squeezed is as ideological as a shit sandwich. And just as distasteful.

I don't know of a reasonably priced store in America that provides a second human helper and in a few years you won't get one. Rfid is going to result in checking out mostly consist of confirming that you in fact want to pay for the items you've collected. Virtually everything you want a cashier to do is a papering over bad or broken process or user stupidity.

For example item's with marred tags or which don't have one by design and inaccurate pricing are fixable problems. Customers not being able to read on the other hand is not the stores problem.

I prefer the human interaction nowadays.

Oh man, I remember doing my weekly grocery shopping at Caprabo, and having the miserable cashiers absolutely fling the bottles, bags, boxes, cans, etc. down the table after they rung them up, and you would have to try to bag as quickly as possible because she wouldn't wait once the next person was coming through. Gah!

Anyways, I hate bagging my own groceries even in the U.S., so there's an example for you. Not that big of a deal, European society in general works quite well, regardless of how horrible and mean their cashiers are.

I drove out of my way yesterday to pick up food from a popular chain restaurant usually famous for their super quick takeout. I was turned away, cash in hand, told they are only taking online orders.

I’m not even mad, while I was undeniably irritated in the moment, I’m now moreso just curious how the math works out.

Short staffing means a person who would have to play cashier can be making food. How many customers do they send away in a day given that was their usual schtick? Does it actually work out better for their business?

Don’t conflate the service sector with customer service. For example most white collar jobs that have nothing to do with normal “customer service notions” are part of the service sector.

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