Pressing issues
Indignity Vol. 4, No. 139
POLITICS AND POLICY DEP'T.
The Most Powerful Populist Issue Is Pushing a Button to Talk to a Human Being
THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, now calling itself the Biden–Harris administration, announced a multi-agency regulatory campaign this morning, under the name "Time Is Money." It was a fairly naked election-year gimmick, less a coherent initiative than a bundle of already released rules, proposed rules, thematic areas for deciding what rules might be good to make, and a call for the public to suggest more rules. The administration didn't even clean up the typos—the text of a hyperlink to an agency letter still read "[insert link to letter]"—and nevertheless, Indignity embraces and endorses the Time Is Money agenda wholeheartedly.
None of the major newspapers are currently giving Time Is Money a fraction of the coverage that they are giving to Elon Musk's plan to chat with Donald Trump. This is because the newspapers have no sense of what genuinely matters in American life, and they have conditioned themselves to believe that pandering to the public is a matter of saying bigoted things about fake issues.
What the White House did today was real pandering, pandering of substance. While Musk and Trump were getting ready to talk about the migrant hordes or the Woke Mind Virus or whatever is rattling around in the ever-narrower grooves of their brains, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris put out a press release denouncing "all the ways that corporations—through excessive paperwork, hold times, and general aggravation—add unnecessary headaches and hassles to people’s days and degrade their quality of life."
Hold times! The announcement went on:
Too often customers seeking assistance from a real person are instead sent through a maze of menu options and automated recordings, wasting their time and failing to get the support they need. In a recent survey, respondents said that being forced to listen to long messages before being permitted to speak to a live representative was their top customer service complaint. To tackle these “doom loops,” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will initiate a rulemaking process that would require companies under its jurisdiction to let customers talk to a human by pressing a single button. The [Federal Communications Commission] will launch an inquiry into considering similar requirements for phone, broadband, and cable companies. [The Department of Health and Human Services] and [the Department of Labor] will similarly call on health plan providers to make it easier to talk to a customer service agent.
That's four different agencies getting to work on forcing companies to prune their phone trees. It's tempting to press "1" to demand to know exactly why it took Joe Biden more than three and a half years to get around to doing something about this, but then, the previous three decades' worth of presidencies never did anything at all, while the automated answering system relentlessly evolved from a way of helping callers reach the right person into a way of preventing callers from ever reaching a person at all, until eventually the workers who might have helped those callers could be eliminated, and the companies could simply stop doing whatever the callers had originally hoped to get done.
The other week I was on a call that required me to read a reference number out loud to the robot before the robot would connect me to a human being, and it was one of those days when my voice happened to be frayed and hoarse, and the robot could not understand me but would not let me ask for an operator. I think in the end I might have had to hang up on the robot, call back, lie to the robot about what I wanted to do so that it couldn't ask me for the reference number, and then, after getting myself connected to the wrong department on purpose, ask the human in the wrong department to help sort me out. Nobody wants to do any of this! Except the people who count the dollars the company isn't spending on helping its customers, and whatever extra dollars the company saves or gets because people can't ask them to do something or to stop doing something.
Speaking of which, elsewhere in the Time Is Money release, the Biden–Harris administration wrote that "[t]he Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed a rule that, if finalized as proposed, would require companies to make it as easy to cancel a subscription or service as it was to sign up for one." The great thing about that rule is also the terrible thing about the fact that the rule doesn't already exist, which is: there is no remotely plausible argument against it. Everyone who has ever made the unsubscription process more cumbersome than the subscription process has done it specifically and intentionally to rip people off. Unsubscribing should be even easier than subscribing, because when you subscribe, you need to give the company your information. When you unsubscribe, you just have to tell them to stop using the information they already have. Set up a button that says "STOP"—maybe with a second "Are you sure?" / "YES, STOP," setup so you genuinely don't unsubscribe by accident, as an Indignity reader who we had to help de-unsubscribe recently did—and that's all. Anything more is a scam.
After laying out its existing regulations or proto-regulations or regulation themes (the Labor and Health and Human Services departments are "calling on health insurance companies and group health plans to take concrete actions to save people time and money when interacting with their health coverage"), the administration presented its list of principles for the American people to consider in seeking additional regulations against having our time wasted:
Companies should make it as easy to do things that you want to do as it is to do things they want to do.
• It should be as easy [to] cancel a subscription or membership as it is to enroll.
• It should be as easy to obtain rebates and refunds as it was to purchase, with no needlessly cumbersome paperwork.
• Refunds and rebates should be paid as quickly as companies take funds from your credit card or bank account.
Americans should be able receive customer service on their terms and their own time without significant hassle or hardship.
• If you want to talk to a human, you should be able to talk to a human at convenient times and without interminable waits.
• If you prefer to interact electronically – such as by text, email, or online portal – there should be simple and easily identified ways to do so securely.
• Technology – such as chatbots – should be used to enhance customer service with speedy response times, not used to shirk on basic responsibilities, such as receiving a refund.
Americans should not be subject to confusing, manipulative, or deceptive practices online.
• If you want to understand what you must do to obtain a good or service, the requirements should be clear and transparent.
• You should not be subject to hidden fees or to requirements that are obscured through confusing language and small print.
The Democratic National Convention is next week in Chicago, and they need to recite those bullet points in place of the Pledge of Allegiance.
WEATHER REVIEWS
Bethany Beach, Delaware, August 11, 2024
★★★ Clouds dulled the early morning light and then departed in time for the sun to burden the trip to the farmers' market and the supermarket. An osprey flew over the downtown, giving a little midair shiver as it went. After the errands were run and the lunch digested, the beach lay under clouds again. The switch from heat to coolness had done nothing to thin out the Sunday beachgoers. Gulls and pelicans dived at the waves in a frenzy. Even in August of a summer of climate collapse, the Atlantic was chilly on first impact. Ten or 15 yards out, past a stretch of waist-deep water, a sandbar rose so high that a little child could stand knee-deep in the foaming remains of the breakers. Waves crashed into and over each other, pushing the retreating surf back up the beach. A new wave reared up with its glassy green-white interior bearing a tan patch of sand stirred up by the older waves. By the time the swimsuits were hung out and the showering was done, the sun was shining clear again.
NOT-SO-EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
WE ARE CONTINUING to experience and battle with technical difficulties getting the podcast sent to the usual places such as Apple, Spotify, and our own pod site, so here is today's podcast, available at the only place we can get it to right now, the GHOST platform, which is supported by our favorite readers, the ones with paid subscriptions to Indignity!
There was no podcast today. Thursday and Friday's podcasts are here.
Click on this box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM SCOCCA
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of sandwiches selected from Book of Recipes, by Daughters of the American Revolution, Genesee Chapter, published in 1922, and now in the Public Domain and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
“Let’s pack our baskets and eat in the woods.”
Always use a sharp knife in preparing sandwiches. Use bread a day old, the finer grain the better. Spread with butter soft enough to distribute evenly, but not melted butter. Butter with a broad bladed knife; trim crusts and wrap sandwiches in a damp cloth until ready for use.
TOASTED CHEESE SANDWICHES
Toasted bread, butter, 1/2 lb. cheese, chopped with 2 pimentoes. Spread on toast, put in oven until cheese begins to melt. Serve hot.
CLUB SANDWICHES
Between two slices of bread put lettuce leaf, mayonnaise dressing, then slice white meat of chicken; more dressing. Put bacon, fried crisp, on top. Cut across cornerwise. Put pickle cut lengthwise on plate.
OPEN SANDWICHES
Cut any kind of bread in fancy shapes, butter and spread with Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Cut pimentoes in fancy shapes to form flowers or border, or use almonds to form daisies.
CHEESE SANDWICHES
Cream 2 T. butter, 1/2 cup grated cheese, 1/4 t. each of mustard and paprika, and 1/2 c. chopped stuffed olives. Season with salt.
CHICKEN SANDWICHES
Six T. of chopped, cooked chicken, 2 T. chopped green pepper, 1/4 t. chopped parsley, 2 T. mayonnaise dressing. Salt to taste.
CHEESE AND NUT SANDWICHES
Grind walnuts and mix with equal amounts of cream cheese and add salt and paprika for seasoning.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
MARKETING DEP'T.
Supplies are really and truly running low of the second printing of 19 FOLK TALES, still available for gift-giving and personal perusal! Sit in the crushing heat with a breezy collection of stories, each of which is concise enough to read before the thunderstorms start.
LESS THAN 5 COPIES LEFT: HMM WEEKLY MINI-ZINE, Subject: GAME SHOW, Joe MacLeod’s account of his Total Experience of a Journey Into Television, expanded from the original published account found here at Hmm Daily. The special MINI ZINE features other viewpoints related to an appearance on, at, and inside the teevee game show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, and is available for purchase at SHOPULA.
