Enshittification continues apace

We are circling the toilet bowl of customer service

What is the end result of shitty customer service?
Michael Douglas in the movie “Falling Down” had one answer!

Note: As you can probably already tell, this column will use multiple variations of the “S” word. If that offends you, you should probably stop reading now!

Enshittification is a word coined by Canadian writer Cory Doctorow that was originally meant to describe the process by which online platforms inevitably decline over time, as management attempts to maximize profits by cutting costs. Of course, this is a process that goes far beyond online companies.

Customer service in general has been in decline at most large companies for decades. In most cases you are lucky to even find a phone number and be able to talk to a human, and if you do, you will likely find yourself talking to a 3rd World person who is reading from a script in a heavily-accented English that you can’t understand.

More likely you will reach nobody and be left to deal with a zombie company that seems to be operated by AI bots who continue to act as programmed regardless of how much you try to complain. In this article I am going to name names of some of the zombie companies I have dealt with lately, and than discuss what the net effect of all the shit that consumers are increasingly forced to deal with these days might be.

One case in point is Trip Advisor. As the owner of a B & B, and a user of the Duck, Duck, Go search engine, I noticed recently that searches for B & Bs were returning results exclusively from Trip Advisor.

Although, admittedly Duck, Duck, Go is a minor player in searches compared to Google, I didn’t want to be excluded from searches because I was not listed with them. I looked into it and found I could be listed for $100 a year, which seemed reasonable, so I signed up. Big mistake!

Only after I signed up, did I discover that the company engages in extremely deceptive practices that are actually harmful to businesses like mine. When I search for B & Bs in my town, my listing comes up with a button inviting customers to “Check availability.”

If you enter a date and push the button you will get this message:

We’re sorry, this hotel is not available on Tripadvisor from Sun, Jun 21 - Mon, Jun 22.
Try changing the dates or the number of travelers to find availability.

There is only one problem with this message: Trip Advisor does not actually search my inventory. Even if I have rooms available for the searched dates you get this message. It doesn’t matter if you change the dates and search again, you will only get this message. In fact, Trip Advisor no longer has direct booking capability for any property.

Now if you were a customer, looking for a place to stay on a particular date, what would you conclude? I think most people would think that we must be booked up for that date and move on to another listing.

Of course, Trip Advisor has a solution for this little problem. All you have to do is sign up for an additional fee for a service that will actually check your inventory and book the room. In other words, instead of getting a useful listing for $100, you are getting a harmful listing that will require an additional financial cost to fix, but it gets worse!

My first attempted workaround was to edit the copy of my listing to make it clear to potential customers that I am not bookable through Trip Advisor and they need to contact me directly. Naturally, this copy change was not allowed to be made, as that would circumvent the scam.

My next step was to make a complaint to the Better Business Bureau of Eastern Massachussetts, where nominally Trip Advisor is headquartered, if there are any actual humans still working for the company. After going through a prolonged process they closed my claim on the basis of the company’s promise to cancel my listing and refund a pro-rated portion of my money.

As you might be able to guess, there was just one little problem with that: As of a month later I have seen no refund and my listing is still online misleading customers. Welcome to enshittification!

I have also encountered enshittification in a most unlikely place, my state tax department. Say it ain’t so, Kathy! As a collector of sales tax in the great state of New York, I sometimes get in arrears in forwarding the money to the state. Shit happens!

In the Good Old Days, (about two years ago), if you ran into a little liquidity problem, some vey nice tax agents would show up at your business to inquire what the hold-up was. Usually they were satisfied if you entered into a payment agreement to catch up with monthly deductions from your bank account.

Since many businesses, especially B & B’s in frigid Western New York are seasonal, this worked out pretty well. You didn’t have to pay the annual tax which came due in March, when you had no business, but could pay it in the summer when you did.
(I know you are supposed to put the tax money in escrow so you have it when you need to pay it, but who does that?)

You may think I was being sarcastic when I described the sales tax agents as “nice,” but actually I found them very easy to deal with, perhaps because I was always nice and cooperative with them. Of course I always kept in mind that they had the power to put a padlock on your door if you weren’t!

A couple years ago, however, I receive some disturbing news. The agent I was dealing with told me that his job was being eliminated, and they wanted him to go to work in a call center. He expressed doubt that he would take that offer, and who could blame him? A few weeks later his phone was disconnected.

A year went by, and I was short again, (the story of my life), and I was contacted by the new call center. You guessed it! It was somebody in a 3rd World country whose accent I couldn’t understand. The Great Empire State has now proudly joined the ranks of the enshittified!

I could go on and talk about Facebook, Airbnb, and a host of other companies that I have tried to do business with, but you get the idea. Customers service has gone the way of the buggy whip, so what can we do about it?

Here we need to introduce the concept of moral hazard. These companies (and state agencies) that have given up on customer service are flying blind. They don’t really know the problems their customers are experiencing with their products or services, because they are not listening.

This is a very inefficient way to do business and increases the risk that the customer will eventually say, “Screw it! If you won’t listen to or value me, I feel no compulsion to follow your rules.” In other words, if you treat me like shit, I will treat you like shit!

Just such a scenario was shown in the 1993 classic cult film, “Falling down,” in which the main character, played by Michael Douglas, goes on a violent rampage after a series of customer service disappointments. While this may have been an exaggeration, it uncovered a raw nerve that many people can relate to. Stop treating us like shit, or else!

The “or else,” in most cases, rather than go on a rampage, is to simply cheat the company (or state) out of every nickel you can, and not even feel bad about it. Not that I would ever do such thing myself, of course, but I can hardly blame those who might be tempted!

BTW If you are looking for a nice relaxing place to vacation in the Finger Lakes, please consider our B & B in Geneseo, NY, but DON’T check us out on Trip Advisor, AirBnB, VRBO or any other enshittified place we are listed. Go to our website, where you can book directly and save!