<story><title>FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2021/08/02/1023801277/your-facebook-account-was-hacked-getting-help-may-take-weeks-or-299</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>malandrew</author><text>I pay for a cold calling service that lets me look up emails and phone numbers for many professionals of import. These days customer service gets two shots to get it right before I start calling the personal cell phone numbers of the C-suite, board of directors and everyone with the word director in their title. I&amp;#x27;m absolutely over shitty customer service and it&amp;#x27;s not fair to subject customer service representatives to well deserved vitriol. Well paid execs getting the big bucks and making the decisions to under-invest in customer service and driving down defects? Fair game.&lt;p&gt;With the last company whose customer service messed up badly, I reached out to the head of e-commerce for the company. I was nice and pleasant and explained the dilemma, but then he tried to pass the buck back to support which did not have the resources to solve the problem to which I replied &amp;quot;You&amp;#x27;re the head of e-commerce for company X, the buck stops with you. This is your problem to resolve. If you don&amp;#x27;t take ownership, I&amp;#x27;m perfectly capable of escalating this issue myself, first to A, your CEO (personal cell number (xxx) xxx-xxxx and personal email foo@bar.com), then to B (...), C (...), or D (...) on the board of directors, then E, the CEO of the company that owns your company (...), and then F, who is on his board of directors (...) and happens to live 2 miles from me.&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;...boom, problem resolved immediately. Not just for me but for other customers. Changes were made to their website within days. When warranted, you just have to go absolutely nuclear and make it clear as day that solving your problem personally is far cheaper than you escalating the the issue to anyone and everyone with power at the company whose customer service is jerking you around.&lt;p&gt;You have to make the cost of not providing customer service well the first time around so expensive that they don&amp;#x27;t see any other option than to invest in doing things right the first time.</text></item><item><author>jimrandomh</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a bit of a story behind this. Oculus is owned by Facebook, but the Facebook website and the Oculus headsets&amp;#x2F;software are by different teams working in different states. When Facebook bought Oculus, they decided to get rid of the Oculus-specific account system and use only Facebook accounts. The Facebook account requirement took effect with the launch of the Oculus Quest 2, which launched in October 2020.&lt;p&gt;October 2020 was the month before the US election, and the peak of both disinformation&amp;#x2F;influence campaigns, and of Facebook-the-website&amp;#x27;s efforts to combat those campaigns. So the spambot detector sensitivity was turned up to max that month, and if you tried to create a new account, there was a large chance you&amp;#x27;d be mistaken for a bot and banned immediately. So a bunch of people who weren&amp;#x27;t Facebook users got fancy new VR headsets, tried to create Facebook accounts in order to be able to use them, and got immediately banned. The support department for Facebook-the-website was not at all up to the task of dealing with this. This kind of wrecked their product launch; instead of the press coverage and public reaction being about how great their hardware was, it was about all the people who couldn&amp;#x27;t use their hardware because of account issues.&lt;p&gt;So now Oculus has a completely separate support department for Facebook account issues, which acts less like it&amp;#x27;s supporting a free website and more like it&amp;#x27;s supporting a $300 piece of hardware. And if you have an account issue with the website, and you want to use that support department instead of the bad one, then buying a Quest 2 is not such a bad idea.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dredmorbius</author><text>This is a recognised and effective method &lt;i&gt;after&lt;/i&gt; standard approaches have been exausted.  It goes by selveral names, though &amp;quot;email executive carpet bomb&amp;quot; is one colourful and memorable term associated with it.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;consumerist.com&amp;#x2F;2007&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;how-to-launch-an-executive-email-carpet-bomb&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;consumerist.com&amp;#x2F;2007&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;how-to-launch-an-executive...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve used this a few times myself.  Again, &lt;i&gt;after&lt;/i&gt; going through normal channels.&lt;p&gt;The mode where &lt;i&gt;multiple&lt;/i&gt; executives are contacted (and perhaps a member or two of the press CC&amp;#x27;d) is particularly effective as it plays off both internal office politics &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; the bad public relations spillover dynamic.&lt;p&gt;Remember too that such approaches aren&amp;#x27;t entirely self-serving.  If &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt; are having a specific issue, it&amp;#x27;s quite likely that many others are as well.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lifehacker.com&amp;#x2F;how-to-contact-executive-customer-service-and-get-your-1563732113&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lifehacker.com&amp;#x2F;how-to-contact-executive-customer-ser...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2021/08/02/1023801277/your-facebook-account-was-hacked-getting-help-may-take-weeks-or-299</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>malandrew</author><text>I pay for a cold calling service that lets me look up emails and phone numbers for many professionals of import. These days customer service gets two shots to get it right before I start calling the personal cell phone numbers of the C-suite, board of directors and everyone with the word director in their title. I&amp;#x27;m absolutely over shitty customer service and it&amp;#x27;s not fair to subject customer service representatives to well deserved vitriol. Well paid execs getting the big bucks and making the decisions to under-invest in customer service and driving down defects? Fair game.&lt;p&gt;With the last company whose customer service messed up badly, I reached out to the head of e-commerce for the company. I was nice and pleasant and explained the dilemma, but then he tried to pass the buck back to support which did not have the resources to solve the problem to which I replied &amp;quot;You&amp;#x27;re the head of e-commerce for company X, the buck stops with you. This is your problem to resolve. If you don&amp;#x27;t take ownership, I&amp;#x27;m perfectly capable of escalating this issue myself, first to A, your CEO (personal cell number (xxx) xxx-xxxx and personal email foo@bar.com), then to B (...), C (...), or D (...) on the board of directors, then E, the CEO of the company that owns your company (...), and then F, who is on his board of directors (...) and happens to live 2 miles from me.&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;...boom, problem resolved immediately. Not just for me but for other customers. Changes were made to their website within days. When warranted, you just have to go absolutely nuclear and make it clear as day that solving your problem personally is far cheaper than you escalating the the issue to anyone and everyone with power at the company whose customer service is jerking you around.&lt;p&gt;You have to make the cost of not providing customer service well the first time around so expensive that they don&amp;#x27;t see any other option than to invest in doing things right the first time.</text></item><item><author>jimrandomh</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a bit of a story behind this. Oculus is owned by Facebook, but the Facebook website and the Oculus headsets&amp;#x2F;software are by different teams working in different states. When Facebook bought Oculus, they decided to get rid of the Oculus-specific account system and use only Facebook accounts. The Facebook account requirement took effect with the launch of the Oculus Quest 2, which launched in October 2020.&lt;p&gt;October 2020 was the month before the US election, and the peak of both disinformation&amp;#x2F;influence campaigns, and of Facebook-the-website&amp;#x27;s efforts to combat those campaigns. So the spambot detector sensitivity was turned up to max that month, and if you tried to create a new account, there was a large chance you&amp;#x27;d be mistaken for a bot and banned immediately. So a bunch of people who weren&amp;#x27;t Facebook users got fancy new VR headsets, tried to create Facebook accounts in order to be able to use them, and got immediately banned. The support department for Facebook-the-website was not at all up to the task of dealing with this. This kind of wrecked their product launch; instead of the press coverage and public reaction being about how great their hardware was, it was about all the people who couldn&amp;#x27;t use their hardware because of account issues.&lt;p&gt;So now Oculus has a completely separate support department for Facebook account issues, which acts less like it&amp;#x27;s supporting a free website and more like it&amp;#x27;s supporting a $300 piece of hardware. And if you have an account issue with the website, and you want to use that support department instead of the bad one, then buying a Quest 2 is not such a bad idea.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lenkite</author><text>You are getting downvoted, but realistically your approach works. Had to do this myself a couple of times when desperate.</text></comment>