[AussieWog93]

>It's bizarre to me, because a relatively minor repair had to be cheaper than giving me three multitools and six accessories for negative dollars (since the bank tosses fees on top of the chargeback). The companies have no incentive and know they're going to lose (see all the articles complaining about 'friendly fraud' to reference chargebacks) yet they do it.

From where I'm sitting (business owner who handles my own customer support), this seems like a classic case of the business's incentives not aligning with the employee's.

Minor complaints are often much harder to deal with (and care about) than major ones, and far more likely to explode into something nasty. Couple that with the fact that the support rep doesn't see a cent of that transaction, and I can see why they would want to shut down the interaction ASAP.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The support rep is following a script cooked up to follow a directive from an MBA. Support is a cost center, subject to optimization for P&L. Reputation isn't in the analysis so the customer hostile solution is best.

[bombcar]

Exactly. The rep gets yelled at for a “cost” repair. He gets no telling about a chargeback, that’s eaten somewhere in finance.

[fxtentacle]

Oh wow it's the guy that built the open source dog USB Oscilloscope! Great product :)

I'm surprised that you have to do your own customer support, though. I had always assumed that Crowd Supply would take care of that.

[AussieWog93]

Labrador is my side project; my main business is actually in used video games down here in Aus. :)

I think Crowd Supply handle certain support issues specific to orders through their platform (as does Amazon), but there's still technical information that people need/want and so I help where I can.