> aggressive dismissal and censorship of natural immunity
The 'natural immunity' argument never makes sense if you think about it. You're comparing the chances of a SECOND covid infection of an unvaccinated person to a vaccinated person's first infection. If you compare vaccinated vs unvaccinated people and their chances of their first and second covid infections, the vaccinated person wins in both cases.
Also, the first infection is the riskiest one. So going through the riskiest infection to get immunity for a second, less risky infection doesn't really make sense.
If it's about whether someone who had covid already should count as being vaccinated, maybe. But that also risks incentivizing people catching covid on purpose instead of taking the vaccine.
And if one's natural immunity came from a previous coronavirus infection from 10 year ago?
There is such a thing as cross reactive immunity. Look at the diamond princess cruise ship. They were locked in close quarters sharing a ventilation system for 2 weeks and only 20% of the guests tested positive.
I would encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, but there were millions of people who got infected before there were any vaccines available. The vast majority of those recovered patients now have durable cellular immunity which will usually protect them against severe symptoms in subsequent reinfections.
I signed up for America's Test Kitchen one time, because they had a nice program for learning the basics. Probably used it for a couple months, and then I was done with that content and wanted to cancel. Of course, even though you can sign up online, you have to cancel on the phone. On hold for 20-30 minutes during work hours, then talk to the rep, then listen to their retention offer, then it's successfully cancelled.
I actually loved the content, and would probably have resubscribed for a month here and there. (Cook's Illustrated is part of the same group and their content is also great.) But I will never do it again because of this experience.
How many people decided to get the new Playstation next time because of a frustrating experience cancelling their xbox subscription? You won't see those numbers in a spreadsheet.
I have a similar story for internet. I tried to cancel my Xfinity (Comcast) internet service through the online chat. After being transferred several times, the person said they will do it but then disconnected right after they said that. I had to restart the process and in the end they told me I had to call. So I called and finally was able to cancel after they wasted hours of my time.
I will never use Xfinity/Comcast again in my life if I have a choice and will try to make sure everyone knows how shitty they are. Unfortunately they have monopolies in many areas and can be as shitty as they want, but if you have a choice I recommend never using them.
I can't believe that in 2021 these tactics are still legal. It's also stupidly shortsighted because in the long term I'm pretty sure they lose money by making everyone hate them. If it was easy to cancel, I would happily sign up again in the future without giving it much thought and would think positively of the company.
Edit: I also want to add that I was paying extra to not have a contract so I could easily cancel.
I've heard the Comcast "retention agents" have a quota or retentions vs cancellations they must maintain, hence ask the disconnected
cancellation calls.
For a time, I resorted to having an attorney cancel my Comcast service to ensure it actually happened.
But once, months after the attorney forwarded my Comcast cancellation confirmation, I received a notice from a collections agency for the exact Comcast account I had cancelled. The attorney took care of that too.
My new (and best) method for dealing with Comcast is to use a fake name and social. I've been using the cats' names for the past few years, and it works great!
I recently wanted to quit Comcast service at one of my properties, so I went online to chat. No agents available, so I just removed my credit card from the account and stopped paying. They'll figure it out eventually. And good luck of they're going to try to collect from Westley the Cat. He's unemployed.
I recall when I signed up for 24 Hour Fitness many many years ago. They wanted my social security number, which I refused to give, so the employee just put some random number down. Turns out they needed it because my membership was a "loan" for the whole cost over X number of years, which I pay back every month with the membership fees. I have no idea how that fake number managed to get through their system.
When I canceled my Comcast internet service, I got much less resistance from them, but this was in the days where they still had physical offices that you can go to. I took my modem and dropped it off, telling them to cancel my subscription. When they tried to give me the retention speech, I told them I had already switched providers. End of conversation.
The best way to do this in my experience is to tell them you're moving in with a partner who is already subscribed. Works equally well whether true or not.
They're still pulling this kind of stuff? Back in 2014 a journalist recorded an agonizing conversation with a Comcast agent who refused, over and over again, to disconnect his service without arguing. One of the most infuriating things I've ever heard: https://www.cnet.com/news/could-this-comcast-rep-be-the-wors.... Listening to it on a bad day is not advisable
What I fear is that hostile behavior like this is actually not short-sighted. I suspect in many cases these companies are pretty savvy about how their business models work, and I suspect that they are correctly estimating that they will end up ahead both in the short term and the long term by making recurring payments easy to forget and difficult to cancel. I really don't see this sort of customer ill will being that effective at scale. I will probably never pay America's Test Kitchen one penny after hearing your review, but my impression is that they still have an excellent reputation. And do you really have great alternatives? Does Playstation not use the exact sort of hostile patterns as Xbox?
I suspect it is shorted sighted in a sense, and not in another. The choice to prevent cancelation likely hurts the long term revenue of Microsoft and at the same time maximizes the short term revenue of that executive. He will be working somewhere else by the time that chicken comes home to roost, so it maximises his value long term.
What I’m saying is that it will potentially also help revenue in the long term, and that “customer ill will” won’t actually spread and turn away customers at any noticeable scale.
There’s long vs short term, but I’d also add ease of calculating a decision’s value. Ironically I think a lot of the business and tech world is hamstrung by “data-driven” decision making which assumes
1. You have all the necessary data and
2. You are interpreting it correctly and completely
This is almost never true, so instead “data driven” is mostly “data covering-your-ass.” Maybe the future will yield leaders more capable of wielding data less like a cudgel, but I’m not optimistic.
It is the best decision for the executives that are in the position that they are in right now and for their foreseeable future. Now for the decades to come? Probably not.
I was able to switch to a new company with transparent simple billing and I will never go back to Comcast even if they offer me a better deal on a better product.
Their customer service policies were horrible and anti consumer. They also routinely throttle certain types of traffic. BitTorrent and Xbox were both verifiably throttled for me during different periods of being a customer of theirs. They increase billing every few months until you complain.
I had to constantly fight to prove that my modem was owned by me. And they just kept adding it back as their equipment and charging me a monthly fee for it. They wanted me to prove I bought it. Wanted to know where I bought it. Etc. I had to call and prove that I indeed bought and paid for it myself numerous times.
Point being. I will never go back. I suspect many others will not go back either once given another option. And options are coming through community fiber projects, 5G and Starlink to some of the areas where Comcast has been the only option.
I'm a fan of Serious Eats for cooking content. Again, ATK was great except for the subscription thing. Looking at their Support page, it looks like nothing has changed with their cancellation policy[1] (the fact that you can cancel your physical magazine subscription online, but not the website subscription is hilarious). I would LOVE to know if they have support for online cancellation for California customers, that they just disable for non-California customers. I've heard of companies doing things like that.
Not sure if Playstation did the same, but Xbox doesn't make this difficult this anymore anyways. In fact, recently I started a Game Pass Xbox subscription on my xbox account and used it for a couple days. Then I realized I should do it on my main microsoft account instead (so I don't have multiple accounts anymore), so I cancelled. They gave me a full refund automatically without me needing to ask or do anything. So companies do change, although I imagine it's just easier to implement it this way anyways. Phone-based customer service is really expensive.
I once got a marketing email from British Airways with no "unsubscribe" link, I emailed back telling them to take me off their list as I never asked for marketing emails when I booked my ticket.
The crazy thing is they replied, but refused to take me off the list unless I sent them an actual physical letter in the post. A few emails in they claimed it was due to a "technical" issue. That BS annoyed me so much, I am now into the 3rd decade of my own personal British Airways boycott
Edit: I realise that's insane but it makes me giggle everytime I deliberately don't book BA, and I wonder to myself how much money I would be willing to loose by going for the next most expensive ticket, just to keep my boycott going
Even if it’s PEANUTS to them. I feel better, because at least I’m not participating in perpetuating a shitty system.
I feel especially good about it when those companies are ubiquitous and hard to avoid, because I feel rather righteous against an all encompassing behemoth that likely would have got my money otherwise.
>I once got a marketing email from British Airways with no "unsubscribe" link
I just use Gmail's "Report as Spam" feature in these cases. If enough people do it when they can't unsubscribe easily, it's gonna start eating into their deliverability.
I'm glad I'm not crazy, or at least not alone in my craziness !
I end up engaging in the same type of behaviour with companies that also do not make unsubscribing obvious, or, worst of all, have slightly annoying GDPR-mandated tracking-denying UIs. Trying to get me to go through two sub-menus and not having a "Deny all" toggle ? Good, good, good. See how petty I can get, $COMPANY !
> The crazy thing is they replied, but refused to take me off the list unless I sent them an actual physical letter in the post. A few emails in they claimed it was due to a "technical" issue. That BS annoyed me so much, I am now into the 3rd decade of my own personal British Airways boycott
I'm surprised BA even had email in 1991 or earlier. Since britishairways.com doesn't even make an appearance in the Wayback Machine until late 1998, perhaps we can forgive them their anachronistic practices of the day.
If someone says they are "into the 3rd decade of" something (for example, programming experience), I would generally assume that means 30 years or more.
But what you're saying is that it could mean as little as 11 years, e.g., from 2010 to 2021 (yes, 2010 is still part of the '00 decade¹ and 2021 marks the beginning of the '20s, strange as that was to me).
To me, the natural interpretation (at least in contexts where calendar-decades don't have special importance) would be 20+ years. The first decade is the first ten, the second decade is the second ten, and the third decade begins after that.
"into the n-th decade of X" sounds like "n-th decade of X has started but not fully completed yet" meaning "n-1 full decades + something" for me (non-native speaker)
I know the majority opinion in the US is "less rules is good", but as a counter point: European consumer protection laws prohibit this, if you can sign up online it's mandatory to offer online cancellation without extra hurdles. Sometimes having some rules is a good thing...
Europe also goes through the pain of developing rules and laws that are incredibly detailed and specific. US just doesn't have that culture. The law will be vague and it'll require at least a few lawsuits before it gets settled as to what they actually mean. This and the general misuse of lawsuits (I mean "Do not iron while wearing the shirt") here is why people are against laws.
That's the different between Civil and Common Law. Common law also has its good points. It's more flexible and grows organically. Whereas Civil Law is more rigorous and programmatic.
That's interesting if true, because my gym in France (Neoness) just made me turn up in person to cancel my rolling monthly subscription, despite the fact that I signed up on line.
(Obviously I will never, ever be giving them my money again regardless)
As far as I'm aware the letter of the law is you can cancel with a formal letter (lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception), and that's the most bothersome it should ever get. They shouldn't have the right to ask that of you, and it's likely they're just taking advantage of people.
Which says: "Consumers must be able to cancel their agreement in exactly the same way as they signed up for them."
As well as disallowing an automatic fixed term renewal. After an initial contract the customer must be allowed to cancel at any point not just yearly. This one had a big impact on the telecom industry a couple of years ago.
This is one reason I won't purchase a subscription any longer unless they accept Paypal, which makes it ridiculously easy to terminate recurring payments to them (easier than calling my credit card company to dispute a charge). Having such a kill switch was how I was able to cancel my NYTimes subscription (another org notorious for making it impossible to cancel) without going through the same kind of hassle of dealing with a sales rep trying to keep my account.
Not just short-sighted, these sort of things is why I don't try anything that involves a subscription. That is also why I make them pay the Apple Tax and subscibe through Apple instead.
No it's not. The VP is maximizing their bonus and career growth within the company. That is likely tied to relatively short term metrics and especially to not having drops in metrics.
Engineers often practice resume driven development. This is basically the VP version of that. Maximizing personal goals over the goals of a bunch of stock owners that would fire you in a heart beat if it increased their share price.
Maximizing personal goals over the goals of a bunch of selfish jerks who just want to use you is one thing. Maximizing personal goals at the actual certain major direct expense of your users is being a piece of shit
Similar story. I contributed to This American Life monthly for awhile. I had set it up online. I wanted to switch credit cards and could find no way to do it (they had redesigned their website). I couldn't even find a number to call. Sent some random emails with no response. I think I ended up changing my old credit card number and I'm now very, very skeptical about reoccurring payments.
On the other hand, it's quite well-known how easy it is to stop/start a Netflix subscription.
> Of course, even though you can sign up online, you have to cancel on the phone. On hold for 20-30 minutes during work hours, then talk to the rep, then listen to their retention offer, then it's successfully cancelled.
I haven't been in this situation, but I always imagined that there is a simple way out: send them a certified letter instructing them to cancel your subscription. If they continue charging after that, it's chargeback time.
Chargebacks are inadvisable in case there is digital content associated with the account. In every terms of service I've ever read there is a clause saying the consumer cannot perform chargebacks. They're likely to nuke your account for "fraud" if the bank reverses the transaction, potentially causing thousands of dollars in losses.
Says all purchases are final. You may only request a refund and they reserve the right to deny it. Forcing it via chargebacks basically locks your account.
That has worked for me before. A company which explicitly said they do not process cancellations via support form or email. I sent an email saying I wish to cancel and I consider the email reasonable notification and I will chargeback any further charges. They cancelled the account.
The answer would be in the user agreement. If it does not enumerate permissible ways of cancelling, then yes. Otherwise idk but probably not. Contract language which limits methods of cancelling is likely enforceable unless there’s a statute prohibiting it.
> How many people decided to get the new Playstation next time because of a frustrating experience cancelling their xbox subscription
If you make it hard to unsubscribe when people are short on time/money/interest, they will probably be less likely to resubscribe when they have the time/money/interest.
Long-term customers on something like Xbox Live have a larger incentive to resubscribe to recover access to their game library.
On the other hand, random web site X is probably just looking to churn through subscribers.
It's something of a tragedy of the commons; the incredible difficulty of unsubscribing from (everything that's a monthly bill) makes people wary of subscribing to anything.
It is not short-sighted and I think it's a disservice to spread that theory because then people can just shrug and say: "a more profitable & moral company will outcompete them". If you instead believe that locking people in is profitable, the next step would be to make laws against it (if you signed up one way you need to be able to cancel via the same method; phone, internet, fax).
While I suspect in most cases (at least for smaller brands) making it hard to cancel pays off I 100% agree there is a measurement problem.
If you are optimizing for money made in the next month - or even next two years - then by definition making it hard to cancel will bring in more money. But it does hurt the brand long term (which is harder to measure)
In 2008 or so I had a bad experience canceling Sirius Radio before they were Sirius/XM and before it was offered by Car Manufacturers, now I refuse to subscribe on any car I own simply because of that experience.
> (They) would fully expect that by early July, all U.S.-based employees will be in the office on a consistent rotational schedule.
> Employee rotations at JPMorgan will be subject to a 50% occupancy cap until U.S. authorities revise their social-distancing guidelines, according to Tuesday’s memo. The bank advised workers that “with this time frame in mind you should start making any needed arrangements to help with your successful return.”
Why are you trying to make it seem like they told you to come in every day starting this week, whether you're vaccinated or not?
If I had to guess, it's overzealous middle management layers wanting to show Jamie that their teams are proactive and doing more than the minimum. You know, because of their exceptional leadership qualities.
Besides what you said which is very likely true. These type of things are always verbal communication all the way to top. So it would not be surprise either if management made very measured release and written communication but internally/verbally it is hustling to get everyone back asap.
We have roughly about same announcement. It is confounding to hear "You all did great working from home. Now be back asap to work and meet face to face." Apparently working via slack/webex from office is vastly more productive than doing same from home.
If workers were suddenly doing their jobs with simple emails and independence instead of micromanaging, why, what need of stratified layers of middle management would their be? You could cut down two or three useless layers of corporate administration altogether and have people that actually did work. What kind of a world would that be?!
If I had to guess, it's overzealous middle management layers trying to keep up the appearance they're still providing value after months of diminished ability to micromanage over Zoom
A step further, they know about you from the sites that other people similar to you visited.
"I just talked about X product the other day, but never searched for it. But I'm getting ads for it now anyway!"
Well, you may not have searched for it after that conversation, but other people in the demographic they think you belong to did. So they think maybe you're interested in X product as well.
20-30 hours on a regular (launch model) Xbox One and the game completely crashes frequently, probably 20 times so far. This means you have to relaunch the game, get through to the main menu, then load your game. So at 3-5 minutes each time, that's an hour of my playtime just recovering from crashes.
Maybe 4-5 times I've run into a bug where my character can't move and I have to load a save, or the person I'm supposed to talk to or follow in a quest won't move onto the next action. This takes 5+ minutes to figure out that it's not going to happen and I need to reload.
A lot of the time it's clear that the game has a lot of things queued for loading and it's trying to catch up. You have to wait 30 seconds or so for it to load everything before you can trigger then next event. These are also the moments that usually trigger the crashes.
> Playing on Series X fwiw.
Most of the comments I've read that share your opinion, the person is inevitably playing on the pro version of the console. It feels really like they built the game for high end machines, and then did everything they could to get it working on the lower end machines. I don't know what the equivalent of building a 'mobile-first' website is in game development or if it's possible, but they clearly didn't do that.
But I'm pretty patient and forgiving of bugs, so I've still been enjoying the game despite the issues.
> I don't know what the equivalent of building a 'mobile-first' website is in game development or if it's possible [...]
Sounds like the old 'progressive enhancement' (at least I think that phrase was 'replaced' by mobile-first, based upon personal experience).
While I first heard it used for web development, where you would build up your content and then add JavaScript and (enhanced) styling, there's no reason that can't be applied to game development as well.
In fact, I think you can look at PS4 Pro Enhanced games for how it was done well.
We had this when game consoles were very dominant: PS3/Xbox360 era, start of the PS4/Xbox One era. Games were developed for consoles and then "touched up" for PC. It sucked. Starting from good machines and pushing them is far better imho. They should have cut off the base versions of both last gen consoles, but Sony/MS don't allow that afaik (e.g. either you don't deliver for PS4 at all or you deliver for PS4 and PS4 pro). At some point you have to realize that hardware is too old for something and accept it.
Agreed. I think the PS4 Pro and equivalent Xbox model really muddied the water when it came to the newest consoles, especially since both the PS5 and related Xbox version are at least backward compatible with the previous gen.
Target PC, make a version for the latest console gen.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but ublock breaks almost nothing because it just allows trackers on pages where blocking it would break something.
So if blocking a doubleclick tracker will stop a video from playing on some page/site, an exception will get added to the block list to just allow it on that page/site.
It makes it 'just work', but imo it's not clear enough in the UI that this is happening and I would guess that most users don't even know.
This is a great rebuttal twitter thread, so thanks for posting it. But you should really add text to give the link some context. People are more likely to click on it if they know what it is first.
