Discussion

@falcennial Sometimes it's obvious when the customer service or support chat is a bot, sometimes it's not so obvious - and not all companies are open about stating if the chat is automated or not.

(And some people in customer service are impossible to tell apart from a bot, because they're either that bad at problem solving, not allowed to deviate from a script, and/or you get bounced between multiple people. You wouldn't think it would take 12 hours and a 45 minute voice call to get my phone provider to remove my cancelled card and let me add new card details but it did, because three different people answering the chat and a fourth person on the phone didn't seem to understand the scenario at all and assumed I just didn't know how to update an expiry date.)

So, to the best of my knowledge, it's extremely infrequent. But I don't know for sure.

@falcennial Probably should put, not at all. But I DID try it in the beginning. Asked to compare translations of two versions of Tao Te Ching; it failed miserably (but that was a while back). Once tried to brainstorm a shop name. It wasn’t helpful in that either. So gave up and moved on. That was in 2024, I guess?

for the record in general: in things like this where I am asking people about their lived experience in good faith, doing so precludes any judgement whatsoever of the answers. this is to give us all as a group some self knowledge.

whatever personal opinion we have about any behaviour, the act of asking individuals to divulge theirs (even anonymously), means no judgement has any right whatsoever to enter into the exercise. it would be unethical and counterproductive.