After abandoning all my reddit accounts [1] (some back into the aughties), I eventually found hackernews. Here is now the only place online which I write publicly.
Still, I love sharing tips for navigating reddit (you can do these without logging in):
1) old.reddit.com allows you to use Reddit's built-in link shortener,
I fully expect it to get retired in the wake of the forthcoming de-anonymization of the web. But I’m frankly shocked they haven’t already given how aggressively bad the “new” one has become.
I have a friend who retired but still does some contract work. They were on salary their whole career and are not used to sending invoices and tracking down payments. One of their clients was late paying and my friend wasn't concerned, but I encouraged them to be diligent about insisting on being paid on time. I have been a freelancer for over a decade and in my experience, the further away you get from a bill, the less real it becomes to the person who owes it. They start forgetting what the project was, or worse, start questioning why they even have to pay for it. You have to stay on top of these things or they can spiral out of control.
Just for my own general curiosity, once a bill is overdue, how often do you nag the customer about it? Or does it look more like an escalation process? (Start out with a polite email, then a phone call, then a phone call to their manager/business partner, etc?) Do you ever "fire" customers who always pay, but always pay late and only after they've been reminded 3 times?
They get 30 days to pay. I used to start sending reminders if they were late by even a day past that, but I quickly learned that can unnecessarily embarrass or annoy some clients, so now everyone gets a two week grace period after the 30 days are up.
I send a gentle reminder just to my immediate point of contact to start. If that doesn't work, I start sending more business-like requests for payment every week, and I CC anyone I think might help make it happen.
I've never fired anyone, and everyone has eventually paid (knock wood), but there have been times when I assumed the money was a lost cause (though never five figures worth like the person who shared this blog post).
But more than once, I've had a client contact me and request new work, and I've had to remind them they still have an unpaid invoice. I'll tell them I can't start anything new until the old work is paid. They almost invariably blame the delay on their billing department, and the money eventually finds its way to me.
I’m the kind of person that just assumes customer service is going to be bad. I gird myself whenever I have to call a company and just deal with their gauntlet with patience, knowing the trick is to outlast them. It costs them money every time you call. I’ll often tell them I know that and assure them I will continue calling until the matter is resolved. It’s not fun, it’s just the way things sadly are.
My old man, however, still feels some kind of righteous indignation when he spends his hard earned money and doesn’t feel he’s getting what he paid for. He loves to give a piece of his mind to the companies that mistreat him, and he always says “And I hope my comments are being recorded for quality assurance!”
The new feature of the iPhone where you can put a phone tree on hold until a person answers is very nice. I had a kerfuffle with Delta airlines along with a few thousand other people some days ago. I had to hold for 2.5 hours, but I spent it catching up with my dad and then my phone rang when the CSA was ready for me. I was so fresh and bright on the call I got an upgrade pretty much just for not being a bitch.
I get it. I also know customer service is a pretty low paying job for something that involves being yelled at all day
I get as frustrated as anyone, but it’s not the fault of the person whose job it is to take my call.
I remember once on the phone with Comcast I just explained the situation and jokingly said look, if it helps, feel free to tell ‘em I’m yelling and screaming. The guy laughed. An engineer called me an hour later with a firmware update for my modem.
Sometimes there’s no winning. But sometimes it helps if you can put people on your team
Yep. When I’m frustrated on the phone with a rep, I always make sure to say something like “I understand this isn’t your fault, but I’m very frustrated with X.”
Angry customers aren't at fault. If all customers are mad as hell when they call, then the company will have to start paying better wages to keep customer support staff from quitting, and they'd rather fix the problem before doing that.
> The real strategic question isn't whether Starlink can be weaponized - of course it can - it's what happens when military operations become dependent on commercial infrastructure that a single company controls.
This happens: Why the world's militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink
Substantive issues with this submission aside, it’s a mistake to have such long conversations with an LLM. The longer they go, the more likely they are to accumulate errors. The latest models all claim to be able to handle long conversations, but in my experience they still don’t do as good a job as just pasting your conversation into a new thread.
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