by theden on 5/20/23, 8:26 AM with 13 comments
You're forced to use an intercom chat widget to open up customer support tickets, but the response times are abysmal. Currently I have this[1] issue, where an account doesn't get upgraded after going through the payment flow. It's been over a week with no reply. I paid money for a service that I'm not receiving. When/if they do respond, I have no idea if they'll reimburse the days I paid for nothing, who knows, there's no comms about it on their page.
Note that it's a known problem, given they have a dedicated page for it on their help docs, and there's a massive thread[2] about it on their forums.
Their refund policy[3] goes through the same chat flow, so one could end up paying for two months before they're finally issued a refund.
I know they're scaling up, but I'm shocked at how bad this is, especially given they're using stripe for payments. Normally, even when in a move-fast type environment, billing logic/flow is one thing you have to get right before shipping a product to prod. They're breaking all sorts of consumer rights (especially here in Australia where they are strong).
Between broken billing and their recent IAM issues, right now I'd jump at a competitor that can deliver these.
1. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7232905-why-is-my-plus-s...
2. https://community.openai.com/t/paid-for-chatgpt-plus-but-sti...
3. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7232895-how-do-i-request...
by moonchrome on 5/20/23, 9:22 AM
Also from a technical standpoint OpenAI seems to be failing at solved problems, I can understand model scaling issues, but basic infra and UI for a chat app (one way chat no less), when you're claiming to produce 10x developer tools, seems particularly weak. Especially given they have open tab at Azure and talking billions in funding.
The gap between what current AI tech promises to deliver vs. what it actually delivers is a chasm.
by toofy on 5/20/23, 10:34 AM
many of our complex systems are bloated because the problems consist of a lot of tiny problems that require a complex and often messy bloat to solve.
i already see this “let’s just rebuild it” attitude about some large software projects that are fairly modern. and repeatedly the people imagining a rebuild will fix the problem have little idea of complex systems and fractal depths of problems these systems must address as they scale in every possible direction. the people imagine a rebuild will somehow not require bug fixes, security patches, thousands of new layers of features, etc… etc… all done by dozens or hundreds of different people, each with different mental mappings of the overall system.
i’m obviously not suggesting that we don’t build or attempt to streamline, but omg the number of times i’ve seen people completely… just utterly fail to understand why something in the real world may be bloated or messy is unreal.
sure, it’s easy to be streamlined and agile as long as the product is new and not used in any kind of scale… until the product is used in reality, and it begins to scale, and the insane number of (very real) real world variety of complications smack it (and it’s cultists) into reality.
sometimes things are bloated, not because the previous generations were stupid — they weren’t, we’re standing on the shoulders of giants — but because scaling will naturally come with impossible-to-prediagnose fractal depths of difficulties.
by anonu on 5/20/23, 10:48 AM
by gumballindie on 5/20/23, 9:20 AM
by thejackgoode on 5/20/23, 10:51 AM
by williamstein on 5/20/23, 3:22 PM
by logdap on 5/20/23, 10:46 AM