On october 27th, when I first heard about Starlink for RV's, I immediately signed up at starlink.com and paid €480. I filled in my email and my phone number, but to date I have not received a confirmation of receipt from Starlink. The payment was a direct transfer.
I have gone through the (not great) starlink support pages, and one can apparently only contact starlink through an account that becomes available through the confirmation email. Naturally I have none. It also states that if that confirmation email wasn't confirmed, the order would be cancelled after 7 days (it hasn't). There was no email in my Spam folder.
Now it's been over 3 weeks. I am a customer but as far as starlink is concerned, I am not. They obviously did their utmost best to not need a helpdesk, having generous procedures in place for when things fail. There is no one to talk to, not even a silly bot. This is all great when it works, but when you fall on the side where things don't work as intended, as I do now, it doesn't exactly feel great. It feels like a scam, it's indistinguishable.
There is also a potential for a scam. If I somehow filled in a slightly wrong email address someone else could, in theory, have taken over my account, and could have redirected the shipment. The point is, I'll never know, and I was not made aware of such risk while signing up. Indeed the signup experience was strangely feed-forward, without an email-confirmation step. In the end it felt like I was supposed to dump €480 into a void, with nothing to show for, except a bank transfer. Just like in a scam I was forced to rely on the reputation of the brand, only. This could have been a scam, except this is standard policy.
I think the above is a relevant data-point to many of you (non-scammers), because it represents an extreme case, even beyond Google, one where not only the non-fallability of software artifacts is presumed, but also the non-fallability of the organizational process that led to its 100% no-contact design.
That's sure to have some relevance to the community, but of course I just want someone to talk to and solve what could have been the smallest of issues. Any advice on how to proceed next is appreciated.
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33681263
Points: 31
# Comments: 7
Continue reading...
I have gone through the (not great) starlink support pages, and one can apparently only contact starlink through an account that becomes available through the confirmation email. Naturally I have none. It also states that if that confirmation email wasn't confirmed, the order would be cancelled after 7 days (it hasn't). There was no email in my Spam folder.
Now it's been over 3 weeks. I am a customer but as far as starlink is concerned, I am not. They obviously did their utmost best to not need a helpdesk, having generous procedures in place for when things fail. There is no one to talk to, not even a silly bot. This is all great when it works, but when you fall on the side where things don't work as intended, as I do now, it doesn't exactly feel great. It feels like a scam, it's indistinguishable.
There is also a potential for a scam. If I somehow filled in a slightly wrong email address someone else could, in theory, have taken over my account, and could have redirected the shipment. The point is, I'll never know, and I was not made aware of such risk while signing up. Indeed the signup experience was strangely feed-forward, without an email-confirmation step. In the end it felt like I was supposed to dump €480 into a void, with nothing to show for, except a bank transfer. Just like in a scam I was forced to rely on the reputation of the brand, only. This could have been a scam, except this is standard policy.
I think the above is a relevant data-point to many of you (non-scammers), because it represents an extreme case, even beyond Google, one where not only the non-fallability of software artifacts is presumed, but also the non-fallability of the organizational process that led to its 100% no-contact design.
That's sure to have some relevance to the community, but of course I just want someone to talk to and solve what could have been the smallest of issues. Any advice on how to proceed next is appreciated.
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33681263
Points: 31
# Comments: 7
Continue reading...
