Replying to @⁨FridaVanMercury@discuss.tchncs.de⁩

While the agent apps have been billed primarily as time-saving devices, some users have claimed more direct savings — and earnings — by instructing them to do things like cancel unwanted subscriptions, apply for refunds or renegotiate services to get cheaper rates. Multiple social media users say agents have successfully applied to states’ unclaimed property sites to retrieve funds owed to them

I’m taking that one away from the article. And how business don’t seem to appreciate the utility of those kind of agents.

Replying to @⁨CosmoNova@lemmy.world⁩

I read a similar thing about older generations who grew up without the internet and found it taking over every part of living, and being very angry about it.

Basically if you didn’t want to touch the internet as it became ubiquitous, then suddenly you can’t just go and see a movie since all seats are sold out a week in advance and reserved now, can’t find an apartment or get a job without it, newspaper classifieds all replaced by craigslist/ facebook marketplace making it hard to sell your old car, etc.

Replying to @⁨Geologist@lemmy.zip⁩

I grew up with it and as I age I identify with those generations more and more. When I was young I didn’t want to deal with people to get things done, and to a certain extent I still feel that way, but we’ve given up so much for those touches of convenience and so many times we made the simplest use cases easy while completely fucking over the less common ones.

For example, a couple times within the last few years I’ve needed to check into hotels early in the morning. This has traditionally been easy: book starting the night before, call the front desk, let them know and they make sure not to give the room away. Well, seems like now some hotel chains only direct calls to the call center and don’t have a pathway to reach the front desk anymore. I tried telling them and they said they let the front desk know, and both times the room was cancelled.

Big corporations have too much power and it’s too hard to avoid using them. I’m lucky enough to have enough money where I can afford to go out of my way to choose small businesses but most people are really limited in how much they can do this.