Human Responsability And AI

Last week I placed an order for some supplements I need for my eyes. It was during the winter holidays, after new year, everything was closed and I thought if we have the opportunity to order what we want and get it delivered, why not?

This convenient option comes at a price though, as your order needs to reach a certain limit, in order to be delivered for free. My supplement was cheaper than the limit, so I thought I would order two, but the store only had one. The most convenient option for me was to order another product as well and this way I could get them delivered for free. The two products were delivered by two different stores and from my point of view it was a clear option, but later it turned out that things are not always as easy as they look.

After a few days I got a text from the courier company, notifying me that my order is waiting for me in the easy box. I couldn't be happier because I really need this boost for my eyes, so in the shortest time possible, I went to pick up my order. Things started to get suspicious when I opened the door of the box and saw how slim the package sent to me was. I knew right away that one product was missing and it was my eye supplement, unfortunately.

The first thing you can do in such a case is to check the app, to see if you misunderstood something, or there's an update about your order, but what I got was a confirmation notice saying I picked up both of my orders and that I should enjoy them. This is the moment when you start panicking about losing your money, but I knew there has to be an option to contact the company and try to solve the problem, reach some kind of agreement.

After clicking on "assistance", I got a prompt reply from a lady called Diana. I must say, she knew all about my order in a split second, including the time (to the minute), when I picked it up, which was really impressive, but then again, this is the minimum you can expect from an AI agent. All the app has to do is read the information available. This is the easy part.

Anyway, after I told her I only got half of my order, she told me she's transferring me to a human agent. Me,the naive, was waiting for 10 minutes to talk to a human agent, but nothing happened. The day went by, so did the next one and no one contacted me. When I tried to get in touch with them again, there was no possibility because my order was marked as delivered and I already used my option to contact them about that specific order. Not a good feeling, I must admit, but there was no reason to panic still.

My plan was to try to contact them on another order I had, but I got busy and had no time to do it. Then yesterday I got a call from an unknown number. I'm not a fan of answering calls from unknown numbers, but these days it could be anyone, like your bank, doctor or who knows. In this case, it was a nice lady, letting me know that she opened her box and found my pack next to hers. I told her I'm missing one pack. So I went to meet her right away and turned out what she was holding in her hand was my missing pack.

The lady told me she was surprised to see another pack next to hers, so was I obviously, and started thinking about how did my pack end up in another person's box.

Most likely I will never know the truth, but what I think happened is the courier forgot to put both my packs in the box and when they realized it, it was too late as you can't open the box once the delivery is marked finalized, or if the client has picked up the pack already. They could have called me still, but why complicate your life and waste time waiting for someone to come pick up a pack you missed to drop in the right box, when you can just put the pack into another box and hope the person who gets it is decent enough to do the right thing. I'm being sarcastic here obviously.

This is my case and has never happened before, but I suppose I can expect this to happen in the future, because these couriers have so much work every day, but that doesn't mean what they did is right.

I'm not against AI because it's a huge help in so many areas, but there has to be some control over how AI is used and how complaints are handled because online shopping is winning over the old fashion shopping and losing packs will lead to losing clients.

What about you? Have you been in such situation?

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