How to Protect Yourself from AI Customer Service Gatekeepers

Something that occurred to me this morning while talking with my partner about AI chatbots and AI phone systems was getting locked out of an account and being unable to reach a person. We talked about things we saw online, like saying you'd like "40,000 waters" to an AI drive thru order screen in order to get a person to take your order.

Trick the AI

I saw something online where someone was able to cancel their account (they were getting the runaround) by saying "I'm 12 years old." I think it was just a funny joke, but I could see it happening with AI. I haven't had luck with that sort of thing in the past. My experience is before 2020, but that kind of thing just got my account locked, not canceled, and I couldn't get a person.

Since AI is being inserted in so many products without sufficient knowledge of how to properly do it or what safeguards are needed, we have some creative options to trick it. And in this post, I'm going to give you some suggestions for protecting your money in the age of AI gatekeepers.

AI gatekeeping

AI is the perfect gatekeeper, because you can program it to frustrate your customers and just continue to say no.

First, I'd encourage you, if you're testing out a service or product, to try to get ahold of customer service. If you can't or you can't get a person, that's probably a sign that the company is not going to help you if you're in trouble.

The problem with companies trying to get you in a loop of AI chat is that they won't help you if you have trouble or want to close your account. For a long time, closing an account or stopping a subscription has been difficult. Now it's going to get worse.

VIRTUAL CARDS!

My recommendation today is to make sure you use virtual cards when you can. If you get locked out of a service or account by an AI gatekeeper, you'll be able to close, delete, or lock the card associated with the account so the company can't keep charging you. My experience with this is they just drop you once payment won't go through.

This is one reason why some people stick 100% with cash only. I get it. If you can't take my cash from my hands, you don't get my money.

Virtual cards is the option I use when I do intend on paying for something, but I want to use the free trial period to see if the product is actually going to help me and if the customer service is available.

Story time

Recently, I tried out a teleprompt online service. I'm interested in doing videos online, but talking to a camera is really really x 100 difficult for me. I freeze. However, I can read from a teleprompter.

Anyway, this particular service had stuff you can do in the browser Lets you visit pages on the internet, examples are Safari, Edge, Firefox, or Brave. and an app. The app won't work on GrapheneOS An alternative to Android or iOS on phones. even with Google Play Services, which I could've been ok with. However, downloading videos was not working reliably. I'm not paying money if I can't use the service. I could be ok with it if I think I can get customer service support. The nail in the coffin was that customer service was an AI agent. Nope. I'm out.

I provided feedback and closed it all out. Then, I deleted my virtual card.

Gift cards

You can use gift cards for this purpose too sometimes. If you have a gift card that's spent or maybe just has a dollar on it, you can enter that when asked for a credit card. That's worked for me for a very long time.

I tend to use this option for something I want to do a trial for or something I don't intend on paying for. I may change my mind if the product or solution is impressive, but usually it's not.

Conclusion

We need to protect ourselves when companies start to insert AI in their products. As a mom, I don't have time for this nonsense, and I don't have extra money for companies to drain. My housing, electric, and water/sewer bills are doing enough of that.

For coding, my perspective as a senior engineer tells me that AI can write small, simple scripts and programs that impress stakeholders. But it takes people working together to appropriately architect a product, to deploy a solution at scale, to maintain it, and to respond to feedback from users and their behavior.

I feel like I'm seeing sci fi dystopia coming true with AI gossiping, leaking data, accessing things it shouldn't, hallucinating, and locking people out of systems.

My suggestion is to use virtual cards or gift cards to keep control of who can take your money. Check customer service for a product you want to spend money on before you commit.

Vote with your wallet. Provide feedback to companies. Write your representatives. Where you can, try to spend your money in places where companies show some respect for their customers.

Image credit Simon S. https://www.pexels.com/@simon-s-574087187/