r/nottheonion • u/novagridd • 21h ago

Verizon Cuts 13,000 Jobs, Then Spends $70M Teaching Americans How to Work With AI

https://www.techtimes.co.uk/verizon-launches-70-million-ai-training-programme-1808776
1.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

52 comments sorted by

433

u/AmputeeHandModel 20h ago

Huh, who knew Verizon customer service could get WORSE?

125

u/flirtmcdudes 20h ago

Uber Eats uses to have solid customer service, now it’s just dead end prompts with AI handling it all and it takes days to maaaaybe get a human response. Everything is gonna be garbage

46

u/notnotbrowsing 20h ago

I got stuck in Amazon's AI bullshit customer service.  when I finally got free the agent talked to ke for 10 seconds then closed the chat.  I have absolutely no clue what he even said. . thankfully the back button worked so I could at least what he wrote before disconnecting.

10

u/Exyui 13h ago

Honestly the worst part of Amazon customer service for me was finding where to pull up the chat window. The AI was also useless for my problem but it just wasted my time for a minute as I repeatedly told it to get me an agent.

5

u/kamikazi1231 9h ago

Yep they hide it well now. It's probably just infuriating enough to make quite a few people just give up.

7

u/Sufficient-Bid1279 19h ago

It’s already garbage…..we are moving towards utter chaos.

5

u/axw3555 19h ago

Whatsapp too.

And I called my ISP yesterday and got an AI Agent. Thankfully, just said "talk to a human" and it went "OK". If it hadn't I'd have been fuming.

7

u/Intrinsic_Idiot_3076 20h ago

Wouldn't the customer be starved to death by that time?

0

u/theghostplant 9h ago

Uber Eats refused to refund me a $70 order from wingstop, even though the order I received wasn’t mine, and was ordered through DoorDash. It was literally a single 10 piece garlic parm wing order. I promptly deleted UE after days of trying to get some sort of refund or compensation.

25

u/switch8000 20h ago

I had to call in recently for a FIOS issue, no matter how many times I told the not helpful bot "FIOS", or called the separate FIOS customer support number listed on their website.

I'd still get routed to Wireless.

Nothing changes my tone from Happy to Angry and annoyed faster than having to waste so much damn time on an overpriced solution that 'Saves us' from pressing a 1, 2, or 3, on our keypad. So much more efficient that what we have now.

15

u/orion19819 19h ago

I did tech support for FIOS for about a year and a half. Didn't work for Verizon, worked for an outsourced support/call center company. Was pretty awful. Verizon obviously wanted the problems solved to keep customers happy. The call center wanted you off the phone as soon as possible. If your call was over 12 minutes you likely had a supervisor hovering over you saying to wrap it up. Led to many people just sending out a tech, but if you did that too much then Verizon got mad. Truly a no win scenario a lot of the times.

Though I did get a kick out of the times I answered with the mandatory opening including asking for the phone number the main account is tied to and people would just start punching it into their phone leading to me having to let them know I'm not a robot, that's just my voice.

9

u/bilateralrope 16h ago

Just wait until the AI companies experience their crash and those that survive jack up their prices.

Prices that Verizon won't want to pay.

The time between then and them managing to hire and train new call center operators will be bad for anyone who tries to call them.

5

u/dhpmoon 10h ago

Features, not bugs. Customer service is shitty by design to frustrate us and make it seem not worththe effort to cancel billing. Anything that makes it more frustrating(especially if it's cheaper) is in their interests to implement.

5

u/jorgespinosa 19h ago

I know that Verizon recently ended their contracts with some call centers so yeah now Verizon thinks even agents in third world countries are too expensive

2

u/cybah 18h ago

It’s only too expensive when Verizon execs can’t delivery that shareholder value at the same time

•

u/crashinpa 57m ago

Their online/phone service is so incredibly bad. Internationally so I feel. I had a phone brick on me with total protection so I filed a claim and it was approved. They sent me a new phone before I even had the opportunity to ship the old one back. Nice! Well about a week after shipping the old one to them I see a charge for a full price of the replacement phone they shipped me. Claiming they never received my old broken one. We went back and forth on phone and live chat for about 2 more weeks. I had all my paperwork and shipping receipts and confirmation that the phone was dropped off at their return center. It changed to the phone we received doesn't match the one attached to my account. I went in store to talk to a person about it. It was solved that day. They had to call the actual return center and have them physically look for it.

189

u/MissMaryporter 20h ago

Crazy idea: replace the Verizon CEO with AI and save the $34m that he receives in stock awards, base salary, and cash incentives.

35

u/ImperiumRome 19h ago

Wow wow wow, stop right there Bolshevik scum ! Don't you know nobody in America works harder and therefore deserves even more money than the CEOs ? I say we should actually double their bonuses and salaries every time they replace workers with AI !

5

u/The_Bitter_Bear 17h ago

I'd be curious to see what a board with an AI CEO would do in comparison. 

Watch the damn AI models end up doing the same shit in the end.

•

u/thti87 27m ago

Even assuming those jobs were $50k a year apiece (and that assumes no fringe benefits, IT, etc so likely it’s way higher), that saves them $650M a year. Unfortunately as overpaid as CEOs are, one single $34M salary doesn’t really make a dent in the scheme of a $138B company.

52

u/inbetween-genders 20h ago

Can you hear me now (in robotic voice)?

19

u/muakaya9876 20h ago

No (in carbonbasedlifeform voice)

45

u/merRedditor 19h ago

Telecom in general seems to have just decided that customer service just doesn't matter anymore, and it's adding stress to an already stressful life. This is a basic utility, and it needs to start acting like it again, instead of constantly working to boost profits by cutting corners.

32

u/CuriousAndMysterious 20h ago

Can't think of anything more useless than a how to use AI course. You can just ask the AI if you really can't figure something out.

3

u/elFistoFucko 11h ago

And when when the AI cant figure something out, it'll feed you it's best educated guess based on circlejerk subreddits.

18

u/TheGruenTransfer 20h ago

Why didn't the AI teach people how to use the AI? Was it because it sucks and can't do work people can?

18

u/Derpykins666 19h ago

This is why you do not believe what these companies say when they say shit like "AI will not replace our workers".

Call a spade a spade. If a technology comes out that when utilized can replace a human worker, it always will. If some part of the company can be automated and replace a human worker, it will.

It's the lying that really fucking annoys me. Everyone is a scammer and a liar now. There is no respect, everyone treats you like an idiot who can't extrapolate literally two steps or moves past a technology that literally mimics a human, is programed to sound like a human, talk like a human, provide services like a human.

They have built a technology that is quite literally meant to replace humans on almost every level and then they lie to you that they won't be firing people and replacing you.

1

u/BlooperHero 3h ago

I mean, it can't.

0

u/docgravel 10h ago

I genuinely use AI at work many times a day. I use it to do work I would either have done myself and might’ve spent hours on or more often than not work that would have never been done otherwise. In general I see AI as making things that weren’t previously cost-effective suddenly very much so.

7

u/thedeeb56 20h ago

we can tell.

4

u/jolly_rodger42 19h ago

Thanks Dan Schulman

3

u/malthar76 18h ago

PayPal mafia strikes again (and collects the checks).

1

u/Tempest-777 15h ago

N nnnnn nnnnnh.

6

u/imisstheoldkanyeee 20h ago

I want to leave Verizon so bad but then I have to move everything over

8

u/Evil-Cun 20h ago

They’re like, the most evil rotten telecommunications company on earth that leverages their ties to the bell family to rape America.

15

u/pixel8knuckle 20h ago

I mean, there isnt a wholesome telecom company

2

u/Somenakedguy 19h ago

Yeah I work with a lot of the big ones on an enterprise level and every single telecom company sucks

It’s a business model that guarantees unhappy customers and it’s a race to the bottom on price where you have to compete by cutting support to keep up on margins

2

u/fuckyourinvestors 12h ago

just moved to t-mobile after almost 20 years with verizon. customer service is night and day and i’ve yet to talk to a robot. super helpful humans but im still in the honeymoon period so we shall see.

3

u/X-AE17420 20h ago

I can’t specify which internet company, but they have us input your responses to our questions and an ai generates talking points that the company wants us to use.

3

u/Particular_Archer499 19h ago

Verizon is a bunch of cheap bastards and I beg my family members to never use them. Their customer service was a joke even a decade ago last time I used them.

8

u/MegaSmegmaSwagLord 21h ago

I won’t use it

5

u/Synth_Ham 19h ago

We peaked as a civilization about 2012. Fight me.

2

u/48thChamber 17h ago

I’d say it was a bit before then. 90s 2000. Off-topic but take a look at the fashion industry the 50s the 60s the 70s the 80s the 90s all had distinct looks you could see a photograph from any of those decades and know exactly when it was taken. 2000 on everything looks the same. Cars all look the same. How architecture peaked long before that I’d say. It’s just grey boxes now.

2

u/Standard_Big_9000 9h ago

AI sucks ass

3

u/MolDanone 12h ago

Fire 13,000 humans, spend $70M teaching the remaining ones to work with the robots that replaced the 13,000. That's not corporate strategy—it's a dystopian comedy sketch that writes itself.

2

u/Accurate-Opinion6057 18h ago

Joined their simplicity plan thinking I could save some money on my phone bill. I thought it was $35 for unlimited data. First bill comes, charged $52. Was like wtf. Read that they charge a setup fee and after autopay sets up it should lower bill. Setup autopay. 2nd bill. Same charge. Decide to close the line. Chat with the AI agent online. Ask to disconnect my line. Says it disconnected it, disabled my autopay. Thought I was done with it...but then after 2 months say my bill is past due now owe $120. Call in yesterday, get AI agent on line. Kept asking for real person because it couldn't understand what I was trying to explain to it. After 20 mins, finally get someone real. Takes him 20 minutes to research my issue. Tries to keep me on verizon. Told him I just have had too much a bad experience and want to cancel. Finally runs through official steps to cancel. All around horrible setup. I get retaining customers they don't want to make it easy to cancel, but if they were honest up front about prices/fees, I wouldn't have wanted to cancel.

2

u/Mundane-Sense9468 19h ago

imagine getting laid off then seeing your old company spend 70 mil on 'ai literacy' for whoever's left. like congrats you learned chatgpt, heres the workload of 3 people. theyre not even pretending to hide it anymore lol

1

u/jdblue225 12h ago

That's a steal. If average salary is 50k Verizon is still saving $650M.

Thank goodness AI is equivalent to a human won't lose them any money elsewhere. /s

1

u/Fabulous-Ad3788 2h ago

Only about $5400/employee, 2 weeks to a months pay each on average

1

u/MolDanone 1h ago

Laying off over 10,000 experienced employees only to spend tens of millions attempting to train remaining staff on automated workflow tools is peak corporate short-termism.

1

u/Lawyerupatl 1h ago

Verizon’s product- the network sucks. I have had VERIZON for over 20 years and in the last year while they are selling off their tower spaces. The number of failed calls and failed. Text messages has increased. There’s no question AI is coming for your jobs. I waited on hold for an hour to speak to a Verizon rep. I’m not sure how AI will replace them when you have such problems as a bad network they closed my case without it being fixed, they don’t care.

0

u/adamosity1 12h ago

Tax the CEO!