Well that's disappointing

[cellio]

Me: Opens help chat with Netflix (there is no email option).
Chatbot: Title?
Me: Accessibility options for choosing shows

Chatbot: Sends links to irrelevant articles I already had to click past to get to the contact link.
Me: Clicks "chat with an agent".

(Opening handshake.)

Agent: Can you elaborate the issue that you are facing?

Me: When browsing shows, either on my TV or on your web site, you only show graphics for the shows. I don't see very well and the art is often hard to see, particularly if the show uses small or fancy fonts. Is there a way to see a text list? You used to have that for the web site (but not the TV) but that's been gone for a while. I do not want to have to hover over or navigate into each thing when browsing -- too many to do that. I'm looking for a way to scan a list of titles I can actually see.

Agent: The list is not available anymore

Me: Is there some accessibility setting I can change? It's really frustrating to not be able to navigate your offerings.

Agent: I understand, but there is no setting

Me: Thank you. I understand. How can I escalate my concern? I know that you cannot fix it but somebody at Netflix should be concerned about ADA/accessibility. How do I reach that person?

Agent: There is no one that can resolve it. I can pass on the suggestion and the feedback to our team. And they will look into it.

I suspect I know how that will go. I have the impression that all the streaming services are anti-accessible like this, though I've only done cursory browsing. They probably all think it's ok because everybody else does it. Netflix has had this problem for a while; I don't often use the service because of that, and every time I go to watch something I am reminded of how hostile it is. (In case you're wondering, my Netflix subscription comes bundled with something else; otherwise I probably would have dropped it by now because of this.)

Comments

[gingicat]

Streaming services are extremely variable on this.

[shewhomust]

I'm not an expert, but a quick search reveals that Netflix were challenged ten years ago under disability legislation, and seem to have had to pay out - you'd think that they'd be a bit more aware of the issues...

[cellio]

Interesting! And they can't very well argue high cost, given that their site used to have this so at least the web side of it isn't hard. (I don't know how the TV side of it works.)

[madfilkentist]

What's really anti-accessible, whenever you're dealing with customer support, is people who can meaningfully address an issue. The customer support department, whether on chat or phone, has the task of keeping customers from getting to anyone who can do something about an issue.

I'm reminded of the time that I noticed that TD Bank's downloadable files for its credit card terms of service were broken PDFs that no software could open. I tried to report it and got shuttled around on the phone from one technically ignorant support person to another. Finally, after many tries, I got someone who accepted my bug report and said he'd submit it.

I never heard anything. I stopped using the TD Bank credit card. I hope the guy who dared to accept a bug report didn't get into trouble for it.

[cellio]

A lot of companies seem to treat support as a firewall, yes. It's especially frustrating when the only public path is online chat. Many issues should be handled asynchronously and should allow longer messages -- email is perfect for that. Or a web form that emits a ticket I can follow. Every time I have typed a substantial problem description into a support chat, the person or bot on the other end has ignored most of it in favor of glomming onto the first significant word.

[magid]

I wish there were thoughtful humans instead of drone humans answering their subscribers' concerns.

[jducoeur]

This sort of thing is, IMO, the one and only downside of the death of Twitter as a functional service. I always found it maddeningly useless for actual social networking, and mostly ignored it. But it was great for naming-and-shaming companies publicly about their failings -- a well-crafted tweet could get the attention of the sales/marketing departments, who often have the ear of the C-suite rather better than Customer Support does.

(Yes, all of that is idiotic. But as far as I've ever been able to tell, it was the best way for a customer at many companies to effectively raise a stink.)

[cellio]

I got very mixed results from that, but Twitter was generally worth a try in the pre-muskification era. I might as well try; I don't expect results, but no harm in trying, right?

Here we go.