computer vs thinking human?

[alondra]

Just got my Discover card bill, had a $4.50 service charge, called them, why?. seems that I sent a check in for my over $100.00 bill that was one cent, one penny, short, the computer decided the bill was only part payment, and charged fees on the total amount. for the month. duh. bring back humans. who maybe think.

[Roy]

Visa charged me a $29.00 late fee on a $19.95 payment that was delayed by non-delivery on a holiday.

I talked to a human who agreed it was unreasonable and reversed it. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[Target]

Ya know, maybe its just Discover card..... I also had a neat little experience with them a while back.

I accidently over-paid my bill, and since I didn't over pay by much, I simply left it there as a credit on my account.

Well, I ended up leaving it there for quite a while, not using the card much.

To make a long story short, their computer decided that since I didn't have a $0 balance for such a long time, that I was delinquent and needed to have my card cancelled <lmao>. It was pretty funny talking to their Service rep and listen to them try to figure out why my accnt would be cancelled since they in fact OWED me money <lol>. Of course, they graciously fixed the accnt, but I got a kick out of how stupid the whole situation was.

[NeilTrain]

I am a software developer, and things like that really annoy me. I strive to create smart software, as most developers do, but you have to realize that a few poorly written applications should not make the thousands of helpful ones less valuable.

But the fact that credit cards use computers keep the price down, if they were to have every bill, every purchase and every transaction passed through a human, sure the service would be great, but there would actually be more errors, and fixing them would be ten times as hard. Not to mention to pay all those people would make your discover bill unbearable to look at.

I am currently working on my Artificial Intelligence certificate at Eastern Michigan University, which has a nationally recognized A.I. program of study. It is a very interesting field, as computers are "exact" machines, getting them to be "flexible" or giving them a little common sense can be very difficult, but im glad to say that over the last 50 years, AI research has come a long way, and society may soon (and finnaly) be benifiting from computers and software that can actually "Think"

[yaroa]

You know, there is a tv comercial wich catch phrase is something to the efect of software that "think". Well everytime I see something about software/computer that think, I can't help but to think about the Terminator movies. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif