Forum From the Archives: Is Customer Service a Bad Model?

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KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

To be a modern consumer is to experience poor customer service at some point in your life. The kind of service that has you in a fever dream of pressing “1” for “representative,” getting your call dropped, calling back again, and then asking to speak to a manager who can’t solve your problem. Experts call this kind of service “sludge,” an administrative morass meant to deter, not help, consumers. And for some businesses, it’s a feature not a bug. We listen back to our conversation with journalist Chris Colin about the practice and hear from you: what’s your sludge story? Guests: Chris Colin, journalist, The Atlantic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:11.0	Xfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply.
0:15.0	There's a reason we re-watch Home Alone every year.
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0:42.9	Now streaming 18 plus.
0:44.0	Subscription required.
0:45.1	T's and C's Apply.
0:47.6	From KQED.
0:50.2	Welcome to Forum.
0:51.8	I'm Alexis Madrigal. We are joined this morning by Chris Collin, a longtime magazine writer who has a
0:56.4	new feature out in the Atlantic that's nominally about Chris's struggle with forward customer service,
1:02.7	but it's really about how the incentives of the modern corporation are quietly, slowly,
	...

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