Employee is forced to talk to customer service bot instead of a person and ends up developing another bot to run up the company’s AI bill: 'Maybe they'll provide customer service now, instead of foisting the responsibility on a chatbot.'

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  • Man programming using laptop
  • Force me to use your AI customer service chatbot? Enjoy your excessive bill.

    Preface: I am a developer for a company that provides engineering services and manufacturing/industrial supplies for businesses. We are often purchase goods from a supplier and ship them directly out of that manufacturer's location. It's called drop shipping. Slightly important to the MC.
  • About two years ago, a vendor completed a merger with another company and provided us with a list of operational changes. One of which was a list of shipping zones. When we made an order, we would get free shipping based on the total amount of the purchase. Different zones, different thresholds to get the free shipping.
  • We got these zones in an email and they were available on the vendor's website. I implemented some code that would calculate our user's checkouts online and give them free shipping when they hit those marks. There was much rejoicing.
  • Nothing gold can stay, as they say. We received an order that met the threshold, but when we placed the order, we were charged over $500 for the shipping to the end of the US. Naturally, I assume the shipping zones must have been updated, as this is the first issue in over two years.
  • I reach out to our sales rep with the vendor and explain the situation, requesting for the most recent shipping zones so I can compare them to what we have on file. Mentioned the email with the shipping zones goes to 404's and their website no longer displays them. Was not prepared for:
  • "We don't have that information available, anymore. You have to ask our Al chatbot on our website for each zip code." I'm a little confused. It's a huge incentive that helps even out in a very competitive market. I emphasize this in my response. It just helps us sell their products better.
  • I'm also reasonably sure that it's as easy as exporting a mysql table, maybe a query for two. "Sorry, you'll just have to ask the chatbot." Bet.
  • So I spend about 30 minutes probing the chatbot and I realize it's not appropriately safe guarded. There are no limits to how much I can interact with it. It won't give me a list outright, but I can give it up to 10 zip codes at a time and it will respond with a list of rates accurately.
  • Awesome. So I write a tamper monkey script to run in browser that feeds it a list of zip codes, 10 at a time, and appends them to a csv file. Do you know how many zip codes are in the continental US? Apparently about 33,000.
  • After some attempts at fine tuning, it amounted to about 4000 individual chatbot prompts. I know it is only querying their local database for the rates, but it still costs tokens for their chatbot to interpret the prompts.
  • black red and white code
  • Instead of spending 5-10 minutes to procure some data that is mutually beneficial, I ended up running up their Al bill. I feel bad for the environmental impact, but I feel like it's the same disparity with individual consumers burning fossil fuels vs. corporations.
  • Maybe they'll provide customer service now, instead of foisting the responsibility on a chatbot.
  • closeup photo of eyeglasses in front of computer screens

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