Company Facebook pages are hellish, and it doesn't look like the robot future is going to make it any better.
Nick Paterniti from Perth, Australia ran afoul of the bots Monday after writing a post on the Facebook page of online fashion retailer ASOS inquiring about a refund.
"Your customer service team via email is not helping although I've repeatedly provided the details they've asked for. Please sort this out ASAP," he wrote.
A little later, a reply from "ASOS Ashley" appeared, asking Paterniti to send through his personal details so the company could follow up, even though he had already provided them "repeatedly."
Begrudgingly, Paterniti sent through the details again.
"Sent. I need this sorted today," he wrote. A friend, Ben Somerford, wrote "so quirky," seemingly in jest, which appeared to trigger ASOS's autoresponder.
"Hey Ben. Please fire over your account email address, date of birth and order number in a PM and I'll take a look for you. ASOS Steve."
Unsurprisingly, the comment did not go down well.
Others joined the conversation, wondering if the increasingly nonsensical replies from customer service agents with human sounding names were actually courtesy of a bunch of soulless ASOS robots.
ASOS did try and make it clear the messages were not "auto generated," however.
Even suggesting some of the autoresponders would be fired didn't seem to stem the flow of cookie-cutter responses.
You would've thought ASOS would eventually learn its lesson, but nope. These are just some of the best responses.
Paterniti told Mashable Australia via Messenger he had been waiting for a refund from the company since April 27, lodging an inquiry in early May to check what was happening.
"So basically since then I've had about 20 back and forth emails," he said. Like on the Facebook thread, he would get different customer service representatives asking for the same personal details over and over. With no luck, he posted on the company's wall, where the chaos ensued in public.
"To be honest I wasn't surprised at the auto responder comments. It really just proved that they need to sort their shit out," he said. "I was surprised at the auto responder comments that said 'these are not automatically generated responses' -- there were a few of those."
Paterniti got his refund overnight Wednesday. Surprisingly, he said he'd still shop at ASOS. "I'd use them again, but probably just small orders until I'm confident," he said.
If we've learnt anything from this ridiculousness, it's that the ASOS Christmas party must be a real hoot.
Mashable Australia has contacted ASOS for comment.
[h/t Mumbrella]
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