Sometimes it's because they don't have a choice.
Case in point, since we're already talking about them: Ryanair. I'd cheerfully never fly with them again after, several years ago, they denied my wife and I boarding to a plane despite the fact the screens round about were still saying final call. Not just us either: about half a dozen other people missed that flight because the screens in the main terminal only updated with the departure gate a few minutes before final call and we happened to be quite a long way away when that happened. I've never had anything like it happen at any airport before or since.
Be that as it may: we can't practically avoid using Ryanair. My wife is from another country and Ryanair is one of only two airlines that fly there from the UK at all and the only airline that flies there from the nearest international airport (roughly half an hour away as opposed to 2+ hours away).
So we fly Ryanair even though neither of us want to: there simply isn't another practical or sensible choice.
We got an admittedly very good deal to switch cell carriers. Part of that deal was receiving a debit card with my phone's trade in value loaded. That card turned out to be digital. I put it on my phone without thinking too much of it. However, given my lack of experience with Apple Pay, I didn't realize that I now didn't have access to my own card number. When I try to use the debit card, I am asked for a PIN that I've never been given an option to set up. When I call the card provider, the automated system demands a card number. Which I don't have.
Granted, it was my ignorance as a user that is responsible for some of this but it's pretty clear that the lack of access and support is intentional.
The banking industry has been hostile toward poor people for ages. When I was in my early 20s, an employee at a bank let me open a savings account without meeting the minimum balance for an instant penalty.
Of course, I'd get that shit reversed on that person's dereliction of duty to warn me when we were discussing how much I'd allocate to it if it happened today, but I was young and dumb and didn't know how to stand up for myself at the time. This was early 2000s, so hardly a recent change.
These companies have correctly figured out that it's much cheaper to buy out governments so they won't actually punish them for all the regulations they break or institute new such regulations.
That's the weird timeline we're on. Governments willingly ignoring large scale violations by large corporations who actively harm their voters they're supposed to represent.
Yes, Ryanair stole 100 euro from me once, but if next flight is 50 to 250 euro cheaper than competition...
I did some big projects motivated entirely by spite (project was overall helpful, but I would not do this if someone would be less nasty). But I still would use Ryanair.
I swore off them a few years ago.
Plane started boarding around when it was due to land. We got on, seeing about 3cm of snow around. It went to the runway, whereupon the weather wasn't good enough so the plane waited. And waited. And waited. And then the pilot turned off internal power because we were waiting so long. And then the airspace was closed for the night and every Ryanair plane did what we did and taxied back to the airport and deplaned all of us, creating a queue at the help desk that didn't clear until 8am the next morning, or at least that was when I got to the front having stood up all night.
I was supposed to be back in the office and working by this point.
They told us to check online for rebookings: couldn't do that, their website was overloaded, though I could sometimes get as far as the schedule before it failed on me, and the next official opening was about 5 days later at the start of the queue and 7 days later when I reached the end. Other airlines were now charging £1000 for next-day flights.
Got a standby ticket for a few hours later. Went through security again. It was also cancelled.
At this point I went to my brother's place near Portsmouth, slept enough to recover, took the ferry to France, and took the train from Caen to Berlin, and this was still both cheaper than any replacement flight and faster than waiting for Ryanair to offer another flight that would also be subject to the same general climate.
If the plane had landed on time before it got to us, it would've taken off before the weather got so bad.
Had a very understanding boss at the time. I miss working with him.
If I wasn't as idiotically stubborn as I am, I would've given up a month into the 8 month ordeal it eventually turned into. I guarantee you the vast majority of people wouldn't bother escalating to their CAA, or contact the relevant courts or authorities, which is what these scummy tactics are designed for. They would've been ignored like I did, then they would've given up because what's even the point?
The fact that we're allowing companies to get away with bullshit like this is ludicrous to me
Hope you're not voting for any parties that don't explicitly run on a platform of stopping companies getting away with bullshit.
I'm pretty sure the Netherlands does have at least one such party, as other European countries I'm more familiar with do, no matter how small they might be.
If they decide to not reply it becomes much more resource consuming to go down the legal road.
I had this with DoorDash, even if you call they just say some specialised team needs to look at it and they'll email you back, surprise, they never do.
That was the most recent time, but I've done it a couple of times. I do everything digitally, so it's always easy to prove my case.
Cell phone accounts: no regulatory oversight
This pattern of deregulated modernization isn't just a pattern. It's a scandal.
If they don't show up, doesn't that mean you win by default? (And then you can indeed send a bailiff to seize a plane...)
"Your Instagram account has been suspended. This is because your account, or activity on it, doesn't follow our Community Standards on account integrity.
If you think that we made a mistake, you have until 8 March 2027 to appeal."
I've now uploaded my drivers licence, a photo of my passport and still apparently that's not good enough for them.
My latest rejection says I have only one more chance. No idea what the transgression was, but apparently there is no recourse.
I guess it's a good thing I don't really give a crap about Instagram in the first place, isn't it.
If you were willing to upload your driver's license and passport for a mere chance at getting back an account you don't give a crap about I'd hate to see what you'd do for one you do care about! Facebook demanded my driver's license at one point out of the blue. I simply abandoned the account, I was already pretty over them at that point anyway. About a year later it let me log in just fine and had forgotten all about how badly it had needed a scan of my license for security. In fact I didn't even remember the password, it just auto logged in from an email link.
You kind of confirm what I suspected though, that they'll just keep asking for more stuff leaving you more exposed and they're under no obligation to actually give you the account back no matter what you do.
I don't use discord but IIRC I read that if your account was banned they were asking for a mobile number to get it back. Instead of getting it back if you complied they just added the mobile number to their ban list so you couldn't make a new account with it.
That's not a good practice to begin with. Your insta account doesn't matter but your privacy and government-issued documents do matter.
There are a gazillion accounts that do this constantly, and all of them appeal.
After the recent news about >150 million drivers' license photos being stolen from an ID verification service, I'd be very hesitant to do this for anything I didn't absolutely need. ID theft is a lot easier when someone has a photo of your sensitive documents.
Sounds like its working as designed. This is why you never cross streams between work and personal life.
No appeal process.
Luckily she didn't use Facebook much.
But if you go on Swapd right now and pay a Meta employee $500 while it's still in appealable state you'll get your account unlocked in an hour.
Make it make sense.
Also their explanation for the lockout was that I failed the verification step too many times, which I don’t recall failing even once.
This is already implemented, under the EU's Digital Services Act, you can appeal and get specifics about account terminations - see https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/dsa-out-co...