<p>Something similar but not exactly what you are looking for is &quot;tying one's own hands&quot; or &quot;committing to a strategy&quot;. The tool of the commitment here is the agent.
<br>
<em>However</em> such a commitment is an imperfect tool; Amazon might lose customers because of their inflexibility. It is not clear they could do better, because it is not easy to determine which customers will &quot;walk&quot;, and also if the agent had the freedom to choose they might go the less stressful way and give every customer what they wanted. Thus giving the agent a simple rulebook to follow may be a reasonably good (but not perfect) strategy.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-10-12T07:32:14.913Z
2022-10-12T07:32:14.913Z
Giskard
<p>I had a discussion with an Amazon customer service rep yesterday. I asked for something, and they replied &quot;we cannot do that&quot;. Amazon was, of course, perfectly capable of doing what I asked.</p>
<p>In a sense, the rep told a lie. It wasn't &quot;cannot&quot;, it was &quot;will not&quot;.</p>
<p>In another sense, it wasn't a lie, because that individual rep did not have an option on his screen to do what I asked. It was the higher-ups at the company who chose to have a policy to not give him that option.</p>
<p>By having constrained, low-level employees talk with customers, Amazon gets a huge advantage in negotiation. There is no opportunity for a customer to bargain over or even question a policy. The negotiation advantage gets even worse when the customer can only talk to a computer, not an actual human.</p>
<p>What is this called? I'm sure there's an economic concept to describe it.</p>
<p>It's not Agency Theory; that deals with people operating on your behalf, not people operating on someone else's behalf.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-10-12T07:33:32.413Z
Hi! This is an interesting phenomenon, but not everything that has to be described by a three paragraph anecdote has a name. We sometimes get questions like "what is the economic term for when I go to the deli, and I order tuna salad, and the person at the register gives me some change where one of the coins has a fish on the head side, so I keep it as a lucky coin, but then when I am walking home my landlord calls me to tell me she is raising my rent, and I find it hard to argue with because I am reminded by the coin that I am wealthy enough to frequent a deli?"
Giskard
<theory>
Name of concept where having someone negotiate on your behalf gives you an advantage?
ccleve
# Name of concept where having someone negotiate on your behalf gives you an advantage?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2022-10-11)

I had a discussion with an Amazon customer service rep yesterday. I asked for something, and they replied "we cannot do that". Amazon was, of course, perfectly capable of doing what I asked.

In a sense, the rep told a lie. It wasn't "cannot", it was "will not".

In another sense, it wasn't a lie, because that individual rep did not have an option on his screen to do what I asked. It was the higher-ups at the company who chose to have a policy to not give him that option.

By having constrained, low-level employees talk with customers, Amazon gets a huge advantage in negotiation. There is no opportunity for a customer to bargain over or even question a policy. The negotiation advantage gets even worse when the customer can only talk to a computer, not an actual human.

What is this called? I'm sure there's an economic concept to describe it.

It's not Agency Theory; that deals with people operating on your behalf, not people operating on someone else's behalf.

**Tags:** theory
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Hi! This is an interesting phenomenon, but not everything that has to be described by a three paragraph anecdote has a name. We sometimes get questions like "what is the economic term for when I go to the deli, and I order tuna salad, and the person at the register gives me some change where one of the coins has a fish on the head side, so I keep it as a lucky coin, but then when I am walking home my landlord calls me to tell me she is raising my rent, and I find it hard to argue with because I am reminded by the coin that I am wealthy enough to frequent a deli?"  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2022-10-12. Score: 1

Something similar but not exactly what you are looking for is "tying one's own hands" or "committing to a strategy". The tool of the commitment here is the agent.
  
*However* such a commitment is an imperfect tool; Amazon might lose customers because of their inflexibility. It is not clear they could do better, because it is not easy to determine which customers will "walk", and also if the agent had the freedom to choose they might go the less stressful way and give every customer what they wanted. Thus giving the agent a simple rulebook to follow may be a reasonably good (but not perfect) strategy.


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