Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Chatbots
Raised as a usability problem by 248 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 176 threads.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Bots repeat questions and offer no quick route to a humanUnreviewed
20092026- Bot keeps repeating website instructions and won't escalate despite failed attempts2026-08-10
- Must slowly explain requests to a bot that can't actually act on them2026-06-17
- Bot loops in circles and users must find a trick to reach a human2026-06-03
Intrusive pop-up chat boxes keep appearing and interrupting browsingUnreviewed
20092026- Popups obscure page on mobile and the tiny close button is hard to hit2026-05-09
- Chat windows pop up unprompted and distract shoppers trying to find product information2026-01-01
- Popup assistant forces users to click close and can hide information2025-11-10
Chat takes more messages than simple clicks wouldUnreviewed
20092026- Built-in delay and fake typing animation slow down every reply2026-01-14
- Typing-based chat interfaces add friction compared to clicking, so people resist them2025-03-09
- Conversational UI is cumbersome where a button or a few clicks would do2020-10-20
Bots wear customers out so they give up on refundsUnreviewed
20092026- Chatbot makes it almost impossible to get refunds, even for fraud2026-06-09
- Customers spend hours talking to a bot instead of completing a simple cancel or refund2023-08-25
- Chatbots are designed to tire customers out so they give up on refunds and cancellations2022-12-30
Chat-based search is slow and hard to verify for accuracyUnreviewed
20092026- Chat takes seconds to load, fails to identify the current product, and returns long unhelpful answers2026-08-16
- Embedded AI chat interfaces are slow and hard to discover2025-07-06
- Chat-based form filling is slower than filling the form manually2025-02-01
Automated support bots fail to help and leave people more frustratedUnreviewed
20092026- Automated support bots fail to help and leave people more frustrated2026-05-26
- Support bots make getting help significantly worse and frustrating2025-07-02
- Automated website support fails to solve problems, so users must reach out for help2023-05-26
Users must guess commands and can't tell when a human repliesUnreviewed
20092026- Users must guess commands and can't tell when a human is responding2023-07-07
- Useful commands are buried in long-winded conversations, making them hard to find2018-06-08
- Undocumented nondeterministic commands force users to guess what works2017-11-29
Finding earlier chat messages by scrolling back and searching is awkwardUnreviewed
20092026- Can't rename or tag chats, so finding one in a long project list means scrolling2026-07-31
- Hard to navigate back to something in older chat histories2023-04-18
- Scrolling back and searching earlier chat messages is not user friendly2017-04-26
Unexplained login wall after about ten messages, and prior chat vanishesUnreviewed
20092026- Chat box appears usable but demands signup before showing any response, a dark pattern2026-07-24
- Chat disconnects after inactivity and new agent has no prior history2023-07-27
- Hit an unexplained login wall after about ten messages, and prior chat vanished2023-01-06
Supplying enough context requires too much copy-pasting of codeUnreviewed
20092026- Must constantly copy-paste context into and out of chat interfaces2025-12-15
- Copy-pasting code into chat requires too much effort to supply enough context2025-03-08
- Manually copying and pasting code into chat is tedious, slow, and produces output awkward to reuse2025-01-03
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- LLM interfaces are primitive, with code harnesses and build tools separate from chat2026-10-23
- Customer support chatbots block people from reaching a human and make getting help harder2026-10-05
- Chatbots are shoved into products to cover for a bad or missing UI2026-09-26
- Chatbots may not do what was asked, forcing users to fight for the desired result2026-09-25
- Too many screens to click through; response hidden behind consent overlay2026-09-18
- Connection-lost errors force reloading the page and resending the prompt2026-08-28
- Voice bot rejects a correct 6-digit code as too long and has long pauses2026-08-20
- Chat takes seconds to load, fails to identify the current product, and returns long unhelpful answers2026-08-16
- Voice bot repeatedly misunderstands requests, forcing re-describing and long hold times2026-08-10
- Bot keeps repeating website instructions and won't escalate despite failed attempts2026-08-10
- Can't rename or tag chats, so finding one in a long project list means scrolling2026-07-31
- Chat box appears usable but demands signup before showing any response, a dark pattern2026-07-24
- Can only edit own messages, and only to regenerate; can't trim or fix agent context2026-06-29
- Must slowly explain requests to a bot that can't actually act on them2026-06-17
- Chatbots can't do anything useful, repeat questions, and hide the handoff to a human agent2026-06-17
- No multi-select to delete many conversations at once; must delete each one individually2026-06-12
- Chatbot makes it almost impossible to get refunds, even for fraud2026-06-09
- Bot loops in circles and users must find a trick to reach a human2026-06-03
- No visible controls for output style or features, so users must prompt-engineer and can't discover capabilities2026-05-30
- Replies are long walls of text that say nothing, so the answer to the question is hard to find2026-05-27
- Automated support bots fail to help and leave people more frustrated2026-05-26
- LLM search answers omit popular libraries and waste time with verbose output2026-05-25
- Popups obscure page on mobile and the tiny close button is hard to hit2026-05-09
- Bot hangs up on callers and can't handle their questions, forcing repeated calls.2026-05-05
- Hard to extract conversation history programmatically, requiring automation or browser plugins2026-04-18
- Removes user visibility and control, turning quick clicks into long typed exchanges2026-04-13
- Can't remember which key combo sends input versus inserting a new line2026-04-12
- Corporate safety restrictions make LLMs nearly unusable, hiding what they can do2026-03-24
- Chatbot cannot resolve a wrongful charge; getting to a human is excruciating2026-03-21
- Search results are often fabricated, so users must verify every result manually2026-03-14
- Bot fails to understand the problem, hangs up, forcing repeated 'operator' requests to reach a human2026-03-04
- Animated background is so distracting it can't be turned off without devtools2026-02-20
- Other AI offerings are confusing about intended use and UX2026-02-12
- Assistants allegedly add friction and deception to keep users engaged and dependent2026-02-06
- Users must know what they want and type it, which is a pain on mobile2026-01-27
- Keeping track of generated images gets very hard as chats pile up2026-01-19
- Built-in delay and fake typing animation slow down every reply2026-01-14
- Chat windows pop up unprompted and distract shoppers trying to find product information2026-01-01
- Working with chatbots feels like groping in the dark, hard to get them to work2025-12-28
- Must constantly copy-paste context into and out of chat interfaces2025-12-15
- Ignores instructions, pads simple answers, hides uncertainty and sources2025-12-11
- Customers cannot reach a human agent and must deal with a bot instead2025-12-04
- Hides few real capabilities behind a fake-person chat UI, so users can't tell what it can do2025-12-02
- Clunky to work across multiple threads; memory barely persists outside a single thread2025-12-02
- Must explicitly tell it to admit defeat instead of showing confidence in its answer2025-12-01
- System prompts must be typed in every time, with no reusable presets or modes2025-11-12
- Unhideable floating chatbox keeps grabbing attention while scrolling text2025-11-11
- Popup assistant forces users to click close and can hide information2025-11-10
- Ignores instructions to be concise, always returns bloated lists with examples2025-10-29
- Support AI assistants make it harder to reach a human agent2025-10-10