Good morning readers. GameStop’s stock just won’t stop…falling. The company’s shares plunged 12.1% Monday after a lackluster annual meeting left investors disappointed. CEO Ryan Cohen's brief remarks focused on cost-cutting and potential store closures, with no concrete future plans. To make matters worse, technical glitches delayed the meeting from starting on time and there was no Q&A at the end, which left investors frustrated. Meme stock interest, fueled by Reddit's Roaring Kitty, saw the stock double in May, but GameStop still faces challenges in transitioning to online gaming.

Let’s jump into today’s storylines.

In today’s digest:

• Companies are sliding down the satisfaction scale

• Headline Hustle: Biden will give legal status to immigrants married to U.S. citizens, Benjamin Netanyahu dismantles Israel’s war cabinet, U.S. sues Adobe over misleading subscription fee practices

• Amazon’s quest for AI supremacy stirs the pot

• Pulse Points: What’s Trending

BUSINESS

You’re not wrong, its more difficult to deal with companies and government agencies these days

Ever feel like getting good customer service nowadays is like finding a needle in a haystack? You're not alone. According to the latest Forrester report, it seems everyone—from your local coffee shop to the IRS—is making it harder for consumers to smile.

This year’s Forrester Customer Experience (CX) Index, which takes the pulse of nearly 100,000 consumers across 13 sectors, reveals a disappointing trend: customer experience scores in the U.S. have dropped for the third consecutive year, landing at an all-time low of 69.3 out of 100. It’s a steep drop from the optimistic heights of 72.0 in 2021, erasing years of slow but steady gains.

Where's the value?

As pandemic pains like shipping delays and product shortages fade into memory, new frustrations over "shrinkflation" and sneaky fees have taken center stage. “Consumers are paying more and getting less, and they can tell," said Pete Jacques, Forrester’s principal analyst. Companies are being called out for charging premiums without delivering the enhanced experiences customers expect.

The introduction of AI-driven chatbots, intended to revolutionize customer interactions, hasn't quite hit the mark either. Experts point out that insufficient testing and rushed deployments have often left consumers more frustrated than relieved.

Not all hope is lost, though.

• Pet-care giant Chewy continues to lead the pack, topping Forrester's ranking for the third year, despite a slight dip in its score.

• Tesla and financial stalwarts like Navy Federal Credit Union and USAA also climbed the ranks, showcasing that exceptional service can still be found if you look hard enough.

Lagging behind

On the flip side, the IRS languishes at the bottom of the list, despite concerted efforts to enhance its services, including a better-than-expected pilot of its free electronic tax-filing system. Energy giant PG&E and the federal jobs portal USAJOBS.gov also struggle, remaining stuck in the “very poor” category.

A shift from bad to meh: Jacques optimistically notes that the shift is more from positive to neutral rather than a total collapse. This silver lining suggests that while businesses may not be acing the customer experience test, they haven't completely flunked out—yet.

IN THE KNOW

Headline Hustle

🇺🇸 Biden will give legal status to immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens. President Biden is set to announce a new immigration program providing a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of immigrants married to U.S. citizens. The initiative, to be announced Tuesday at the White House, offers work permits, deportation protections, and green card eligibility to those living in the U.S. for at least a decade. This program rivals the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in scale and targets longtime residents, primarily Mexican immigrants, addressing a neglected population. Republicans criticize the plan as mass amnesty.

🇮🇱 Benjamin Netanyahu dismantles Israel’s war cabinet. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismantled the war cabinet established to manage the conflict with Hamas, as a top U.S. envoy visited to prevent a wider conflict with Hezbollah on the Lebanese border. The war cabinet's dissolution follows the resignation of Benny Gantz over disagreements on war strategy. The security cabinet will now oversee war matters. Hezbollah's recent aggression has escalated fears of a broader conflict, with extensive diplomatic efforts underway to de-escalate the situation.

🫣 US sues Adobe for hiding termination fees and making it difficult to cancel subscriptions. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced actions against Adobe and two executives, Maninder Sawhney and David Wadhwani, alleging consumer deception. The FTC alleges Adobe concealed an early termination fee for its popular subscription plan, making cancellation difficult for consumers. The complaint, filed by the Department of Justice, accuses Adobe of pushing customers into its annual subscriptions that contained a ton of hidden fees. Adobe plans to contest the claims in court, emphasizing transparency in its subscription terms and a straightforward cancellation process for all its customers.

TECH

Amazon's quest for AI supremacy turns GitHub into a goldmine

In a world where data is the new gold, Amazon is digging deep—perhaps too deep for comfort. The tech giant’s latest maneuver involves leveraging GitHub to turbocharge its artificial intelligence ambitions, but not without raising a few eyebrows and potentially, a few alarms.

As per a recent internal memo, Amazon apparently instructed its employees to sign up for Microsoft’s GitHub platform and asked them to hand over the keys to their accounts so the company could scrape data from GitHub more quickly. The platform’s limit of 5,000 data requests per hour per account could stretch the data gathering over years. Amazon’s workaround? Multiply the accounts, condensing years of data collection into mere weeks, a critical acceleration in training its much-anticipated in-house AI model.

Can they even do this?

While this aggressive data collection tactic may accelerate Amazon's AI development, it skirts dangerously close to ethical grey areas. Microsoft, GitHub’s parent company, and Amazon’s archrival, might not take kindly to these tactics, especially given their own legal tussles over similar issues. Microsoft itself has faced lawsuits alleging it skirted open-source licensing laws with its AI model, Copilot, setting a precedent that might spell trouble for Amazon.

Big picture: Open-source code on GitHub is typically available for free use, but it carries specific obligations, including maintaining accurate attribution of the original source code. Microsoft on the other hand benefits from selling Copilot without giving back anything to the open-source community (despite it being written on billions of lines of code from GitHub).

SNIPPETS

Pulse Points

• Apple announced on Monday that it has discontinued issuing loans through its Apple Pay Later buy-now-pay-later program, which launched last year.

• McDonald's is ending its AI drive-through technology partnership with IBM, discontinuing the Automated Order Taker in over 100 restaurants by July 26.

• The Atlantic hurricane season is intensifying with two potential tropical threats this week, one expected to bring heavy rainfall and serious flooding to parts of Mexico, Central America, and the US.

• Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called for urgent action against the threat social media poses to children, urging Congress to label the apps similarly to cigarettes and alcohol.

• Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed an executive order pardoning over 175,000 cannabis-related convictions, aligning with a nationwide trend to relax drug restrictions.

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