Things that are meant to be better but are not better

Mine too , have you seen the headband type headphones? Have been looking into them for a while now because I cannot put anything into my ears because they are too small to fit anything else and they are good for wearing to bed apparently ( I like to to listen to stories to sleep ) sad I know 🙄 😆

Queuing at the bar. I mean wtf!
Just walk up to the bar, a good bar keep will know who's next.

I've finally accepted orders food via app (pubs only)
But those that use the app to order ONE DRINK to be table served by staff give me the rage, especially big groups ordering one drink each, ggggrrrr.

Tbf, covid robbed a whole group oof newly 18yr old the chance to figure out how to use a pub properly!
Buy a round ya muppets (preferably ordered at the bar!)

I JUST WANT TO PARK MY FUCKING CAR!
How I long for the days when I could pop to town, put my 50p in the machine and off I go.

I do like the ANPR ones where you pay when you leave - no worrying about whether you've missed the small print saying "£1 / hr except if you've arrived between 1pm and 3pm on the second Thursday of months which end in a Y, and then it's £2"

Yeah but you get a signal every time it cuts in and out, too. Maddening.

Toilets - the ones with the high tank and a chain flush better and break less than anything invented subsequently, with their plasticky little buttons and feeble cistern parts. It's been a three stage journey to toilet hell- chains (good), handles (not as good but ok), flush buttons (why?).

Self check at supermarkets.
Made stealing easy -> we are all paying higher prices
Also, it’s not always quicker. Often someone is sat there for a long time because they don’t know what they are doing, they are waiting for staff member or the machine is not working properly.

It’s all done by companies protecting themselves by creating a situation where they can ensure a consistent profit stream.
When we bought our first flat, we paid a quarterly charge for the landline.
The cost of that, four times a year, was just over the minimum monthly charge for a mobile phone subscription (and the phones weren’t even smart!)
Now, everyone seems to be at it: we used to receive our electricity bill quarterly and pay it - now we have to pay by standing-order-type payments - meaning that each summer, they are getting interest on our money that we have overpayed!
The same goes for printer ink - a pricey subscription to “ensure we received our replacement cartridges in good time” meant that because we weren’t printing very much, we paid 8 or 9 times more than we would have if we’d just bought these when they were running out.
Soon, you won’t be able to buy a car outright, and household appliances are next on the list… the “smart” feature that they won’t tell you about will, of course, be that they can disable your car/appliance if they think you have had it for long enough or used it enough.
Even when legislation is introduced to prevent waste (E.g. the insistence that all chargers be made with the UsbC connector) the manufacturers will always exploit the wording of that legislation to their advantage, such as when I bought my new iPhone to find that the charger was Fire wire to UsbC, meaning that the new power sockets I’d recently installed with USB ports so I didn’t need a plug for charging, were now useless without an adaptor…
It’s all about profit, and taking as much money from the consumer as possible now, but I can’t see it changing - Pandora’s box is well and truly cleaned out!

Mine has a special fast boil function that is very easy to activate if you swipe it by accident, for example if you’re cleaning up a water spill.

Guess how I know.

Presidential democracy in the US.
May as well have kept to a monarchy, as after all their efforts they've ended up with a bonkers Henry VIII + sycophantic courtiers situation.
At least with a monarchy you can make sure they get a good education.

This!!!

Help or live chat functions on websites instead of a phoneline.
You get a bot that goes through a list of very basic yes or no questions and then decides it can't help you anyway!

I hate that so many places are cashless. I like cash, I feel safer with cash and, call me irrational, but ever since I read A Handmaid’s Tale as a child, I have been suspicious of cashless societies.

It ain’t most of the time.

Since my cooker died, I've been using an airfyer only - it does every kind of cooking, including steam oven. To be honest, it's very annoying to make all the food in a 20cm box and to have to guess how long / how hot to cook it. But it was a quarter the price of a proper cooker, and my electricity consumption plummeted as soon as I got it.

It does randomly freak out, though, beeping like some kind of apocalypse siren when it suddenly decides its pot's gone missing (it hasn't).

@GingerLiberalFeminist, my washer does indeed have cheat codes 🤣 Apparently most (all?) modern machines do. I just found this one because I was looking for the deep clean cycle, which is mentioned in the handbook but nowhere among its many dials, buttons and icons. I found the one to override unauthorised ink cartridges on my printer, too, but then gave in to HP's automated subscription service: the printer informs its overlords I'm running out of ink and they send some.

In a recent crime drama, the shithot car thief knew the cheat codes for electric cars. I bet they really have them! They'd want to build in some way of getting the vehicle started if it was having a 'blue screen' moment.

You know that oft-misquoted line from the 2016 WEF: You will own nothing and be happy? It was part of a thought experiment by Danish MP Ida Auken, in which she envisioned a future where everything is rented, easily upgraded but never truly yours. I have mixed feelings about that - when I was a kid in the 1960s, most people did rent everything so it doesn't feel as weird to me as it does to younger generations.

I'm not sure if things are heading that way again ... but my phone's in the third year of its three-year contract. When it ends, I'll own the device but its battery will be fucked and they're not issuing any more updates for it. So I have, basically, been renting it and will have to start again with a newer phone. I rent my flat. If I were to buy a car, it'd have to be on lease, which is 1960s hire purchase with a new name 🤷‍♀️ The finance companies rake it in from every angle.

I parked in a (rare very reasonably priced) carpark a couple of weeks ago. I'd got the app and both cars details were on it. All good. Tried to pay with Google pay - bank said there was a problem (no idea what!) so had to try again. It took 2 more tries and took about 10 minutes! No wonder it always has spaces, most people probably lose the will to live trying to pay!

Am currently sat at an airport departure gate. Checked in online, got boarding pass on phone, all worked fine. But you can bloody bet I’ve got a printout of every bit of paper I need for my journey because if you lose or break your phone, what do you do?

Ah, but it's getting there: Mercedes under 5 years old van (top spec) and you say 'Hey Mercedes Radio 4' and R4 comes on. You can also set the Sat Nav by voice. Ask it to read text message (that's just come in) as well as dial (named person). Must try the heating adjustment next time I'm in that van. Will take a while to filter down to bog standard cars, but my friend's 2012 Shogun you can vocally ask it to dial a number or name of a stored person.

But I agree it's a pain and even worse when it goes wrong - my screen was broken other than in bright sunlight making it impossible to pay for car parking by phone on a rainy day.

Which i don't have.

Nor do I want to have to buy another adaptor or splitter. They're more things to forget or lose and be a choking risk for my toddler in addition to the earbuds themselves.

And the flashing light on the earbuds! I have had to buy blackout tape to stick over the lights so they don't flash in my son's (or partner's face).

@BansheeOfTheSouth
@Northumberlandgirl
@maddening

I'm pretty anti tech. It always seems to go wrong. Agree about the Bluetooth in the car, I recently was talking indoors with a consultant, conversation heard in the car,loud speaker!! As for ordering meals with a QR code, I did this recently. A carvery we've been going to for about 10 years. It's under new management and there wasn't much staff visible. I ordered drinks, they arrived,no issues. I ordered a starter with sides,as my meal,DH ordered a meal, I ordered a dessert as well. We had been seated so there was obviously 2 of us. My dessert arrived, said we hadn't actually eaten yet. It was taken away...no apology! Then my starter (meal) arrived,DHs meal didn't,so I sat there patiently, with my meal going cold waiting. Then decide to eat. Eventually saw a waiter going to another table, asked,he said my "sides weren't cooked, because they assumed they were DH sides,he was having fish and chips,my side was a portion of chips! I really didn't want the chips on their own. We didn't tip.i sent a review,no reply! It's a shame because it's quite near home, lovely spot, pretty garden and quiet. We started going there, because we both find "standard " size restaurant meals way too big. Carvery,we self serve exactly what we want.

Oh, and whilst I'm ranting, banks! The loss of banks on high streets and people being able to interact with staff is awful. I'm not saying online banking isn't great but there should be choice.

I can't agree with you about Bluetooth because I wear hearing aids and Bluetooth lets me get the sound directly into my ear.
However many products that announce they are new and improved were usually much better in their old and unimproved incarnation in my experience

Whilst I think there should be a choice, the push for self service tills doesn't do much get my goat as ride it round a field hitting it on the arse with a banjo!😡
Our local M and S pays someone to awkwardly stand on the door saying hello and goodbye, and another person to walk up and down the queue for the manned tills asking if you'd rather use self service but not to actually operate the till to prevent the queue in the first place. Bring back proper customer service!

Smart meters for electricity, we are on the old style RTS and have to switch to a smart meter by June, problem is we don't have mobile signal. Scottish power are yet to give me a solution to the problem.

It’s a pain. It also I think gives idiots an excuse (they think) to have phones on speaker .

Yes. If you lose your phone and try to book an Uber on someone else’s it wants to send a message to your phone. That you don’t have.