Rant about things being online only!

[Noseylittlemoo]

My Uncle is almost 92 . He lives alone , independently without help even tho he is almost blind. He doesn't have or use a computer.
He loves gardening and as such signs up for his local council garden waste collections. Previously he has been able to phone a number at the council, giving his card details over the phone to pay for the service. However now they have gone online only so he phoned me to help.
I had to create an account - which obviously he will never use , putting in my email address for contact information. I asked him for his card details but then a one time pass code was needed and he is not familiar with this. So I had to change the mobile number on the account from his to mine and put in my own card details and he will give me the money. The whole process took about an hour when he could have called them and had it processed in 5 minutes.
It also angered me that he is eligible for a 25% reduction as he is over 65. But in order to get the reduced price he was supposed to upload proof of his age and obviously I don't have any of his ID or documentation. He is comfortably off and was happy to pay the full price because he was just stressed about getting it sorted.

Surely the council could look on his previous history to find his age or cross reference with other information held like the electoral register.
It just annoyed me that it took up both of our time and stress for something he could have done independently a lot quicker. There must be others in this situation too.
Rant over!

Not just council and financial services. I spent an hour the other day trying to help an 83 year old access an app for a medical device that is actually inside her. The communicator thing wasn't linking to her phone. She had phoned and asked to speak to the nurse who told her to go online and work through the troubleshooting options and that would solve it.

Fucking 83 years old and medical equipment dependent on her being able to use a smartphone, Bluetooth and wifi, plus navigate the Internet. Which I looked at and we couldn't do anything cos the fucking communicator doesn't fucking communicate. She phoned the nurse back and is still (3 days later) waiting for a call back.

@MyDcAreMarvel

I have little sympathy for elderly people who are unable/unwilling to use the internet unless it’s due to a disability. An 85 year old now would have been 61 in 1998 hardly old or unable to learn a new skill.

Why would they have bothered if they didn't need it at the time, though? How could they ever have predicted that 25 years down the line their independence would be totally reliant on being able to use increasingly complicated apps and websites? It's come as a surprise to me recently that I can't even book a bin collection without doing it online and I'm in my 20s.

Nothing has been done to make this a user-friendly experience to encourage older people or those inexperienced with technology to give it a go (or, indeed, anyone at all, really) either - I've never gone on any Council's website and been able to find anything I need with ease because they're so badly done, and half the time the technology doesn't work as you'd expect or as required, yet now we have to use them, crap as they are, because there's no other option. You can see how that would be baffling and frustrating for someone who hadn't ever really had a use for this kind of technology before now?

The phone queue thing is getting ridiculous though - another 'cos covid' excuse. As mentioned earlier, we've just moved house and the minor irritation of spending hours in queues online because the FAQ section on a company website doesn't cover your, obviously, IFAQ quickly becomes a major irritation. And on many company websites it's virtually impossible to find a contact phone number.

I suppose it's the 80/20 rule - 80% of people can solve their queries/problems via the website, and the other 20% are left to God and Providence.

The lack of decent broadband in certain areas is a disgrace.

And phone signal. You’ve people driving miles to just do the bank authorisation when they are paying for something.

@darlingdodo I can't remember the last time I rang any organisation that wasn't "experiencing higher call volumes than normal"! I'm not sure what or when is classed as normal. And you're right as a PP said a lot of the time you are calling/visiting in person as it is for something that can't be solved online.

...additionally I I get the rage at outfits that aren't online enough, and insist I waste my time on the phone to them.

Email was invented in the 70s, telephones in the 1800s. Nuff said.

(Also, email correspondence is helpfully self documenting. Call recording can be a faff at times).

@Fairyliz

But isn’t this a natural consequence of everyone wanting to work from home which is seen as a great thing by most of MN? My dad used to be able to go into the council office to renew his bus pass, now it’s all online. The local bank is shut ‘to protect our customers from covid . Nothing at all to do with saving money.

Even if the council employees are working from home, they can still take phone calls.

Personally I don't like calling organisations, they don't answer for ages, make you listen to loads of regulatory statements, and then spend half an hour doing security questions. Much easier to do things online.

But if you want to call, you should be able to.

Yellowsun, the problem arises when the company website doesn't have the facility to resolve your query and you HAVE to call them - they have obviously pared customer service call centres to the bone.

I've decided I am not built for 21st century living...........

16% of adults are considered to be 'functionally illiterate' in the United Kingdom, so paper based forms are not much use to them, let alone online but I don't see many complaining about that?

Simple fact is that local councils can ill afford to employ people to answer phone calls, most of them are struggling to provide the little service they do.

As to OP, I'm surprised that someone who loves gardening isn't composting his own waste?

Simple fact is that local councils can ill afford to employ people to answer phone calls, most of them are struggling to provide the little service they do.

I wonder why

www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/new-birmingham-city-council-website-99370

New Birmingham city council website costs spiral to £2.8m

The cost of building a new Birmingham City Council website shot up by 383 per cent in just four years, it emerged last night.

Still in the top 10 of "worst websites ever" 13 years on. And you could do everything needed with any number of Free Open Source Software offerings.

As to OP, I'm surprised that someone who loves gardening isn't composting his own waste?

I think this is slightly missing the point. We have compost bins which we put food peelings, old fruit and veg, egg shells, tea bags, torn up toilet rolls , grass cuttings, hair cuttings etc in. We still use our green bin for cuttings when pruning trees and shrubs.

Well a 61 year old might have learned to use a computer in the 90’s as my dad certainly did, but he wouldn’t have been able to upload qr codes and move them from one document to another aged 85

As to OP, I'm surprised that someone who loves gardening isn't composting his own waste?

I have a couple of compost bins but I'd be waiting years for tree prunings to rot down and putting perennial weeds like nettles or dandelions in is a crazy idea.

Anyway, my DH is early 50s, does most of his job on computers and is pretty good at solving any tech problems that I have and even he says that new software is constantly being introduced by his international employer, give it ten years and it will start passing him by. Already he says some of it seems so pointless that he and others just can't be bothered learning how to use it because what they already have works fine. But tech companies have new software to flog so have to keep updating stuff to make money.

I recently upgraded to Win11 and I can't see a massive difference from 10 in what I do BUT it wants to integrate everything. I don't like this, so I avoid doing it, but in the future I'll probably have no choice, but it will be a nightmare to learn how to do it and BAM, I'm one of those older people who's become crap at tech.

@DGRossetti

Simple fact is that local councils can ill afford to employ people to answer phone calls, most of them are struggling to provide the little service they do.

I wonder why

www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/new-birmingham-city-council-website-99370

New Birmingham city council website costs spiral to £2.8m

The cost of building a new Birmingham City Council website shot up by 383 per cent in just four years, it emerged last night.

Still in the top 10 of "worst websites ever" 13 years on. And you could do everything needed with any number of Free Open Source Software offerings.

Exactly this Councils claiming to be short of money are spending millions on tech (and other things) that are of no benefit to the local community.

The pp who mentioned an 83 year old who need to do all that to access a medical device - that is DM worthy. I don't use Bluetooth for anything because it's quite insecure isn't it, and uses a mad amount of battery?

@darlingdodo

Yellowsun, the problem arises when the company website doesn't have the facility to resolve your query and you HAVE to call them - they have obviously pared customer service call centres to the bone.

I've decided I am not built for 21st century living...........

Well that is true. As someone said, most questions people actually want answered aren't in the FAQ list.

I'm surprised that someone who loves gardening isn't composting his own waste

Garden waste is too much to go into a domestic compost bin. The great wheeze for our local council is that they collect garden waste for an additional fee, and then sell back the compost to the public!

Simple fact is that local councils can ill afford to employ people to answer phone calls, most of them are struggling to provide the little service they do

Local councils could spend what money have more wisely. For example, not taping off playgrounds and blocking off car parks during covid (and no, they weren't told to do that by national government, they chose to do it and spend money they didn't have).

I've never got my head around Bluetooth really. I assume it can be pretty insecure because a device just seems to seek out other Bluetooth devices (e.g. the Covid App or that hook up one where people could find other available people in the vicinity). My car allows me to Bluetooth music from my phone to the stereo but I find it just as easy to plug in a USB! (Which is increasingly seen as old-fashioned!)

@Sweetpeasaremadeforbees

I've never got my head around Bluetooth really. I assume it can be pretty insecure because a device just seems to seek out other Bluetooth devices (e.g. the Covid App or that hook up one where people could find other available people in the vicinity). My car allows me to Bluetooth music from my phone to the stereo but I find it just as easy to plug in a USB! (Which is increasingly seen as old-fashioned!)

I gather new iphones don't have headphone jacks any more?

@Fizbosshoes

Banks are really awful for doing this. Every time I go into the bank (which admittedly is not especially frequently because I do bank online) there are always massive queues of people. There are posters telling you how easy it is to do this that or the other online, and the staff there also are falling over themselves to let you know you can do it all online . When the fact that I've bothered to go to the bank suggests a) it's an issue I can't do online, or b) I'm unable to use the online services - rather than unawareness.

Doing everything online assumes

• Everyone has a device that is Internet connective
• they are able to use that device
• that they have sufficient data or wifi
• that the website is fully functional

Even some computer literate people do not want to make purchases or put their card details online.

this is true- you don't always walk around with enough spare storage in your phone for another new app just to pay for parking or even just to pay; at a recent school event in a rural poor signal area parents had to download a new app just to pay with little warning for example

My 95 year old fil is very computer literate but in the 3 years since I have known him his deafness has worsened and he is now almost blind with macular degeneration so from being able to use mobiles and computers with ease he now has to get his son to do stuff for him. He's not stupid just disabled.

I gather new iphones don't have headphone jacks any more?

Probably not because Apple want to flog people ear buds or whatever they're called. But Apple devotees seem fine with Apple forcing encouraging them to constantly invest in new expensive tech.

Simple fact is that local councils can ill afford to employ people to answer phone calls, most of them are struggling to provide the little service they do

Bollocks. Councils always find money for their own pet schemes. Same as the "no magic money tree" government.

Like the police. Can't find the manpower to deal with a mugging. But that's because all their officers are busy on twitter desperately looking for traces of non-crimes to get busy over.

I agree with so many of the previous comments - it's a really important issue and, as others have pointed out, it's not just older people who are disadvantaged.

But I'm particularly concerned about this at the moment because of my 83-year-old dad. He has a laptop and a tablet, and has learned how to do certain things on both. He is willing to learn more to some extent, but there are several issues with urging/forcing older people to do everything online:

• a deterioration of cognitive skills (so even if you understood how to do something before, you may not retain that, and are likely to find it harder to learn new things)
• so many sites/apps are just not user friendly enough (in their functionality and/or content)
• constant changes to how things work and the tech needed
• a general distrust (my dad and my PIL have both been scammed twice) and lack of patience (as a PP mentioned), which is kind of understandable.

My dad feels increasingly bewildered by it all, and it's a big factor in his growing loss of independence.