"Download our app"

[BruceHellerAlmighty]

AIBU to think it's an absolute pisstake for companies to try to make up for their poor customer service by telling customers to download apps onto their phones to sort it out? I've had to do this three times in the last week alone. Missed your delivery (that we didn't make)? Download our app to rearrange. Bought tickets for a concert at £120 a fucking pop? Download our app to access them. Bought a train ticket? Download the app for the specific fucking tiny operating company that covers the part of the country you happen to be travelling through at any point in time in order to access it. If you venture outside of this area you'll need to download another fucking app to get a hold of the tickets you've bought that covers you there. Then if you want to buy a coffee download another fucking app.

Fuckers. Just do your jobs, answer your phones and give me my fucking stuff that I've paid for.

Yep, totally agree!
Ringo is a good, useful app but it does make me sad that others, mainly older generations are suffering from this sort of digitalisation. My dad, 72, doesn't have a smart phone so cannot pay for parking via an app and he does sometimes feel alienated by this sort of stuff.

All the other parking apps are just annoying though, I currently have 7 for the different areas I visit!

Parentmail is OK and DD's nursery have one too so that's nice to see photos of her at nursery.

But yes, I don't want to download an app just for something I'll briefly use! It's so annoying!

Parking app: pay £4 cash or £4.40 by app. How can it be a 10% tax when they don’t even produce a paper and use ink or pay a human to patrol the car park?

The parking ones are the worst, having to download an app when you have no signal, input all your details and the sign says you’ll be fined if you haven’t done so within 2 mins

I have the NCP app. My local station's car park is run by NCP. For some inexplicable reason, to park at the station I need a different app. 🙄 Fuckers indeed. They are just gathering our data for resale aren't they?

but it does make me sad that others, mainly older generations are suffering from this sort of digitalisation

They are “suffering” through their own choices.

The elderly now were not elderly when this technology came about. That excuse doesn’t wash anymore.

They chose not to learn to engage with new technological advances and now they’re suffering the consequences of their own decisions.

Give me an app any day over those pesky automated services! When you hear, you are number 3,546 in the queue, please be patient, we will be with you as soon as possible! I am usually ready for launching the phone out by the time someone has answered 😅

Yy simultaneous fury and panic before you've even started your bloody day. And you can rant and rail as you wish but it will be met only by callous unknowing sky. And a small dot next to an empty triangle.

I don't work for you, you work for me so companies, stop trying to make my life harder and your life easier by pretending an App is God's gift to customer service. It's to shut us up and stop us bothering you.

You might want to familiarise yourself with the terms digital literacy, digital exclusion and digital poverty before you come out with more rubbish.

I loathe this. Endless requests for feedback on absolutely everything. Who in the world has time to give feedback on apps FFS?

If they hired more customer support people are fewer app developers they would have far happier customers.

I feel sorry for the generation for whom these things are not intuitive. My mum who is nearly 80 and pretty delicate at the moment (my dad died recently) phoned me yesterday in floods of tears because she’d come back to her car to find a £60 fine. She’d got something wrong with yet another app she’d had to use. She just wants to put coins in a machine ☹️.

It’s the same with all the other things that, as you’ve said OP, force you into using an app that seems to be just a way of holding people at bay and not a help but just a company’s hook out of providing a service. There are quite a lot of people like my mum.

This made me laugh as my phone is full of apps for ridiculous things smart plugs and a workplace health one

DS started Reception in September and I’ve had to install:
ParentPay- School dinner selector
Seesaw- Homework/class journal
Bug Club - reading area
Eduspot - School messages
They also send me text messages with alarming frequency (3 weeks in and the record is 4 in a day!).

The southeastern app is the worst system ever. The app isn't even a ticket, you have to use a plastic card Called 'the key' which never loads the stupid ticket from the app. Why not just have a code on the app?? It makes no sense. The system is so so so bad I regularly wonder whether the person who designed the app is just someone they found in reception who said they could 'work the internet' and was free on Thursdays.

I totally TOTALLY agree.

Isn't "digital poverty" just a part of poverty in general rather than being something separate?
I have to say that I find the separation quite weird

I've never had an issue with this. Buy ticket on app, wait 5 minutes, hold Key against phone and ticket is uploaded. Really easy.

And thanks to this thread I've now realised there is a NCP app which I've just downloaded so now the one car park I use regularly and used to have to queue for the machine for I can now do from an app. Winning!

You can use whatever bullshit terms you want. It doesn’t change the fact that they had the chance, chose not to do it and now want the world to cater to them.

The world is thankfully saying no. Tough shit.

OK - you carry on making a tit of yourself in your quest to remain stupid. No skin off my nose.

Yes, digital poverty is part of poverty - but it can also include access (inc geographical access ie rural areas), skillset and so on. Digital exclusion is a very real problem.

Ah this thread has restored my faith in humanity.
I'm also suffering from app saturation. I hate ordering from apps in restaurants and it really affects the service / flow.
And I miss my free coffee with the little McDonald's bean stickers.
I had to order train tickets on the app last week to save £8 on the journey. While 2 staff were able to serve me but couldn't offer those tickets.

I've just done a digital technology apprenticeship - what started out as trying to help with digital inclusion I'm at the stage where I feel we're in danger of losing so much on the people side.

Realistically, how many people never had any access to modern technology until and including this time to a point they never had a chance to learn basics with it? Because I am kind if with pp about the fact that for most it was very much a choice. I saw it on my grandparents. One set is fully digitalised, second set just kept mumbling about these new things and why should they learn etc. Being older than 60 doesn't make people suddenly unable to understand these things (mandatory disclaimer, talking only about age, not medical conditions, just in case).

I can also see it on older than me colleagues. "Oh you are younger so it's easier for you" and I am very tempted to answer that they are often younger than my mum who is using ms office just fucking fine including being able to start a power point presentation. Me being in my late 30s so making it often only 15 year difference between me and complainer is even more ridiculous.

However, i agree with op on the apps. I now carry change when travelling. Haven't encountered car park without option to pay cash or card yet

It rarely works on mine first try. I usually have to wander around repeating the stupid card holding action for 20 mins until it finally agrees.

What I don't understand is why you need that card. Why not just have the app be the ticket?

My mum isn't 70 and doesn't have a smartphone.

She's only ever worked as a cleaner so has no desire to become tech savvy. Why should she have to?

It's incredibly sad to watch people feel less and less part of society.

Latest report from Ofcom is 6% don’t have access to the internet at home with more at risk (eg those living in poverty, or with disabilities). Almost 12 million without the necessary digital skills.

So while it might be tempting to wave your hand and make some condescending statements about personal choice, it’s far more complex than that. Loads online (and in print, of course) if you want to understand it a bit better.

I hate this too. Not a technophobe but I don't want a million and one apps that I'll only use once.