To be so drained and fed up of constant electronic forms and passwords and apps?

[Bananabreadandcupofcoffeethanks]

Hate it so much I can't express it. Nothing works right for me, you need a fairly recent smartphone for apps to work for example.

Then with electronic forms. Fuck me. I'm trying to fill in a whole complicated form for an appointment and cannot get the 'electronically fillable' form to work. So now I have to print it, and hope the printer works, and then take a photo and scan or something.

I don't have the energy to do this now. It is now a whole multi step process with lots of little bits to get the task done.

I just fucking hate it all when it comes to appointments and job applications and whatnot, and then everything needing an app, or an account with a password that needs xyz to meet criteria.

God needed to get that off my chest.

I wouldn't. I'd be more likely to mislay a paper ticket.

We have residents parking where we live and you could get a visitors permit. Nice and simple. Now the council have introduced a new system for visitor parking whereby you have to buy visitor parking hours on line and register your visitor’s car when they arrive. As opposed to just giving them a piece of paper to put in their car. It’s ludicrous.

I did take a train to London recently. Not something I usually do.
Booked online but I got the actual tickets from the station machine

Most people had the app on their phone. But I still just liked having the paper tickets. A bit of a reminder of "the old days"

But when DF did the same trip up, he used the app on his SmartPhone and was very excited to get journey updates, the train location and even being told what platform the connecting train was on.

Me - I just went with the flow, looked at the platform numbers and worked it out

The last 10 years or so have felt quite sinister in the absolute mega- push from all sides to be fully apped up and automated, with everyone requiring a tiny computer, on them at all time, tracking their every movement recording everything they buy and do.
I was an early adopter too...in fact I worked in the development of early mobile apps ( before most people had heard of such a thing).
It's shocking to me now how dependent life is on these now and how hard it is to refuse.
I call companies up where I can, don't use self checkouts, rarely shop online, but it's getting harder and harder.
And that stupid fucking comment someone made about showing our age, which was meant to be an insult. As a person who grew up at a time when kids taught themselves to programme real computers and was at the inception of the tech that is being used now age has given me insight and perspective.
And I'm sad as Hell that this is the only world my kids know. It has not been for the best.

I think train journeys are much easier since apps - all tickets and information on phone.

There is a separate theme developing here about crap apps too. I suspect a lot of the hate is centred around pisspoor user experiences as much as anything.

Not to mention how convenient it is to have access to boarding passes and paperwork for holidays via app.

Tickets on your phone are all well and good, until your phone dies mid journey.

I mean, if you've got your boarding pass on your phone, and your phone crashes at the airport, what then?

I always take a paper copy, just in case.

But the lovely people who design the paper boarding passes, make sure to load them up with lots of ink heavy adverts, so that printing them off costs you half an ink cartridge. Thanks for that.

Tickets on your phone are all well and good, until your phone dies mid journey.

And paper tickets are all very well until you lose/forget/can't find/have them stolen ...

It isn't exactly difficult to carry a power bank with you. They're pretty small these days.

We have the holiday folder for our camping trips to Europe. Each labelled on order of use and stapled together.

Stays with us.

If we lose it, then we would be able to get them on the phone via email.

But I just love a paper copy.

Amusingly there are now ads for phones on this page.

Fucked I I'm paying £1,400 for a phone. £140 would be too much.

Always watching you, watching what you post and then targetting you

But this is so much better.

People arrive and you sort their parking. No traipsing to the car in the rain with a scratch off card. Then they stay longer and you extend it from your house in at most a minute.

Seems like a good idea.

I'm debating whether to print off paper back up for my holiday. I'm not sure it's worth the hassle but it is useful sometimes I suppose.

But I just love a paper copy.

I'd admit when dealing with pisspoor companies (that's all of them, and especially the NHS) then at least turning up with a paper copy that was sent to you advances the conversation from "we have no record of this appointment, so it's your fault" to "well you shouldn't have been sent that".

Of course. Why would I expect any different ? I just satisfy myself that I'm lost in the noise. Although I may be responsible for some noise myself ....

Checking in your own suitcases at airports is always faff as is those biometric screening booths with the passports and judging by the amount of people who struggled with both I think it just makes everything so much harder and holds things up.
It's not always the person either but the actual machine that isn't working properly and nobody about to help out. They just think it's your fault and everyone ends up stressing

Just before Covid I had a very scary experience where my phone was stolen on a train. I had no ticket and also I was a woman alone at the station and there are now no public telephones so I couldn’t call anyone, no guard as electronic barriers which I couldn’t go through because I had no ticket , it was early evening but dark . I was shocked at how vulnerable I felt .

Do you mind if I ask what you did to get out of the station and home safe?

Oh, the travelling. I'm going Interrailing soon, with the kids. There was a choice of paper or mobile passes. Except you have to pay an extra £19 for a paper pass "for delivery".

All our passes- all our transport- are on the app on my phone, which has to be online regularly as you download tickets for each journey. There's no option to access your pass and journeys through another device at all- it's 100% tied to one phone.

The anxiety over what happens if my phone breaks/ gets lost/ gets nicked is intense. If that happens Interrail cheerily tell you that they will transfer your pass to another phone, which I'm sure is of use to people running for the night train from Brussels to Vienna or something 😆

Our only saving grace is that DS1 is a teen so has his own phone, so we could use that.

i had to ask a person who got off the train at the same station to call my husband who came to get me and vouch for me. 😮and finally a member of staff appeared and let me through the barrier. I was very shocked that there were no public phones at all .

My Dh lost his i phone last year
hassle to get a new one
Plus codes etc being sent .. to the lost phone!
The 'cloud ' did come into our own though tbf , but the rest wasn't easy to sort out. Just took ages to get to speak to anyone and not covered on the home insurance unless you had lost it inside the house.

How can it be a hassle to get a new iPhone. They can be bought on pretty much any high street. And mobiles are never covered on house insurance unless you specifically add them!

It was just hassle ringing 02 etc
Maybe he made more of it than it should be, but it wasn't straightforwards after losing it.
I thought we had phones covered outside the home , but learnt the hard way this isn't the case.