fed up of corporate time thieving, I need that time - give it back!

[dustypockets]

I am increasingly frustrated by the theft of my time by utter nonsense. Search engines are becoming increasingly stupid at answering basic questions, online shopping is a marathon of an engagement to fulfil a list of specific items with a price scale and even going into the bank recently to get cash meant an extra five minutes being lectured on the age of my account in an effort to upsell me one that costs me money.

I feel like I need to start invoicing for my time every company that does this. AIBU?

I already vote with my feet but post pandemic every direct route from needing a thing to procuring a thing seems to have vanished entirely.

I wonder if you could allege the bank is not considering certain neurodiversity by trying to get you to change accounts?

When you call the Dr and they give you that five min lecture on stuff can get a bit distressing when you are sick and in pain.

I'd issues with my broadband earlier and the company website is fixated on selling new or upgraded packages. It was a huge waste of time to have to keep trying different ways to access fault reporting.

Yes @Skyrim41 , hold muzak was bad enough now we must endure condescending time wastery from a machine...

Surely lecturing unwell or frightened people as if they are abusive sweary phone criminals for long periods of time results in more difficult conversations than if surgeries just apologised for the wait and then answered politely and efficiently. How about "we are all in this together, let's help each other" instead of "patient bad - staff victim"?

I had to call because my internet was being flakey and needed a new modem. It took 5 minutes to tell the computer my life story and then it asked for some super secret code that is on my paper bill. Weirdly when I started swearing at it it it then patched me through to a representative.

FFS my bank doesn’t require that much verification when I call them

I spent a long time trying to navigate a charges problem with my credit card, I was told I could use it a certain way that in fact doesn't work. Asking for a call transcript for the ombudsman got me an email link that doesn't work unless you have the right sort of email account. Sigh.

Emailed from a team with no direct contact details obvs. If I don't pursue it they get to keep my wrongly taken charges and do the same to the next customer because the ombudsman hasn't told them off for it yet.

So time and money and even more time.

In The Days Of Old, I recall my dad spending entire afternoons multiple times a year sitting on the stairs on the phone (landline, corded, natch) to various different insurance providers / holiday cottages / banks / sellers of household appliances etc. because there was no other way of doing things; so in comparison I feel rather fortunate.

Try alternative search engines e.g. Duck Duck Go rather than Google / Bing for more productive online searching.

Search engines answer questions pretty efficiently if you input the correct terms. Also far quicker that it used to be when we needed to go to the local library for information. Ditto online shopping faster than getting the bus into town and traipsing round the shops.....

Why must the comparison be to pre internet instead of to user friendly internet? My point is about recent shift in focus.

DuckDuckGo was good initially, now it too slows to the corporate upsell. Same as the internet in general - used to be fun and usefull - now becoming clogged by corporate tedium. There are not direct answers to "correct terms" now - there are all the answers which could possibly be related in any random way to any of the words in the "correct terms".

Going to a supermarket and getting everything on the list is certainly faster now than trying to do it online (unless you live far from supermarkets that is).

I really hope the innovative coding kids of today can reclaim the fun of internet back from the drudge it has become.

Free search engines promote the companies who pay to advertise them, this enables them to make money and still offer a free service.

You cant really expect a free service with no corporate advertising. Search engines and many websites are businesses and they want to make money, I agree it’s annoying having to wade through adverts on lots of web pages but if it keeps the site free I understand why they ads are there.

I bought my DH a simple PAYG phone. We have no need for smart phones but the one I got seemed to be very expensive for calls so I tried ringing them to see what plan I needed. Omg I nearly lost the will to live. Every option I pressed just led to the same thing "all information is on our website". I ended up shouting into the phone "I just want to speak to a person" hey presto it worked.

Re using DuckDuck as a search engine. I had it at one point, in fact I think it was recomended to me by Which. Several computer peeps have said to me since that it's a bad idea, for cookies etc. I've changed back to Google Chrome now.

I would pay for a search engine that doesn't do this, but does it exist?

Anyway, it's not just the list of search results that's the issue, half the time you click on a result and it's a sponsored post that's heavily biased and trying to sell utter rubbish (badly).

OP I work in marketing and wish the setup worked better for everyone. I especially detest poor attempts to flog rubbish with dubious "how to" articles whose sole purpose is to misinform you so they can sell something.

I don’t think one exists, a quick google suggests there was one called Neeva but that it shut down because it wasn’t making a profit and was struggling to get enough subscribers to be sustainable.

I'd actually try invoicing companies that waste your time, OP. I invoiced my bank for the time I wasted trying to get them to correct their mistake - they paid.

@C152 - this is amazing, I need more detail please!

Yes. There’s a building society that uses out of date authentication software that means I need to call them to reset my password after every login. I’ve just transferred the money out and cancelled my standing order and feel so relieved!

Absolutely this. There was a brief period when the internet was brilliant, fun and useful, but now it's mostly a massive pain in the arse. Constant pop ups - ads, mailing lists, cookies, notifications. It's tedious. Most search results on the first page or so are AI-generated bollocks or sponsored content.

Corporations spending millions on ridiculous lifestyle content on social media, when they could plough that money into basic, frontline customer service and everyone would be happier. And then they have the cheek to ask you to fill in a survey about their shoddy service, generating even more spam.

Which possible computer peeps? 😮 Ones trying to see your browser history? The entire point is that DuckDuckGo doesn't track you. Google on the other hand an advertising behemoth that's only getting more invasive as its reach grows.

DuckDuckGo has just launched a new browser that I haven't tried yet but which will be great if it works properly.

@dustypockets - My bank (one of the big high st banks) sent me a new debit card, but posted it to the wrong address. After many calls, they resent another card by courier...to the wrong address again....and again. Each time required literally hours on the phone, followed by letters. In the end, I was so fed up that I sent them a final letter listing each time I had called, the length of the call etc, and attached an invoice for the number of hours I had wasted sorting out their error, charged at my standard hourly rate. Much to my surprised, they paid it without question.

I am going to prepare invoices from now on.

Scottish Power (name and shame) no longer allow me to log in to my account for access. Instead I have to put in user name and password as if to log into account page BUT no more access for me now no instead I then get a message telling me to wait for an email. Please note I have to put in the. correct name and password to get this message, it isn't a forgotten password message or anything like that

After a while an email arrives and I have to click on the link that takes me to the same log in page and put in user name and password which only then lets me log into account page (by doing the exact same thing I just bloody well did!)

WTF?

My pet hate is the recorded message of

"We apologise for the delay in connecting you but we are experiencing higher than normal call volumes "

Except it is not higher than normal because this has become the new normal. Stop taking my time just because you want to save costs on not hiring more staff.

Yes. Samsung and their shoddy warranty repair service are on my hit list at the moment. I do NOT want to go through every step of your online troubleshooting guide AGAIN. I just need to book a repair. No, I don't want to talk to your chatbot either. Just a person.

And if they can't deal with it and offer me a callback, I request they call in the evening due to work, it DOES NOT HELP to call me at 11am. And then say "we tried to contact you but you were unavailable, please go back through the entire circus again...." Fuck's sake.

I only make admin/life shit calls whilst at work. I can be on hold while I work and pop away from the desk for a few minutes to take the actual call. Using my own time?! Heaven's no!

I used to like the option on google to search for forum posts or blogs specifically related to your topic of enquiry, not just a particular site but all forum or blog posts, I even had alerts set up on certain things. It was great as you often could find real peoples actual opinions or fixes for things and so on.

I believe Google removed that option in part because it funnelled people away from commercial stores. As a result loads of smaller forums and blogs died as it became so hard to find them.

Even personally created content is often very commercial these days. As soon as someone has any kind of following the corporate sponsorship follows and in the end it moves from being a hobby to an income stream and the content becomes mostly ads. There seems to be very little personal content on youtube now that isn't highly produced as a business of sorts and while that sort of content has it's place it isn't as good as the more personal stuff that used to be on youtube.

The internet as been largely assimilated by the corporate sphere now sadly.