To be totally sick of modern technology and having to do so much online

[Lifeomars]

i have been almost reduced to screaming and crying over the past three days due to almost everything having to be dealt with online.

!. I ordered some hair straighteners online from Boots, all fine and dandy. I got a text from Royal Mail saying they would be delivered on 26 Nov and giving me the tracking details. They never showed up and tracking showed them as being at sorting centre. This message showed every day for the following week, trying to track it online did not work. Going onto Boots website had a piece of info saying not to contact them until 7 working days had elapsed without them turning up. 7 days passed and I went back on the Boots site .After a good few minutes of scrolling through rather unclear information I then had to engage with a bot to try and explain what was happening (or not happening in my case). The box to enter my order number in would not work and after trying for 20 mins and feeling like ripping my (unstraightened) hair our I tried to use the email facility. This took another 10 minutes as all you are allowed to do is scroll though to find the option. It keeps trying to divert you to their FAQ but in the end I managed to fill it in. The whole process was hideous and I kept thinking that a 5 minute conversation with a human being would have sorted it out.

2, Today I had a message from my phone provider EE saying I had exceeded my "spend cap". I have been with them for two years and was not even aware that I had one. Can't phone them as I now cannor use my phone, can't log into my account on my laptop as I cannot remember my password (never use the online account). To set a new password requires that they send me a text, phone is now not even receiving texts which is odd so atm I am phoneless. I do not use my phone excessively, a bit of WhatsApp, some texts, and all the online stuff is done via my broadband account. Basically I feel that I have been almost driven to the brink by tech over the past few days. Great when it works but when it plays up it seems to take so much mental energy to sort it all out.

I couldn't agree more OP, and I'm sure some sites make it deliberately difficult to contact them when you have a problem. As you say, technology is great when it works, but when it doesn't it makes you wish it had never been invented!

Yes it drives me mad. As previous poster said it’s fine when it works but if something goes wrong it can take hours to put right.

@Lifeomars - agree, everything requires creating an account and a login and password

Re: EE - you should be able to dial 150 for free from your phone to speak with them or top up. Good luck

Oh OP, I hear you loud and clear! It feels like some kind of dystopian nightmare that we can never wake up from. The total absence of common sense

Is baffling too, because as you pointed out, a five minute chat with a human being would sort many problems quickly and efficiently. Surely that is desirable in terms of both cost and time efficiency?
My heart goes out to the elderly, not only is today's world complicated technically but also very isolating for those that can't keep up.

Sometimes I love that I can do something simple online but others it’s a complete nightmare.
I hate when you can’t find a phone number and companies want you to start an online chat of worse.. WhatsApp’s a robot.

I hate it when they tell you that you can use the online chat facility. Mostly you can’t, because it can only respond to very basic queries, so no help at all.

both those companies do have 'call us' options though, so if you'd prefer to speak to someone why didn't you?

I hate speaking on the phone (and don't have free phone credit so it always costs a fortune, not to mention time wasted spent on hold) so much prefer the online options. It annoys me more when there isn't an online option (Asda).

YANBU but I had the opposite experience with Boots recently.

One of my parcels was delivered to the wrong address (Royal Mail fault not Boots). I filled in an email form with the tracking number and order number and an explanation of what happened and they immediately sent out a replacement at no cost.

I was quite impressed because I didn't have a way of proving the person and front door in the RM photo wasn't me and was expecting I might have to argue.

I hate the Chat Bot functions on websites though. Rarely are they useful.

Totally agree with you. Technology is fine, as long as it works. I've gone round and round in circles many times shouting at my laptop because it won't let me do what I want to do.

I used to hate those stupid "I'm not a robot" things where you had to click boxes on grainy images. I have poor eyesight and often couldn't see them properly. At least now there seems to be just a box to click.

Whoever invented virtual assistants, chatbots whatever shit they're called needs their head examining. I have never had a satisfactory answer from one. I just want to speak to a human, but, oh no, out fucking virtual assistant will help you first. Then surprise surprise they can't and I'm passed on to a human - HALLELUJAH!

Whoever invented virtual assistants, chatbots whatever shit they're called needs their head examining.

If I'm being generous I might assume the purpose of them is to deal with simple enquiries such as what are your shipping costs - when the info is already on the website.

If I'm being less generous I assume it's saving money on staff costs knowing that customer annoyance in the moment probably doesn't stop people buying from large retailers as a whole.

I kept thinking that a 5 minute conversation with a human being would have sorted it out.

Not my experience at all. On the occasions when I've had to talk to a human, I rarely get a satisfactory outcome. No better than online really. Though I do agree the online bots are completely useless and are just put there to fob you off. But a written email or filling out an online form is usually just as good an outcome compared with a phone call these days. At least you can write down the full problem and all details and don't have to constantly repeat yourself when the call handler is clearly not concentrating on you due to barking dogs, kids playing etc.

Personally I love it! You don’t have to do these things online, both Boots and EE have shops so you can talk to someone in person and/or phone them.

My current list of hates:

Buying anything online that requires you to have an online account and won’t let you order until account is verified by email - so have to come out of what I’m doing to check emails that usually don’t arrive instantly and means I’m refreshing for ages.

Orders that arrive without a returns note. Instead you have to log back in and create one or show a barcode at returns point - no I don’t carry my phone every where and also all shops near me I never have reception in due to the returns being at the back of the store!

Any store that ask me if I have their app and try to make me download it in store - again I probably don’t have reception and no I don’t want to add another app so it takes up more of my very low storage!

Parcels that are not able to be delivered as I wasn’t in to give a passcode to them - I have a designated safe space for them but nope they need me in person to tell them a passcode or the item is returned. Can also guarantee the 1 hour time slot will be while I’m on the school run!

Yes I’m a grumpy cow at the moment 😂😂

I also get annoyed at having to listen to five minutes worth of ‘did you know you can…..’. If I’d been able to do it online, I would have.

I hate being sent a code by text to even do anything .I have shit mobile signal and texts can take hours to send or receive so by the time it arrives I've been timed out.

Boots don't I phoned the customer service number on their website and all I got was an automated rundown of the info on the website and a recommendation to go online To get EE to call me I had to text them, scroll down a menu of options to choose which service I was calling about, click on that option, then submit a character limited text to outline my problem. Then EE called me back, the call dropped their end so I had to repeat the process. After dong the initial security check they then text you a code which you read back to them and then I was able to speak about the issue! Turns out the whole thing which temporatly disabled my phone was a glitch in their system. I have spent the best part of the morning with a malfunctioning phone and it has been stressful.

I agree with you OP. The thing I wonder is what will life be like if hackers somehow manage to switch things off. I imagine we would be in chaos.

That's all the Boots customer services line consists of, a message that repeats the intro stuff from the website FAQ

Completely agree with you.

I've just done my son's application to sixth form. Four pages of Google form, you can't even see what needs to go on each page until you've completely filled in the preceding one correctly. But it doesn't save progress so every time I come up against something - that I couldn't even see was needed at the beginning - I lose all the progress and have to start again. And then when you've submitted there is no receipt so you need to try and remember whether you actually got to the end of the form on the 5th or 6th attempt. There's always a memory of starting the form but I remain shaky on whether I completed it, whereas when it was a form in a bookbag, or a letter in a postbox, I knew.

I really miss the days of paper forms where we could sit in front of the TV filling in boxes. Or ring someone up whose job it is to be able to work the system while you just tell them how to spell your name etc. It feels like no one's interested in making interactions user friendly these days, because they know we have no option but to fill in their forms.

It was similar when I tried going into banks to find out about their savings accounts. People were employed to tell me to go away and look it up on their website, not to help me. I'd only gone in person because I got a bit overwhelmed trying to research loads of different but very similar products online.

Come to the south of Italy, you'll soon change your mind. Five hours at the post office, over three visits, just to tax the car.

@Gleeanda I would write answers for every question in a word document, save the document, then copy and paste the answers across. Otherwise forms like that are too difficult to complete entirely online

That means a trip to town which I simply do not have time for at the moment. That was the reason I chose to shop online As for my phone, it was out of commission this morning for what turned out to be glitch on the EE system. Like many people I need a working phone asao and I could not wait until I had some free time to travel into town.

Could not phone them as they put a stop to calls on my phone, even to them! turns out it was glitch in their system when I eventually managed to communicate with them. Only took around two hours of my time to get it sorted! have a working phone again now thank heavens as I have a lot on over the next few days and really need it.

Sure. But in this case lots of pull down fields. Enter 10 GCSE subjects and use pull down boxes to enter predicted grades, type of qualification and exam board. That's 40 transfers to/from your word doc just for one section alone. Overall probably 100 cut and pastes overall even if you could cut and paste it all. Doable, yes of course, but you having to create your own offline version is not nothing.

It's not the end of the world. First world problems etc. But it's not trivial either, and there will be 500 students or parents who have a bigger job battling this thing online, who knows maybe 500 extra word docs created on 500 different clouds to save one college admin person the job of inputting the data. It's more efficient from the college's point of view but because of poor design, it adds unnecessarily to the user's load.

@Gleeanda I agree- how ridiculous and difficult to navigate