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 loathe it.

The PASSWORDS. The fucking passwords. You literally can't move online without adding a password, creating a new one, resetting one you've forgotten, saving the new one. And yes I know there are technological solutions but its so time consuming and utterly tedious. My password keeper has about 200 of the things.

And the fact that everything requires you to download yet another tedious app which you'll use twice and then delete. I don't want 5,000 apps on my phone and I don't want them for things which I will use a couple of times and then have to remember to delete.

And as you say the fact that you have to go through an AI to have any kind of interaction with any company about anything. And when you finally call them up an electronic voice will tell you, in an irritatingly bright tone: "Have you tried our website?" Well, fuck me no I never thought of that. I'm just hanging on the phone to British Gas/the NHS/Vodafone for fun. And when I finally get through to the AI that picks up the phone it won't understand what I say.

Yes I sound like a grumpy old woman and yes technology helps with some things. But increasingly it just feels like a way to prevent you getting help, rather than a way to accelerate it.

. . . and when the internet goes down we're all right royally stuffed
(the biggest silent terrorist threat on the planet)

There is the Chat Bot - deserves to be throttled because it requires you to type in key words so that they can tell you utterly useless things related to that key word.

Then there is Live Chat which has a living person at the end, just that they are probably sitting in their slippers at home answering your queries whilst multi-tasking. Better than a robot but not as good as a person at the end of a phone line.

Tell you what though - it's much nicer chatting to a bot to get your internet/broadband/whatever service charges reduced - they are far less pushy and you can just type 'no' with no fear of seeming rude to a real life person

Im sorry, I didnt quite catch that. Please try again later.

100% agree. Sometimes I just want to be able to explain the problem to an actual human being, and as you said, you could get it sorted out in 5 mins. It's increasingly difficult to be able to do so, and its so time consuming and frustrating.

T5 is a complete nightmare. Look into this eys scanner thing, staff member tells me irritably to take my glasses off so now I can't see a thing. So I look into the scanner then get shouted at by same staff member to move on. The screen had said to move on but of course I couldn't see it without my glasses 😡

Totally. I've been organising a school trip abroad (which I'm now on) and the amount of online wrangling I've had to do on the useless airline's website is unreal. I've tried phoning to talk to an actual person, and got nowhere. It's used up countless hours of my time.

I've often thought this. It should be MANDATORY that there is an easy to find phone number for pp to call. Even more so for people who are disabled or older. I'd vote for that!

Some companies are brazen about it, Ive seen websites where there is not even a 'contact us' option on their pages. Tons about modern slavery and sustainability or whatnot.

It's getting increasingly difficult to do these days, but I try and do as much routine admin stuff as I can by post. Sometimes it works quite well, for stuff like closing dormant bank accounts or setting up mortgage overpayments. Obviously no good for anything urgent, but spending five minutes writing a letter and then posting it is infinitely preferable to what feels like an eternity dealing with a completely useless chatbot or voice recognition phone line.

These were the ones I wanted and guess what? when I did an online stock check they did not have any in my local (large) branch of Boots hence the reason why I ordered them online.. Then factor in I do not have the gift of being able to see into the future and assumed that the process would be straightforward.

I got kicked off a service because they said my face wasn't my face. Honestly you couldn't make it up. The system couldn't confirm my photo was the same person as the one taken months earlier for security. And because i couldn't log on i couldn't get the right help. I tried to explain to a chatbot and eventually got to live chat. I was basically asking him to look at my photo and tell the system that I am the same person but he couldn't over ride it. So the computer said no. I had to leave and can't create an account again.

No, I love it. This week I’ve had an issue with a delivery from Phase 8 resolved in a minute or two typing into the chat box and booked a local plumber without having to talk to anyone. These are both phone calls I would have been anxious about having to make in the past.

After all my moaning I want to add that Octopus are bloody brilliant. Had a query about my account, phoned them up and spoke to a human and not only a human but a lovely helpful human who sorted everything out and then followed it up with a detailed email explaining and confirming all the details. A lot of companies could learn from them.

My bugbear is parking. You need an app to park your car now. It is ridiculous.
There is one car park where my mum gets stuck in a "email already in use" loop, so she puts a sign on her dash saying she tried.

And get charged a 20p transaction fee!

When systems go down, there is usually no back up to work from.

Retail relies so much on the internet. Contactless/mobile pay, buying/redeeming gift cards, stock checking, issuing price tickets, reductions and disposals. Friend worked at a supermarket where the retail park lost all its internet for 2 days was a nightmare. Customers unable to pay has had no cards or knew their PIN. Code checking took forever to manually write tickets and cashiers had to manually input reduced prices etc.

Because they stocked the brand I wanted, is that a good enough reason? They had none in the physical shop so I ordered online. As for Tesco, well thank you for suggesting this as an alternative but the nearest big Tesco is a long way from my home and I never go there so no idea of what sort of range they carry

Got an issue with Evri. Tried to deliver a parcel to me last Tuesday afternoon. Wasn't in as had hospital appt. Following day, said were going to deliver between x-y time and I was out. So decided to get parcel to be delivered to an Evri locker a mile away - its on the way to the supermarket I shop at. That's when the notifications stopped.

Contacted Evri using their chatbot. Thing is if you put in information where it tells you to, you will get a better response from a human agent.

They are looking through the depot as what happens is when the parcel was scanned, it notes that its going to a locker now. So goes onto the van that deals with the lockers. It got lost.

A couple of years ago, I spotted an A5 size grey packet on the kerb, probably fell out of the courier's van. Address was 2 miles away. It was much quicker for me to drive to the address, with a note explaining where I found it and my number. Than to contact the couriers. Guy couldn't thank me enough. It was some photos of his grandparents which he had restored.

Oh god yes! This is my biggest irk. I'm mid 40s fairly tech literate if I could have sorted out my issue without being 798th in a queue, listening to shit lift music for 50 minutes interspersed with a patronising "did you know...." messages, then I already would have done! I would have literally trawled their website simply to get to the phone number (it's often very well hidden!)

On the plus side I have cancelled 2 subscriptions online, really easily recently, and changed my sons sim contract within about 2 min and felt a bit silly that I had expected them to be far more arduous!

I find that increasingly this is not the case though. If you do get to speak to a human they invariably suggest you ‘ go to our website/app’, or, worse, they’d like to help but they can’t because their autonomy and powers of action have somehow been taken away by a bot …..

Ah,the sweet song of my people.... I stand as a comrade in the fight against computerised tyranny.

I'm trying to make my life as technology free as possible now.

Most recent irritant was trying to fill out my tax return and inform them of my business ending. Apparently their website doesn't like my passport. I can't answer the credit report style questions correctly which are a substitute, and which lock you out if you try too many times. I don't have any other photo ID. It doesn't matter that I've done it online last year - Apparently my phone upgrade is something to do with it as it doesn't recognise my new device. I send a query. They might be able to help me. Or not. I'm going to have to phone them.

Or order a provisional driving licence. Which I tried to do. I forgot I lost the previous one about 13 years ago, didn't notify the DVLA (bad me) and in order to replace it, I have to try and remember what address, after about 10 house moves in those 13 years and beyond, was on the previous licence. Own stupid fault, obviously, but honestly, trying to prove who you are over and over again via my phone which is my only tech, is enough to drive one to insanity.

Parking apps are the worst. They are starting to set them up in beach car parks around here. Beach car parks aren't known for having a fantastic phone signal