AIBU to think commerce has utilised technology in a way that makes some aspects of our lives more cumbersome

[HauntedBungalow]

Supermarket shopping for example, not just the customer physically doing more but also the multi-tiered pricing systems.

Having to book many leisure activities in advance is another, also the pricing of these has gone rogue.

Accessing films, music too is complicated - theoretically we have everything at our fingertips but actually it's all parcelled up in subscription services and ownership/access changes all the time.

And if you hit a bump in service of any kind, your only remedy is to have a bot chat at you.

I thought the technological revolution would look a bit different, from this.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/15/government-roll-out-humphrey-ai-tool-reliance-big-tech

Not just commerce.

Hold onto your hats, we're in for a bumpy ride.....

This!! I have asked and asked what benefits I’m getting from my Waitrose card and it seems there are a few random discount vouchers each week. That’s it. I don’t go there at all time when I might want a free coffee so 🤷‍♀️.

Just to counter this with some positivity……

Parking apps….now no more running about to top up or find a payment machine in the first place and no need to carry cash etc.

Restaurant apps….great for ordering when you’re ready. Bonus point if you can pay on the app, just get and leave when you’re ready. Most places i’ve been also have super helpful servers for any issues/special requests. Plus…better for the environment to remove need to re print menus every time there’s a change to the menu items.

Paperless receipts…i love these. I used to lose paper ones all the time (although i appreciate this is a me problem). No paper = environment win. I really can’t get worked up about marketing emails. If you’re bothered then set up a separate email from your main account to get receipts/marketing into. Visit only as you need it, easy enough to search using company name. Plus I’ve had some good offers through marketing emails.

Booking events/attractions….no more turning up to find something sold out or a huge wait. I regularly remember have to stand outside local pool for 30-60mins at peak times…not a problem now.

Trains are the worst. So many different prices, sites, offers, split fares etc etc; you book one ticket and then find out you could have got a ticket three times cheaper for the service that left ten minutes after yours.

Privatisation bullshit. One journey, one price, pay at the station before you leave. As it used to be.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest 😀

It's stupid things like this that drive me nuts. Wouldn't it be sensible to have a little roof/ shelter over the machine, especially in this often damp climate? Apparently it's all no pain, no gain with technology.

There are a couple of car parks which I use - use card and cash, BTW. The problem is that why do they use a display which is impossible to read due to the sun shining on it? Yes I know they are solar powered but that doesn't mean to say that the solar power cells have to point in the same direction as the screen. Please put a cover above the display.

Also another peeve is when the buttons don't align with the screen. ATMs is an example. You press what you think is £20 and get £30. More of an issue if your balance is £20-something.

There has certainly been a degrading in general usefulness, the imposition of hurdles and so on. I am often in different places, sometimes on different devices, related to work and maintaining life alongside that. So many interrupts, follow up and Mexican standoffs as A wants to go to B to A to authenticate an email / message I have been sent somewhere. I don't quite get "hey, we have detected you are now in Spain, touch 63 on your iPad in London", or I do but 2nd phone saves me.

Parking charges and QR CODES caused huge issues in our area. They stuck fake ones on people paid. It was when the fines started landing on the door mats that it came to light . Yes they had paid but the money was long gone to the con men.

No issue for me, but for older people perhaps.

My mother for example rings me and asks why a grid picture comes up and it keeps asking to click bicycles..... Or it keeps asking if I'm a robot, or change password, do they not know elderly people don't want to do these silly things???? She has no idea why "the internet" asks for such things, doesn't "the internet" know she's 80.

There’s a car park near me that is for a pretty remote beach and they’ve switched it to one of those parking apps. Almost nobody can get reception there, and you often get text messages from French mobile companies welcoming you to France while you’re there - nice data roaming charges as an extra then!
if there was ever a need for a good old-fashioned coin meter, it’s there!

Oh yes!! My phone doesn't work in Dover, it goes all French!

I agree with all of this stuff but I do like the parking apps, I just wish there was one for every single car park, Ringo. I now have 11 different apps downloaded for all the different places I go to.

However, i do love paying in a cheque to my bank account with my phone, that is truly brilliant technology!

I get asked, after breast screening, whether I would recommend it to family and friends! Ooh, yes, of course my old Dad would enjoy it.

I stopped using the Skoda garage when they got rid of humans on the phone. You can’t just ring up and book a service, and you can’t do this online. You have to leave your details with them and they’ll ring you back.

Nope. Just switched to local garage instead which works to make things convenient for the customer and not themselves.

We wouldn't even need to search Gmail if our inboxes weren't so clogged up with inconsequential shite that we couldn't find the important stuff 🙄

It’s deliberate so you give up. Customer frustration makes them a lot of money.

Yes, getting refunds for a ticket you've bought in advance ranges from hellishly difficult to flat impossible 😡

There is a small post in the undergrowth 50m from Kynance Cove car park with a sign on it saying "You can get phone signal here". And nowhere else in the entire car park presumably, especially next to the bloody parking machines.

I have spent several years simply refusing to use car parks if I haven't got actual change. At least I'd get my steps in! Thankfully now they're starting to install card readers...

Absolutely! We’ve all been turned into unpaid admin assistants for every company and government department we have dealings with. To add insult to injury, companies then sell our data and make more money from our unpaid work!

Actual admin assistants are of course long gone, so highly-paid professionals have the privilege of spending a large proportion of their time doing admin tasks rather than the actual job they’re paid to do…

Endless updates for every device that they nag you constantly about and, often, just go ahead and do it anyway with no choice to object or postpone.

It's almost like my laptop is driving the show and living its own life, and I'm just here as a spectator.

And when you look at what the updates are for, it's invariably for some obscure 'exciting new' feature that you've never heard of and don't know what it does, much less would ever use.

Oh, and your privacy is important to us - in the same way that your handbag is important to a mugger - so you need to spend 10 minutes right now, clicking several hundred times, to actively stop us from stealing it from you anyway.

This. I bought some dog neuteriene tablets and some patch repair grass seed for my lawn. The neuterine tablets take months to see a difference and the patch repair takes up to 14 days. Yet from the very next day of making the order, I recieved a daily request for a review. How about you let me follow the instructions and Your timescales before asking me? Ironically, two months on, this stuff is great and I would have given it a great review but because they’ve automated the process, it didn’t make sense!

This is something I often think about when you see statistics of TV programmes from precious decades that attracted tens of millions of viewers, of the like that will never happen again.

Even though the population is bigger now, we've come so far from your available TV choices being either one of 4 or 5 channels or watch nothing!

I’m 53, I don’t ever remember a time when I couldn’t rock up to my local pool and swim whenever the fancy took me. Yes, it might be busy during lane swimming but never couldn’t swim nor did I ever have to wait.

Now, if I decided I wanted to swim this afwrnoon, I can’t do that. In order to book I have to sign up. Then I have to decide if I’m a slow, medium or fast swimmer (surely that’s relative to the other people swimming that day?). Then I see that there isn’t an available a lot until next week.

I don’t swim any more. The council have literally put a huge barrier in the way of exercise.

And the staff are penalised if they don’t hit their data-gathering targets! Sadly, the actual selling of stuff is of far less importance to head office than harvesting personal information to sell on.

Worst of all is when we're forced to jump through all the hoops and do all of the endless admin for ourselves - and then we're charged a booking fee for the privilege!

Parking would be better if there was ONE PARKING APP we could all agree on. I think I have five on my phone now, all with their own idiosyncrasies and challenges

YES.

I don't want to set up an account, including a 10 character password with 4 of (x) types of characters, just to buy a bloody pair of shoes, or pay my council tax. So many accounts that I have used ONCE (because how often do I really need to login to my water bill account?) and so many more that I know I've used twice because when it prompts me to set up an account it says it's already got that email in the system, please enter my password, but I obviously do not know the password so I need to reset the password.

Then two-step verification for EVERYTHING. If someone wants to pay my gas bill that badly, they can go for it. I don't need layers of security.

I wanted to volunteer to help my daughter's Rainbow troop. The process of setting up and accessing the account I need to do the online training I'm supposed to do is SO complicated and glitchy that I've given up.