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.

Forgot to add predictive text in mobile phones has gone horrendous!!!

Have to say, I was really impressed by the parking meters in Liverpool when we visited recently. Every machine could be used with multiple parking apps. Instead of hanging around downloading yet another new app, I had four already on my phone to choose from!

Any organisation that still operates like it’s in Covid times - why?

i would hope that some organisations realised that it was much more efficient?

Oh yes, of course…..we’re going to charge you 40p extra to park for the privilege of making it easier for us to fleece the parking charge out of you!
all under the guise of a “service charge” which is just another way of saying the “merchant card fees” are being passed on to you…..which is actually illegal to charge end consumers. But because it’s called an admin fee they get away with it. 😡😡😡😡

where i live i have to park in a place that used to have restricted time parking (max 1 hour) and going to the doctor was often a race against parking tickets.

But they have changed it to app payment, and you can renew now, so it's no issue. Last time, doc was so fast my parking was 25cents and the fee 40 cents...

But in Sheffield - the city that hates cars - i do sometimes brave it and take the car in, and if i use the NCP app i save something like 1 pound an hour, and because I'm usually there for most of the day, it's quite a significant saving.

Why is it so obsessed with changing a correctly-spelled common word to another equally-common word - or even to a non-word?

My phone doesn't recognise 'of', 'in' or 'well' as actual ordinary words - it insists on changing them to 'if', 'I'm' and 'we'll' - even when it makes no grammatical sense whatsoever.

This is like on the other thread about tipping and service charges.

Why it isn't possible for somebody to quote you an all-in price that covers the whole amount that they require from you in exchange for the goods or services they are providing is completely beyond me. It's nothing less than a scam, imho. All the councils with their own trading standards officers should look in the mirror and investigate themselves, when it comes to their car parks!

I wonder how well it would go down if I told my employer that I was now adding a 10% 'payment processing fee' on top of my agreed wages every month, as they need to pay for the privilege of paying me?!

This is not a new problem. See this song from 1957, "Too many cookers".

IfYouPutASausageInItItsNotAViennetta
hate it, well and we’ll, your and you’re … and it won’t let me say what the hell 😅😅😅 grrr!!!! Do you use apple or android?

So does modern ways take longer than old fashioned ways? Some technology annoys me bit overall it feels quicker than years ago

We went recently to somewhere where you were encouraged to book online in advance for tickets, we didn't and arrived and there was a huge queue, the queue was for people that had booked in advance. As we didn't have tickets we were directed to another booth to pay and we went straight in, no queue, also no admin fee either, so cheaper

I have found I can use it with the ad blocker on my iMac and iPad but not my phone, so I don't use it at all when I'm out now.

Android. And yes, 'hell' is automatically changed to 'he'll' as well.

IfYouPutASausageInItItsNotAViennetta

Feck! Apple phone nearly gone so moving to android- was hoping this would be one of the things that was sorted!!!

not just at home, but in the office too…
I get so pissed off at the number of customers who only use online platforms/portals that you have to load up your invoices for eventual payment.
Basically doing their f’ing work for them!
you have to register for each one using sign ons and passwords etc……but most annoyingly is that virtually all of them are US oriented so have loads of info, terminology that just isn’t relevant to the UK market!!!!,
if I produce a handful of invoices it invariably takes me ages to enter manually, to each different platform…..rather then just the usual fire off to an email address as before. I too have said why don’t we just add a bloody admin fee for doing their frigging work and wasting my time!!!!!!! 🙄🙄🙄

but surely with predictive text you correct it? and eventually it offers you the correct one? that's what mine (android) does

But the whole point of the thing is that it helps you; not that it undoes your good work and leaves you with more work to do!

It would be a bit like paying a cleaner who makes more mess than they clean... you wouldn't say "Ah, you just have to clean it all up after they've gone" would you?!

Why is it even picking up on a correctly-spelled word and deciding that it should be a different correctly-spelled word in the first place? It's really overstretching its remit. Mine can sometimes 're-incorrect' a word five times before it finally accepts that I did actually mean what I originally typed.

How do you think predictive text works? Mine, for example, recognises cockwomble, my DHs doesn't. You have to train it on the words you use. That is how AI works. On your phone, it relates only to your words.

I'm currently a little frustrated because i have a new phone so i have to start training it again.

Was at a recent dog festival where a company were offering a free sample of their dog food. Great I thought. Til he said you have to download the app, sign up to a subscription, get your free sample and then cancel it if you want to.

Er, can’t you just hand me a free sample now? No, apparently not.

Well no then. Who has time to do all that?

But it's still very limited if it assumes that, because you use one word sometimes/mostly, you can't ever be genuinely wanting to use a similar word.

If somebody told you that they saw your sister a few weeks ago - and mentioned that she was wearing red... would they come dashing over to report an imposter pretending to be her, because they saw her again yesterday and she was wearing blue, whereas they know from experience that she wears red!

I really miss the old product-based competitions whereby you took the wrapper off after buying it and it would either tell you instantly that you'd won something, or otherwise say 'sorry, not this time'.

I hate the way now that you have to go online, give it your details, turn off a load of stalking cookies, object to marketing and then enter your code, before you know if it's a winner or not.

I used to love the simple comps on Polos as a child, where you would find the left half of a coin under one wrapper and then, if you found the right half of the same denomination of coin under another one, you would win that amount of money. No faff and the instant buzz of participation. Didn't McDonald's do something similar at one time as well?

Advance booking certain things is good, as you know you’ll be able to get straight in when you arrive, rather than turning up and queuing/ potentially being turned away, which is a right arse. So I like that as it rewards having a modicum of organisation with a big pay off.

Generally though, I agree with you. Everything being behind various login systems is very annoying! And supermarket pricing is definitely annoying.

Schools are terrible for it with all the homework being in various different accounts with different complex logins, which are not always communicated to parents at all - just given them a worksheet!

Well that’s ridiculous I agree

I find the cookies consent thing infuriating. There are sites I visit very often, several times a week, and I get the cookies pop-up and then the sign up to our mailing list pop-up every single time. It all seems massively inefficient to me.

And yes I do 🙄 at the admin fee or booking fee on a theatre ticket I've bloody well booked for myself!

Amazon account this morning used the same card for a quarter of a century. I ordered six things total value £98. Up pops additional verification five digit code. That really annoyed me.