Technological/practical "backward steps" we all just accept now

Water company used to mail me a bill, telling me how much I owed them for the month.

Then, they declared that to keep the mailing, I'd have to pay an extra charge. So fine, I went online only.

To pay online with a credit card, there's also an extra charge. Using an online check is free though. All they want me to do is fill in my routing and accounting number.

I prefer to go the other direction, filling in my utility accounts on my bank's website and keep them all in one tidy place.

So here's the punchline: I get an email every month from the water company. It has my account number, but no dollar figure for what I owe. I go to their website, log in, take note of what I owe, and then head over to the bank's website.

I guess we're saving trees. Time and energy though, well, that's another argument.

fuck’s sake

my most frustrating thing recently is websites/cloud products that don't list the full range of functions available when clicking on a menu option.

much like a website which only has a prompt to "sign up" and none to sign in for existing customers, but gives you the option to 'sign in' as an existing customer after you click the 'sign up' button.

like for instance, for S@aviynt, which is an access management cloud tool, which doesn't tell you that the path to remove someone's access is the same as the path to add it. the b utton you click on is purely for adding access and nothing to suggest (until you get inside) that you can remove it there as well.

related gripe: The other day, I logged into my Adobe account to try and re-download Acrobat X. The homepage includes a big section called "YOUR PRODUCT" which you would think lists all your products. To my "wtf" reaction, it only had one product there, and not other purchases I've made over the years. After ten to fifteen minutes of talking to the robot support system, then a human support system (with long delays between each message), it finally came out that, actually, what I needed to do was go to the top of the screen, click on "Plans and payments," and under that, click on the "Products" link, which takes you to a full list of all your products. Why not put them all on the homepage? Why hide 'products' under "Plans and payments"? Who knows?

I choose to blame all of this indirectly on the much bigger backward step, now almost a decade ago, of Adobe switching from a "buy our software" model to a "subscribe to our software" model. The tech support guy who helped me with the website tried again to upsell me on the subscription model, but since owning the programs outright has now saved me thousands of dollars, I'm pretty disinclined to switch until the old stuff just plain stops working. At which point I guess I'll look around for a good third-party or open-source knockoff. Or just keep an old-timey computer set up with only old OSes and software on it, I guess.

"you shouldn't have to wait to just pay a bill"

The media is advising everybody to submit their energy readings today, because the price goes up tomorrow (NB this story is about NI specifically):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-63086811

I wonder if that's the reason. Presumably there would be a spike when people come home and read the meter. It angers me that I get emails telling me to read my own meter. The company used to pay someone to visit my house and do that for me. Imagine if Uber sacked all of its drivers and just gave everybody a car and said "here, you drive yourself around" except that you had to pay them £45 every time you did so.

Or imagine going to a pub where you have to serve drinks to yourself and then leave £25 behind the bar. Or imagine going to a concert venue and there's no band and instead you have to play the instruments yourself and where the band would be there's an audience and you are the band except that you're actually going to the dentist and you have to replace your own fillings.

"it kind of reminds me of jumping in videogames. in some games, you become the character and you jump. in others, you feel more like the person who tells the character to jump, and the only difference is that slight lag between the input and response"

That's a very good point. I wonder if it's what Alzheimer's feels like. Modern games - popularised in the Batman: Arkham series - whereby instead of having direct control over the character you just tap a button at the appropriate moment and the character performs an action. e.g. instead of pressing the PUNCH button, you press the ATTACK button and Batman (or whoever) executes whichever attack looks the most cinematic.

I'm still in two minds about it. On the one hand Batman is a trained fighter and I am not. And the Arkham games are good fun. But it feels more like a rhythm game than a fighting game.

edf ask me for meter readings "before the 23rd" and then text me on the 21st to tell me i haven't sent them one yet.

then, two days after sending it (see above) they text again saying i haven't sent it, despite having sent an email the day before with the amount i owe them.

most annoying is the way both my gas and electric bills are due on the same day rather than coming out of different pay-packets. (6-monthly water bill as well this month, which is as much as gas and electricity combined)

the "save trees by not having us send you a paper bill" argument would maybe have more weight if the company making that argument wasn't a polluter by profession

Mobile versions of websites that don't contain the full functionality of the website. I often go to a website (not an app) on my phone and find it has been "optimized" for mobile. Then I use the "view as desktop site" feature in Chrome and find there is a load of other stuff on there that isn't available on the mobile version.

noticed that with goodreads yesterday

sometimes, because my internet connection is via my phone, I'll get the mobile version of the site despite being on the laptop, four buttons on a 1920 pixel wide screen

tables on Wikipedia are usually set up to be sorted as required, but you can not sort on their mobile version. Also if there's a director or a musician I want to talk with my wife about, the best way is to find on Wikipedia, then click on the "中文" button in the languages section of the sidebar, this is also not there in the mobile version.

On my Android phone, there's a "languages" link at the top of every article that takes you to a list of other languages in which the article is available.

I've been trying all morning to get into my Scottish Power account. I was in a 1 min queue, refreshed, they then said they'd sent me an email with a link to 'continue logging into my account', which I did, and now I get a loading screen saying 'continuing your journey' .

xp I have an android too, just checked a random article and nope, no languages.

now I get a loading screen saying 'continuing your journey' .

This is not a step I accept.

Speaking of mobile vs browser version:

I tried purchasing tickets from a local theater on their webpage in chrome on my android phone. It gave me the choice of either creating a new account and password with them or logging in via facebook. I chose the facebook option because I want to avoid creating new accounts at all costs. This resulted in it trying to open facebook in chrome instead of in the facebook app, which of course didn't work because I never use it in the browser only in the app. It asked me for my facebook login and password which I don't know because I generally avoid situations where I log in and out of facebook. So then it asked if I wanted to skip the login step, which I did. Instead of logging in, facebook sent a numeric code to my email. I enter the numeric code thinking that would log me in and I'd be done, but instead it took me to a screen where I could reset my facebook password, again something I wanted to avoid at all costs. At this point I gave up. If the original login with facebook prompt had opened the app instead, this would have worked seamlessly, but really my main complaint is all these small websites that are insistent that you have some account you log into instead of just providing you with the option to purchase one time as a guest.

xp to CaAL: are you sure? It's the icon under the word Article in the screenshot below:

https://i.imgur.com/ltuvR9u.jpg

gah, sorry for huge

> sorry for huge

this is another thing. i take a picture of the heron in the park and post it to fakebook or something and it's like 4000 pixels wide and really doesn't need to be. i can crop it before posting it but i can't resize it to something sensible like 1000px using the built in app. yeah, twitter will downsize if for you but that's only after you've wasted the bandwidth uploading the huge original.

the "save trees by not having us send you a paper bill" argument would maybe have more weight if the company making that argument wasn't a polluter by profession

It was probably on the irrationally angry thread where I mentioned getting a note each month from my mortgage company to go paperless and then getting three or four more bulky envelopes from them begging me to refinance my house.

I wonder how much "going paperless" is really about reducing overhead and labor costs for processing the checks and paperwork sent *to* them, versus the cost of the straight-to-garbage mail they send *out*. Certainly seems like a lot of the online payment processing is designed around cheapness for the company rather than convenience for the customer!

whaaaaaat

wasted the bandwidth uploading the huge original.

also

this is another thing. i take a picture of the heron in the park and post it to fakebook or something and it's like 4000 pixels wide and really doesn't need to be.

your camera taking higher-res photos than it used to is not a backwards step

no but websites should auto-resize images to a sensible width.

I do find it a bit odd that to resize images on an iPhone (unless you're emailing) you have to download some obscure app, or install a Shortcut, to do it. The bandwidth thing generally doesn't bother me but sometimes websites ask you to upload photos of documents or whatever and they have stingy size limits that you then run into.

I just had this issue for the Glastonbury registration photo id requirement.

I found a workaround of temporarily changing my iPhone camera settings to ‘most compatible’ format (jpg), and when uploading it there was an option to send various file sizes (s, m, l).

Instagram is really annoying for image resizing

It angers me that I get emails telling me to read my own meter. The company used to pay someone to visit my house and do that for me.

wait, what? sorry, I'm American. The idea that the utility companies would let the customers read their own meters and charge based on what the customer reports is wtf to me ... though y'all probably think the same thing about our income tax system so ... anyway, we now have "smart meters" that I think electronically communicate with the energy company so they don't have to have someone come out to read them.

I think it is pretty hilarious that the US medical industry is still so tied to the fax machine for 'physician orders'.

_
wait, what? sorry, I'm American. The idea that the utility companies would let the customers read their own meters and charge based on what the customer reports is wtf to me .

ime they don't. nobody has read my gas meter, or even asked to, since they replaced it ~5 years ago (and then he got it wrong).

electricity meter is in the hallway and they do read that from time to time (it's a branch of g4s iirc)

(gas meter is inside my flat, under the sink, they need me to be here to read it. but I've been wfh for 2.5 years and nothing. they seem happy that I'm not lying to them)

funnily enough just been informed i can get a SMETS2 smart meter which might actually make it worthwhile. though after pushing smart meters on me for years, i now find that they have no bookings available for the foreseeable. the UK's smart meters roll out continues to tear up trees.

I really don't want a meter that is going to grass me up to British Gas when I throw caution to the wind and have oven/grill/central heating all going at the same time. It's better to enjoy this luxury stuff without knowing how much it is costing to the nought point of a penny every minute imo!

yeah i'd be with you were it not for the fact that the meter readings recently have been wild. did a self-submitted one earlier in the year, then someone came round and read them and submitted, my bill shot up. now i've done a subsequent reading it's *lower* than the one the agent who came round submitted.

this involves a very painful amount of time trying to contact and convince edf of the trufax.

ime they don't. nobody has read my gas meter, or even asked to, since they replaced it ~5 years ago (and then he got it wrong).

electricity meter is in the hallway and they do read that from time to time (it's a branch of g4s iirc)

I give them my readings online every month and it seems despite me dramatically cutting down on energy consumption and my bill going up roughly 140% my account is constantly £300 + in debit.

"You're not paying enough" is at the top of my account page. I beg to differ!

The last two energy companies I was with I put my name down for a smart meter (because I’m bad at remembering to take a reading) and never received one. Since the last lot went bust I’ve been with shell energy & every time I go online to submit a reading there’s a bit that says “for up to date readings order a smart meter” or whatever and when I click the “find out more” link it takes me to a page that says “we hope you are enjoying your smart meter”. Cheers lads

i caved and had a smart meter put in last winter - reluctantly, but it was the least hassle option at the time. last month i had a couple of texts from British Gas telling me i needed to submit a meter reading. i just ignored them, they've shut up again now.

I really don't want a meter that is going to grass me up to British Gas when I throw caution to the wind and have oven/grill/central heating all going at the same time.

exactly! See, this is the way we think "across the pond" but we have no choice in the matter, really. ... PG&E says, "we're installing smart meters" and you either complied or they cut you off.

xp just have to say, i fucking love it when a problem appears on the horizon, i ignore it, and it just goes away all by itself.

I got a smart meter put in a few weeks ago and every time I log in to my account online (which I had to do because I kept getting messages saying 'due to a service disruption we cannot access your usage data' but then it turned out they had accessed it all along) it tells me to get a smart meter aghghghg

We had something that was using an insane amount of electric but we managed to ID it before the smart meter. So would've actually been really useful about 6 months ago.

my goddamn doctor's office, I swear to God, is just impossible.

they made it so that you can book appointments online *finally* in the last year or two, only when you do, half the time they call you back and say "oh your doctor's not in that day" (then why the fuck are the dates available, when they require you to specify doctor?!). I had to reschedule my appointment for a few months ago due to the nightmare that work became, as I literally couldn't take any time away from work, and finally that's ended, so I had booked an appointment for a day off I had coming up. They waited a week to tell me the doctor was unavailable that day, and tried to book me an appointment for this week, when I can't come. And now, since they waited a week, other days where I was also off and could have come are now no longer available (whereas they were when I made the appointment last week!).

Secondly, they don't allow the pharmacy to call in renewals of prescriptions, they require ALL renewals to be requested through them, and they send it to the pharmacy, and it always gets fucked up

this time, they sent me not one but two texts telling me my Rxs had been sent to my local pharmacy, who has no fucking clue about it, and after multiple attempts they insisted they had nothing and told me to call the doctor. I have to do this literally every time.

Lastly, their paper bills advertise an ability to pay your bill online, which is great for me, as I often during this busy season don't have much time to call and wait on hold during a work day. you go onto the website, you click on the menu item that says Billing, which advertises that they don't support online billing. but then on the home page, they advertise that you CAN pay them...on Paypal (seriously?). I opted to do it, simply because I had a balance of almost $100 from last time and I didn't want them to deny seeing me, I included my name, account number ,etc, and it went through, they accepted it. and then on the voicemail today they tell me I still have an outstanding balance, so I had to contact them about that.

yeah, about time for me to find a new place to go to, once I can coordinate the transferring of my records. there are a lot better facilities around here.

amazing to me that they built their site using a template and the dummies aren't smart enough to realize they can disable the Billing tab as opposed to actually having it only for you to click it and go "lol not supported".

tell them you can fix their shit, then quit your regularly-aggravating job and become a super-successful consultant just telling health-care providers that they suck

Healthcare bill pay is next level annoying. I have docs that seem to have three different places you can pay your bill online and they are all annoying in their own special ways.

Despite the advent of email and webpages, you can’t re-negotiate a cable tv/broadband package with VirginMedia except laboriously by phone - and you can’t see what packages are available (for existing/renewing customers).

When I agreed a package, the call centre person had to read the main elements of the contract to me over the phone!

xp This is perhaps outside the scope of this thread but can’t read those just grievances about medical bill pay without piling on that the amounts one is charged range from just flat out in error to discriminatory to arbitrary.

My GF's mom got a new fancy TV recently, and when we went to her house, we realized that she had the high-def setting colloquially known as SOE - 'soap opera effect'. Everything looked like a BBC series from 1978, even if it was originally shot on film. "I think it looks fine!" she said. We then dug out the manual and spent 40 minutes trying to make it look normal

A couple years back, my cousin was watching The Graduate in this setting and I wanted to drown myself