I've had to assist an elderly neighbour after her phone company cut off her phone service.
Why?
The way she had paid for it for the preceding 40 years was she would get the paper bill in mail, and then go down to the post office and organise payment using the details in that paper bill.
They switched her over to paperless billing with an email that they've done so but you can opt out.
She either did not understand the implications of this or missed the email, and is of the age where she would not remember when exactly she had last paid which bill. So without a paper bill to remind her, and her payment method being via the post office rather than the utility provider having billing details on record, she ended up not paying 3 months of bills and being cut off.
It's not like they've offered this option to new customers for at least 15 years. So stuff like this it feels like they should just eat the cost of 12 letters per year until the remaining people availing of it age out.
I think paper invoices should continue to be the way that this is handled unless otherwise requested, if only because you are - where I live - supposed to be able to prove this sort of thing for many years to the tax man. All these electronic records can disappear into thin air without you even realizing it has happened and good luck on your tax audit 7 years into the future.
In what situation will an individual need to supply their utility bills to the taxman during an audit?
> This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance."
I’ve certainly never needed to pull up my utility bills while paying taxes as a private person.
It really feels like you’re just coming up with stuff, utility bills aren’t normally tax deductible (unless you are a business). There’s no reason you’d ever need them for the taxman any more than your grocery story receipts.
Wow, you really created an account to make that comment?
> In what situation will an individual need to supply their utility bills to the taxman during an audit?
The bills would be useful if they expensed some of those payments, deducted them, or whatever. With a record number of people working from home, some portion of those expenses might be tax deductible for some people, some people might receive reimbursements from an employer, etc.
(nobody said anything about an audit)
> I’ve certainly never needed to pull up my utility bills while paying taxes as a private person.
I think we can all agree that if you have never done this, it's unthinkable that anyone would ever do this.
You would save the records for deductions or business expenses or whatever as a bookkeeping measure - and as a tax precaution, yes - even if you were not expecting an audit. Audits are fairly unusual.
(Way, way upthread jacquesm cited tax audits as a reason for these records to be physically provided, but they're a useful and common means of communication when employing a tax preparer or bookkeeper as well. And back to the original point, this is all even more likely to be true of an "old" person.)
The cost of saving paper records, for an individual, is fairly close to zero, whereas it's a colossal pain in the butt to track down stuff later. Make that mistake once and you won't do it again.
> You would save the records for deductions or business expenses or whatever as a bookkeeping measure - and as a tax precaution, yes - even if you were not expecting an audit. Audits are fairly unusual
I think you are just repeating original comment here. Regular people in regular situations will never need their old utility bills for tax purposes.
Those choosing to e.g. run a business, pick up various extra responsibilities in doing so. In that case it’s absolutely your own responsibility to maintain good records, and you should print electronic invoices if you so desire.
If you run a business and are using your utility bills as a basis for deductions, you’d have to be stupid to not safely store them (digitally or physically).
Paper invoices should be opt-in, not opt-out. Very few people actually require them.
Post 2017 it does, only people who are 1099, so it includes many software engineers who are contractors. Before 2017, it included employees too. So, some plain-old w2 employees still have utility bills lying around subject to audit.
You can deduct home mortgage interest [1]. Another way in which homeownership and to an extent NIMBYism is subsidized in the tax code and by government policies.
There is a federal mortgage interest tax deduction, and there may also be a state level deduction depending on the state since they each have different tax laws. On the federal level, 90%+ people do not use the mortgage interest tax deduction because doing so would cost them more than not using it.
It is an American thing, and it's often more than just mortgage interest, as it is standard to have our property taxes and insurance(s) escrowed through the mortgage as well.
But the mortgage giver already sends those to the tax authority. How else do you think they have all your mortgage data pre-filled when you file your taxes ?
It's how it is done in Scandinavia and most of Europe. I only have to add a few numbers because I have some small investments offshore, otherwise everything including investments in mutual funds is already itemized.
In the United States, even paying for the highest level of TurboTax does not get me the ability to have my mortgage information prefilled. Still have to enter the information that Chase sent to the IRS on an IRS form in manually on my form. Tax preparation in the US is truly the wild west.
It's an American urban legend passed down from a time it may or may not have mattered.
What did matter in living memory (thus passed down to at least this generation) is that saving utility bills for 7 year can establish credit.
My parents still tell me to do this to this day, since that's how they were able to qualify for a home loan having not participated in the credit system otherwise.
Nowadays most such transactions are reported to a credit bureau, so they are either already on record or (almost?) no banks will care to see them.
It doesn't, but multiple years worth of rent/utility bills can be used as a substitute so long as you are willing to jump through a couple extra hoops and pay a little bit more in interest for the privilege.
My girlfriend just went though this process. She has no credit because she never got a CC and always saved up and paid for stuff like her car in cash. Over the winter she was looking to buy a house (didn't pan out for other reasons), and basically her only option was getting a loan manually underwritten. Part of that process was using a minimum of 2 years worth of bills as a replacement for a credit score. And the only loans available were several points more expensive than she could have gotten if she was able to do things the "normal" way.
Yes, that was my point. If you can get the lender to look at your history, it matters, like anything else. But those transactions do not establish a credit history associated with your credit score.
All these electronic records can disappear into thin air without you even realizing it has happened and good luck on your tax audit 7 years into the future.
I've never understood the value of "paperless" to the consumer. The benefit to the company is the savings of 3½¢ of postage and mailing expenses. But to the consumer...?
I pay my bills online, but I make sure I still get my statements by mail. I also balance my accounts from those statements each month, and every year I catch one or two errors, and they're almost always in favor of the banks.
Logically, I should be able to do the same thing by looking at my accounts online. But paper statements present the information in a different way than online, often to comply with laws about clear billing and communication. What's on paper sometimes very different from what's on the screen.
Yeah the paperless system is horrible unless you are a person that strictly organizes things. There are so many different places where you have to go to collect your digital bills, and sometimes you just end up forgetting.
In Switzerland we luckily have a system where companies can send their bills directly into your eBanking system so they are all collected there. But if a company doesn't support that, it's much easier to keep the paper bill.
Makes me think, that, indeed, the extra friction of paper mail, holds some scammers at bay.
When you have to pay the postage and printing costs, it is far less attractive to throw out 10.000 scam mailings, because the ROI is quite likely negative. Edit: whereas with email, you proably need just one of the 10.000 to bite in order to break-even.
Whereas the phone company (or any legit business) can easily carry those extra €0.40 or so for each bill. They can even simply forward the costs to the customer.
Mailing invoices by snail-mail is a practical anti-scam measure, the more I think about it.
Scammers printing scam letters can just as easily print fake postmarks.
> When you have to pay the postage and printing costs, it is far less attractive to throw out 10.000 scam mailings, because the ROI is quite likely negative
Try to do think about the math here. What kind of scam mail are you sending to reach such bad ROI? Let’s imagine these are fake utility bills for around 50 euros and total cost to the scammer is 1 euro per letter. Your success rate would have to be incredibly bad for the ROI to be negative.
Now, target tenants of rental properties instead and tell them they need to pay their rent to a new account. Profits go up 10-100x, costs stay the same.
> Scammers printing scam letters can just as easily print fake postmarks.
-While that is true, it is impractical on at least a couple of levels:
a) You need to get that fake mail into the postal system, somehow - and do so in a way which escapes attention.
b) (The worrying bit, if you're a scammer) - You've just gone from attempted fraud (sending out scam emails) to defrauding the postal service of whatever country you try to pull this one off in; the authorities are quite likely to take a dim view of your efforts.
> a) You need to get that fake mail into the postal system, somehow - and do so in a way which escapes attention
You pay some guy to drive around and stuff your envelopes into various post boxes 500-1000 at a time.
Or just find an insider at the postal service of your choice, crime forums are full of people offering this.
If you’re capable of accepting payments for fake bills, you already have people walking into banks with fake IDs to open accounts. Sending out letters is significantly less complex.
> b) (The worrying bit, if you're a scammer) - You've just gone from attempted fraud (sending out scam emails) to defrauding the postal service of whatever country you try to pull this one off in; the authorities are quite likely to take a dim view of your efforts.
Probably not, considering the amount of crimes involved in accepting money transfers to a drop account created with fake documents and the subsequent money laundering.
You're probably right, but I think a bigger factor is that if someone pays by mail, a scammer will find it difficult to cash a check that's made out to the utility company.
I believe the only country in the world to still use cheques are the US. In Europe, at least, we get an invoice with payment details printed on it or an occasional giro form. Both are probably easier to scam than cheques.
In my country this is a real thing: fake invoices (in the sense that they are real invoices, but for fake services) mailed to companies hoping a few companies automatically pay them. They are called Spookfacturen (ghost invoices).
And if ever we switch to full digital invoicing, this'll grow much bigger. Because now the costs of these scams are big.
I read it as the bills aren't actually from [well known company] but sent out by scammers knowing many people will get real bills from [well known company] and some may mistake the scammer's bills for real ones and pay the scammer.
It might be a particular company's name, but it's not that company. It's a scammer using the company's name. There's absolutely no point in naming them.
I recently endured a Kafka-esque nightmare with my bank. I had this personal VISA card for several years but I rarely used it because I also have a Mastercard that I prefer. Anyway, two years ago when I started my current venture I opened a business bank account with my preferred bank for business banking (same bank I had the personal VISA through), so I applied for a business VISA. At the same time, I told them I wanted to cancel my personal VISA, because I don't need three credit cards. No problem, did the paperwork and left the card at the bank.
A couple of weeks ago, I received this stern letter informing me that I'm "not acting in accordance with my cardholder agreement / unpaid bills / unfulfilled obligations / we've cancelled your account / etc." It lists a card number I don't recognize. I call them right away.
Turns out it was the personal VISA I cancelled two years ago. Around six months ago, a transaction went through on the account. Then I didn't pay off the transaction. Of course I didn't: I received no notice, no mail, no phone call, nothing. Why would I, for a card that at that point had been cancelled for 1.5 years? So after months of "defaulting" they freaked out, "cancelled" the card, put a black mark on my credit rating, and sent me that letter.
Meanwhile I have been doing business with the bank, and with my business VISA (same exact companies!) the whole time.
Trying to rectify this issue was a bureaucratic nightmare, where I got shuttled from my bank branch over to VISA and back again. It featured enjoyable conversations that started with things like, "for identity verification purposes, please give me the three digits on the back of your card" (hadn't had it in two years!) and ended with "I'm afraid we can't verify your identity".
What was especially frustrating was I managed to find the paperwork for the card cancellation. I have a signed and dated document that says right on it, "Card destroyed in branch".
After seven or eight interactions with VISA and my bank, I finally managed to get them to resolve the issue. But this all could have been avoided had they simply called me or mailed me a letter. Instead, they claimed that they'd sent statements to the "online portal" which, of course, I did not have access to, since I'd closed the account!
Same thing happened with me and MBNA, they just never sent me physical bill OR an email for a transaction I had no idea occurred (because I had canceled the card!) and then put a mark on my credit report because I had a debt that was not resolved. All of this for... $7
What happened to you is clearly not your fault, but after having similar issues with big institutions, I've realized that doing more than one "important" operation on a " big business/bank" account is always finicky.
So now I do things one at a time.
E.g. To cancel a card, first move all money (or debts) from acct A to acct B. Go home. Couple of days later, pay any outstanding fees of acct A. Go home. Couple of days later, request cancellation. Inevitably find that something else needs to be done, so do that thing. Go home. Couple of days later....
You get the idea. It sucks big time, but I've found it's better that way, since the probability of error is somewhat lower (and even then it happens!)
It's sort of funny that software engineers spend so much time thinking about the nuances of making sure that things occur in the right order on the scale of milliseconds while maintaining invariants in all sorts of exotic distributed NoSQL systems that don't guarantee strong consistency... and meanwhile many of the most important things we do on computers use standard centralized relational DBs but take several business days to process and get screwed up if you don't wait long enough for them to resolve properly.
I’m starting to adopt a similar idea about non-urgent healthcare. I have found healthcare providers can not communicate costs when they have more than one procedure.
I had a couple of minor bills like this with companies I barely ever deal with, and at one point I bothered to look at my credit rating. The material impact of a few unpaid items was to drop the bullshit FICO rating from 840 to 810.
As in not worth my time at all to fix some company's internal fuckups versus wait a few years for nobody else to care either.
I had a similar thing a few years ago only with the police and a speeding ticket.
Before me, the car was owned by my then-partner, who had just moved from the UK to California. I was to sell the car on her behalf, and the registered owner being in a different country is a really suspicious warning sign so we changed the ownership to me so I could sell it more easily.
A week later, I did sell it, and did all the relevant change-of-ownership paperwork again.
Six months later, the police sent me — not my partner, not the new owner — a speeding ticket. It took more than one go for me to prove I didn’t own the car.
It's a shame you can't get criminal charges against banks in cases like this. For people who aren't scrupulous about saving copies of transaction receipts, and memorializing transactions, you can be in real trouble for a long time!
Right? They can do incredible damage to people, but have no consequences for it - take OP: if they were applying for a mortgage at the same time that black mark on their credit rating wouldn’t have caused the mortgage to fall through.
No consumers will eat the cost of a bunch of boomers who want to keep using cheques.
And here's what will happen: the non boomer consumers will choose a cheaper bank.
So unless the government wants to pick up the bill any sensible company will tell those senior citizens to get with the times.
Checks are awesome - I use them all the time and I'm at least a third of the age of the elderly. Accessibility is huge to think about especially with "requireables" like the banks, and so it's just good practice and the right thing to do to think about the elderly and edge cases for folks who don't do email/smartphones.
It pays to have empathy to all cross sections of society, not just the ones that are the most visible. :)
but excessive empathy is crippling for future progress. this is literally the root issue in the US system - way too much consideration for special interests. look at housing as an example.
Gov creates money not the banks. They do have operational costs.
And it is not one person who needs to accept checks, every branch has to support this.
I have not been to a bank for the last 10 years. They are obsolete. And those buildings are expensive and they have to be able to compete with online banks. It's not even an option for them to just keep those buildings.
As I understand it, the new money that's 'created'(not even minted as paper money is pretty niche now) by the government is given to the banks to invest.
PS I was just at my bank and I'm not even super old :)
Why I was at the bank? I had to cancel a credit card I never used, and had to show my latest ID.. Here in Europe banks are supposed to validate ID regularly now which is a real pain in the **. I don't get why either, it's not like I change identity very often :) It's just more distrust from the government I think.
No I didn't go there to withdraw money or to pay bills. Though it can still be done. In fact for some government transactions, like getting a new ID, it has to be done. You have to go to the bank with a government form, pay your 20 euros into the government account, and the bank stamps the form as proof that you did it. Then you take that to the police and they issue a new ID.
This is also in Spain by the way (like the article).
Yeah I hate this process too. But I like that old people can still do things the way they understand.
I still use cheques. I am definitely not a boomer. I also like paper statements, use cash and sometimes do paperwork on slices of dead trees.
I work in technology enough to distrust it greatly. I had a multi-week saga one time because I used an electronic pdf signature instead of printing it out. I still get people freaked out when my resume is digitally signed in acrobat.
Cheques were de facto abolished here so long ago that I can't remember the year I last used one, must be at least twenty years ago. The bank I have been using for more than the last ten years has never issued cheques.
Yeah, I think for anyone under the age of 35 in my country, cheques only exist in the giant novelty kind given away in lotteries or politicans at PR events. Current teenagers wouldn't even remember their parents using them.
No consumers will eat the cost of a bunch of boomers who want to keep using cheques.... any sensible company will tell those senior citizens to get with the times.
Your ageism is showing. Hopefully you're never in a management position in an American company, because that attitude will get you fired for violating federal discrimination laws.
Doing that by email is a real dick move. They should send a letter with the last bill. And do it opt in of course.
Old people are exactly the type of people that would carefully study letters that come in the post. Unlike people my age that would bin anything that comes with the bill thinking it's probably just commercial crap.
But of course this is precisely the reason they do it by email. Dark pattern..
In my case, ISP charges you extra if you decide to keep the paper bills instead going for "eco bill" pdf file send by an email; same goes if you decide to opt-out from company selling your number elsewhere.
Last time while getting new contract, 3 different people at local company's office tried to convince me that I can "win some fantastic rewards" if I decide to let them do with my number and personal information whatever they like.
I did opt-outed but they manage to sell all my numbers present on account elsewhere and somehow every month around time when bills arrive, I'm getting bombarded by robocalls - either about photovoltaics or central heating replacements. They claim they didn't do it but they can't explain why newly added number that has all opt-outs receives calls at the same time with the rest.
It's probably still cheaper to pay that small extra fee. I am usually an organized person but in the last 4-5 years I still forgot to download my credit card bill 4 times, which caused a 30$ late fee every time.
I would say most people, even most people still using paper billing in 2022, have a billing method set up (be it CC charges, direct debits or standing order) that would allow their bill to continue to be paid for their main utilities in the absence of receiving a paper bill. It's these people who the companies would rather cajole onto paperless billing.
Then there is the group who are still going to insist on/need paper bills, but use technology enough to catch the email about changing and use the opt out process.
I wouldn't say it's a dastardly plot to kick my elderly neighbour off their service, but simple disregard that people like her that would fall through the cracks while they're trying to save money with the first group.
Don't think of the company as one single highly aligned entity.
Probably what happened here was that a mid-level manager had a goal for 2021 to reduce paper billing by X percent. And came up with this as a quick trick to do it. Departments externalise negative effects to other parts of the company all the time. What they care about is their own goals and looking good to higher management. Not the interests of the company as a whole. This will only change when something causes a ruckus and top management finds out about it.
Also, the company is not really losing anything, the customer will sign up again, has to pay reconnection fees and will probably be forced to e-bill "because paper billing is no longer available for new customers". Triple win for the company really.
Of course the customer can move to another company but they'll probably want to keep their number and the whole portability rigmarole is much too difficult for this type of customer.
> She either did not understand the implications of this or missed the email, and is of the age where she would not remember when exactly she had last paid which bill. So without a paper bill to remind her, and her payment method being via the post office rather than the utility provider having billing details on record, she ended up not paying 3 months of bills and being cut off.
That's so horribly absurd - have just left a utility company, we would send you paper notices leading up to shut-off regardless of paperless opt-in status. Having a customer without water was considered far worse than wasting a little extra litter in the grand-scheme.
My bank (Bank of America) has this "dark pattern" where they try to switch you to paperless statements and billing every time you log into their website. Each time you log in you get a popup about paperless billing. If you click the "default" big button, you've opted in to it. You have to look for a little tiny text link to keep getting paper bills.
I'm only 59, but without my paper bills, I've missed a few deadlines for credit card. I used to look for the bill in the mail as my reminder to pay it for the month.
> I'm only 59, but without my paper bills, I've missed a few deadlines for credit card.
I'm 29 and the same thing also happened to me. It's also so annoying that every time you have to log in into their website to download the bill... They could at least email it to you.
>I'm only 59, but without my paper bills, I've missed a few deadlines for credit card.
The article was talking about a 78 year old, and you're 59, but this is a problem that will not go away if it isn't addressed.
One day even Zoomers will be confused by needing to pay their bills using their wet-wired neurolink to an orbiting drone, and they'll be unable to because their tiny house doesn't have a v9000 laser alignment defragmenter. And then the bank will send a Terminator to their doorstep to deactivate their iLegs for non-payment.
Dealing with real people, that you have a prior relationship with, in paper (or parchment, or papyrus, or clay) has a robust tradition that everybody can understand or at the very least deal with. I don't mind technological solutions, but they had better be as robust as being able to call up Dave and having him work out the problem.
> So stuff like this it feels like they should just eat the cost of 12 letters per year until the remaining people availing of it age out.
I worked in a related field and the cost of this is really not the postage. Your billing system needs to support sending paper bills, everywhere you have customer communication you'll need to add the paper way, the format is different, you still need a way for your billing system to actually send those letters, you accounting needs to check for it etc etc. Also, every time you discuss a change in your systems, you need to consider the edge case of these 12 customers.
The letters themselves are cheap, supporting paper in every system you have is the real cost. I agree that they should have handled this better, no questions asked, but it's not like we're just talking about pennies in postage.
Paperless billing is such a nuisance. I get too much email and I'm far too busy, so anything in the email queue is quickly forgotten. I don't have the time or energy to be re-reviewing emails every day for bills that might be coming due soon.
I try to get all bills on paper. Then I just write the due date on the envelope when it arrives and keep them sorted by due date in a neat pile on my desk. Impossible to miss a due date that way.
The researchers defined 4 levels of technology proficiency, based on the types of tasks users can complete successfully. There was a very good summary published here (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/) and excerpted below.
For each level, here’s the percentage of the population (averaged across the OECD countries) who performed at that level, as well as the report’s definition of the ability of people within that level:
"Below Level 1” = 14% of Adult Population
Being too polite to use a term like “level zero,” the OECD researchers refer to the lowest skill level as “below level 1.”
This is what people below level 1 can do: “Tasks are based on well-defined problems involving the use of only one function within a generic interface to meet one explicit criterion without any categorical or inferential reasoning, or transforming of information. Few steps are required and no sub-goal has to be generated.”
An example of task at this level is “Delete this email message” in an email app.
Level 1 = 29% of Adult Population
This is what level-1 people can do: “Tasks typically require the use of widely available and familiar technology applications, such as email software or a web browser.
There is little or no navigation required to access the information or commands required to solve the problem. The tasks involve few steps and a minimal number of operators.
The reply-to-all task described above requires level-1 skills. Another example of level-1 task is “Find all emails from John Smith.”
Level 2 = 26% of Adult Population
This is what level-2 people can do: “At this level, tasks typically require the use of both generic and more specific technology applications. For instance, the respondent may have to make use of a novel online form. Some navigation across pages and applications is required to solve the problem. The use of tools (e.g. a sort function) can facilitate the resolution of the problem. The task may involve multiple steps and operators.
An example of level-2 task is “You want to find a sustainability-related document that was sent to you by John Smith in October last year.”
Level 3 = 5% of Adult Population
This is what this most-skilled group of people can do: “At this level, tasks typically require the use of both generic and more specific technology applications. Some navigation across pages and applications is required to solve the problem. The use of tools (e.g. a sort function) is required to make progress towards the solution. The task may involve multiple steps and operators. Integration and inferential reasoning may be needed to a large extent.
The meeting room task described above requires level-3 skills. Another example of level-3 task is “You want to know what percentage of the emails sent by John Smith last month were about sustainability.”
Can’t Use Computers = 26% of Adult Population
The numbers for the 4 skill levels don’t sum to 100% because a large proportion of the respondents never attempted the tasks, being unable to use computers. In total, across the OECD countries, 26% of adults were unable to use a computer.
That one quarter of the population can’t use a computer at all is the most serious element of the digital divide. To a great extent, this problem is caused by computers still being much too complicated for many people.
Let that phrase sink in: across the OECD countries, 26% of adults were unable to use a computer. In some countries like Japan, the number is even higher (about 1/3 of Japan's population can'...
And why should they? Just like there are people that don't read books and that don't watch TV using a computer should not be a mandatory thing. What it could be is a way to streamline stuff but there should always be alternatives.
And older people have enough issues in their lives to be dealt another bunch of hardship from those that they are pretty much forced to do business with. But banks and other institutions have a hard time empathizing with the people whose representatives do not work at the bank.
Banks are rapidly shifting to going online completely, shutting down all of their offices and making it google-level impossible to contact them because that part costs them some money and they only really want the profitable parts of banking.
Agree. I would take this imperative a step further: There needs to be a technology bill of rights, in all countries, to serve everyone from the retired doctor in the article to the HN user who suffers an AI lockout.
Just like there are people that don't read books and that don't watch TV using a computer should not be a mandatory thing.
"don't read" and "can't read" aren't the same thing. Same for computers. A baseline ability to read is required to function in modern society. I'd argue the same is true for computers. That doesn't imply the user MUST use a computer or read books regularly on their own, only that they should be able to read or use a computer when life requires.
All that said, I do agree that there should be alternatives to online forms for paying bills, etc.
Something I observe with people new to computing at an old age: They try to reduce any task to "below level 1", aiming at writing this down as a sequence of atomic steps of a recipe. There is no confidence in being able to remember how a task is to be achieved at any future point. There is also no confidence and therefor no interest in acquiring the basic grammar of user interfaces. (E.g., double-clicking is not linked to a general operation of opening something represented by an icon, but just another step in a list of how to conjure a certain view onto the screen, identify an "image" and then double clicking it.) – The real problem is the lack of confidence and therefor a lack of any further interest in learning and an anxiety regarding exploring. BTW, all members of my small (and anecdotical) sample are academics, who formerly held managerial or teaching positions. (Most of them also had some introduction to computers decades ago, but never used this in real life, thus never developing a practical skill.)
Now compare this to smartphone UIs based on swiping and hidden functionality. There's no chance.
Edit: Also 2FA, which requires complex interoperation on two different devices using dissimilar metaphors, each involving complex operations on their own. This is totally inaccessible.
This was my experience for years when I worked in tech support. It seemed like every computer task was just a list of steps. They had to ask "do I left-click, or right-click" on every step, because they had developed no "theory" for what a left-click is, and why you'd use it vs. a right-click. It seemed like if they ever missed a step, or a step required them to deviate from their plan, they were entirely lost.
I haven't done tech support for years (last was in ~2008) so I don't know if people are generally more savvy or not.
I also want to be clear: I'm not mocking anyone for lack of knowledge here. There is a huge population of people who cannot use computers properly. I don't believe that the solution is "make computers easier for people." I believe the solution is: customer service reps, paper billing, and other non-computer alternatives must be available for any service which is even remotely-important.
> I also want to be clear: I'm not mocking anyone for lack of knowledge here.
One of the persons in my sample is my father. He had an introduction to what must have been OS/2 Warp and even had a computer in the office, but never used it (there was still a secretary). In his retirement, he bought a book binder course on how to use an early version of Windows, but hadn't a computer to try it on his own, so this was yet again theoretical and mostly forgotten. At around 80, he finally acquired a laptop, but 10 years later he's essentially at the level described above. (Windows nowadays changing some of its metaphors on a regular basis, doesn't help.) On the other hand, at the age of 90, he's still able to adopt to the interface of a new camera. Partly, because camera UIs tend to be designed more on the principle of providing the least of an interference and mental load as possible, but also because he loves photography.
It is important to note that computing isn't a prime occupation for this generation: Yes, it's something they could do, yes, there may be interesting things, they try to participate, but overall, they can do without it and discovery is difficult, therefor, there's never an ultimate urge to adopt. Conversely, they are reduced to the most basic skill level, which doesn't especially promote interest, which in turn hinders progress. You could say, computers are inverse gamification devices for them. This is something to keep in mind, when designing accessible operations.
Edit: Adding alleged ease-of-access layers doesn't help. E.g., as may be inferred from the above, archiving and reviewing photos is a favorite occupation on the computer. Transferring and navigating stored photos is complex in its own and eventually mastered to a certain degree. (Still, I keep fixing the same míshaps.) However, adding layers like camera roll, moments or automatic links in the favorites bar, which eventually obscure the custom links placed for ease of access, doesn't help at all. On the contrary, it's just an opaque distraction and obstruction, which will be ignored at best, but will add to the confusion at least, because of their inherent time-based instability in what is supposed to be a stable layer of access. (Also, the "magical" appearance and disappearance of these items doesn't help the ability to form a stable mental model.) Don't do this, provide functionality like this as an option only. (Or, at least, have options to disable this.)
> Also, the "magical" appearance and disappearance of these items doesn't help the ability to form a stable mental model.
I've observed that any kind of "mode" that isn't extremely clear, visually is terrible for these sorts of folks (and, as with most things that give them trouble, are really terrible for everyone, we're just better at working past it than they are). Tabs that aren't extremely visually clear will leave these users "stuck" on the wrong one without realizing there even are tabs; filters or searches that don't make it super clear that you're "in" a filter or search will make them wonder where the hell all their stuff went, that kind of thing.
> and, as with most things that give them trouble, are really terrible for everyone, we're just better at working past it than they are
A nice example are non-modal security dialogs in web browsers: You initiate an action, which requires expressed acknowledgement to complete. The dialog is blocking, therefor requiring immediate response for the task not to stall. However, there's just a narrow ribbon sitting at the top of the content window waiting to be either acknowledged (probably requiring to initiate said task anew) or to be eventually dismissed by clicking its close button. This isn't natural to anyone, nor does it go with the flow of events, nor does it disclose itself easily to the uninitiated, nor does the addition of yet another element in the vertical flow of layout communicate the urgency and why the task is currently failing. – It's understandable that some users will give up at this instant and will therefor be locked out from using certain applications.
Unpredictability and inconsistency of behavior are so bad for people in that group (and, really, everyone, they just can't work past it like a fraction of more talented computer-users can). If opening something or performing an action ever doesn't do the thing it usually does—say, it presents some kind of modal or notice instead, as many programs do after updates or for other reasons—it'll completely derail them.
Regarding things like 2FA: This is also a matter of what might be reasonable to one group isn't necessarily reasonable to another group. Let's imagine this the other way round: let's say, Apple were to install a set of different colored hand cranks in front of each house, requiring users to crank a specific set of them to initiate certain interactions. While someone who was once accustomed to fetch water from a hand pump at the back of the house may adopt easily to such a scheme, you would probably be like, "scr$w you, let's go back to 1990s pagers, it's mostly about insert-preferred-messaging-app-of-the-season anyway." You wouldn't even try to memorize these cranking schemes (and ADHD may not help particularly in doing so).
I want to say that this is incredibly important. User interfaces are full of tradeoffs, where you have to make a choice or preferably you find a way to speak to both power users and "level 1" users.
I would not have guessed that the statistics are _that_ bad. Even though most of the things I make are used by so called "non-technical" people - ignoring libraries and internal stuff tools. I just recently stopped a feature suggestion because we probed our client about the behavior and technical proficiency of their users. In SMBs it isn't even unusual that there is only a couple of or even just one technically literate person that does most of the computer work.
My take on this is as a developer is that we can pretty much ignore the 26% that doesn't use computers and the "below level 1"-ers except with pretty radical R&D. This might be a job for the Alan Kays and Bret Victors.
The assumptions about the rest of the users should probably be lowered drastically. Even stuff like the pancake/burger menu icon is on the table here (recently discussed on HN as being an UX-anti pattern). There is a book I want to read called "Calm Technology"[0], which is in part about accessibility but mostly about attention and the mental overhead associated with using computers.
I would not have guessed that the statistics are _that_ bad.
That's a foundational problem for practically everyone involved in the creation of apps, software, websites, remote controls, ATMs, car consoles, etc. We make assumptions based on a very small sample of friends and peers, or extrapolate from the work of successful devs/designers/creators that a certain interface convention must be the right way to do it. We end up with hipster designs and frustrating interfaces that do a great disservice to a large portion of the population.
I posted this in the earlier "hamburger vs sausage icon" thread, but it's worth repeating: I am now my de facto tech support for two families (my own and my parents). I suspect many other HN users are in the same spot.
Every week I get calls or emails from my parents requesting help figuring out something that's not obvious from the UI, is accidentally triggered by users, deliberately activated (by the app) during a software update, or buried deep in some settings or submenu. This week's selection includes:
- Turning off yet again the annoying computer voice announcing any navigation or volume change on my parents' new Samsung TV (accessibility option, not sure why it turned on, but it required me visiting their home in person again to turn it off)
- Trying to help my father disable the "get Outlook for iOS" line that suddenly started to be appended to the bottom of his work emails.
- Helping my spouse troubleshoot a Shopify app feature that prevents >1 item being subtracted from inventory at a time
- Figuring out how to enable a social media save shared photos to her phone's photo album
- Explaining to my spouse that the three dots icon will show the remaining part of a truncated gmail message.
Yes, sometimes software is so complicated and feature rich these items have to buried deep in the settings. But often I find that the lack of obvious text labels for basic features and navigation items is the problem. Hamburger menus and the three dots "more actions" icon are a poor substitute for clear text labels and links.
Taking this away from computers and to systems, I’ve always had a terrible time with interacting with government. So much so I go very far out of my way to avoid it. Talking specifically about Australian Centrelink which is social support type things including unemployment payments. I think this applies to all large bureaucracy. It always seemed impenetrable to me, but in the waiting areas are people there are plenty of people who are experts at navigating this system because they’ve done it for a long time, to stereotype: bogans or redneck type people it’s easy to call stupid, they know all the tricks and all the scams. The govt is then designing and updating their system to foil these people, locked in a perpetual arms race in which someone like me is completely lost in the meta, spun around, chewed up and tossed aside. Powerless to an opaque system designed be experts to prevent experts taking advantage of it but in effect requiring everyone to become scamming experts or be eaten alive. I haven’t even tried in 10 years. Hugely detrimental because this learnt irrationality includes the tax department who I don’t even know what to do about any more, compounding problem.
I turned superstitious and in these terms tried to get lower and lower level. I had a bag with every piece of paperwork ever and carried it with me every time that just got bigger and bigger for no reason. Horde everything you don’t know what you’ll need. Trial and error different phrases like they had magical powers. In a way funny at the time and still funny now not counting the stress and anxiety.
When people proverbially flip a table in frustration with technology I relate it to that experience and I think it fits pretty well. To me it’s bureaucracy to them it’s tech. I’ve had good success teaching people to use tech and in tech support and in event coordination by keeping this in mind.
Here’s another: a job I had changed to a certain digital system for job orders. Don’t worry they said, what you need will be printed by your manager. I said don’t you mean to say “should” be? What are we to do if they aren’t? If printed in advance can we be assured they’re not out of date? That won’t happen they say. It did happen. Failed after a week. Leaving us to nut it out, which we did. The old system had us doing that work so in the end nothing changed but it just got more complicated because new boss wanted some fancy thing to help him with 10 employees and the few things a day we did, it wasn’t Microsoft scale or something. Technology and damn computers copped the blame from the old fellas but it wasn’t really technology was it?
Edit: sorry I’ll add one more thing, the success I mentioned was mostly about being patient and going through what happens when something goes off plan. To the person saying they ask all the time left click or right click, show them both. I did mean left click but here’s what happens when you right click. See? It doesn’t explode, a menu just pops up. So it’s no big deal if you forget. Also: here’s the steps. Repeat those steps for me. Ok now I’m going to start you from a random area of the website, you have to get back to the starting place and then do the steps. Ok now a different place. So if that little print icon isn’t where you think it’s meant to be you’re just in a different area. It goes from being a rote series of steps to a basic understanding when you demystify and strip away consequence, including the shame of being of being an international level expert at something who can’t do something society expects as basic.
I prefer be able to pay bills, new way and old way.
Because WSHTF principle.
I'm preparing that someday maybe i would not be able to use smartphone or internet or bank or electricity or any other single point of failure the system depends on.
Dude has Parkinson's. Lots of older people also have serious vision problems. (and as much we stare at screens all day we should respect the hell out of this issue)
Also lots of old people have arthritis.
Tell me next how people asking for accessibility options are a pain in your ass.
You are already a burden to others. From the moment you were born to the moment you die you rely on the rest of society.
Different people have different abilities and disabilities. That’s life, and if you cannot understand that and help the people who need to be helped, then you are even more of a burden.
It's not just old people with this problem. Many younger people who've been victims of online fraud, and now have trouble with online accounts, fall into the same category.
1. lose access to your email. this can happen many ways -- whether your email account was compromised or your domain was lost or you forgot your password.
2. ??? welp good luck getting those oh-so-important bills and notices. and good luck resetting your access
Here's another scenario:
1. lose access to your email ten years ago and have to go through all that. now you're averse to any service even ten years later wanting to exclusively do business online
Speaking from experience.
Here's a third scenario:
1. don't "lose" access to your email. instead, get inundated with spam and phishing attempts. to combat that, create new emails. good luck changing your email address! I still have banks that send notices to email addresses that were completely removed from the account and present that same email address as a second factor for authorization; I'm very not-impressed with Chase bank. I fear the day that email address ever gets deleted specifically because so many businesses either don't allow changing the email or still use the email after it's been removed from the account
There are a lot of recent changes that are really stupid.
To have an opened bussiness in Spain now, you need to provide the government an email. The excuse is that they want to save paper and stop using the standard post. So you need to pay for internet access. There are still 5 millions of people in Spain that live in rural areas where they don't have a good access to internet or don't have access at all. Though luck if you are one of they. They will put all important legal messages related with your activity in that mail.
So if you lose the access to that email (or is hacked for a month and some mails are removed silently) now you have a problem. Missing the latest legal change or government requirement means that now you are doing things illegally or that you are refusing to provide them data about your company that they asked for. There is a liability and legal consequences attached.
But the mail just will tell you (genius move) that the government wants to tell you "something", but not what. To retrieve this message you need to provide a phone number so they will send you a code by watsup necessary to access the info. So now you need to use a Facebook app, want it or not, because the government "cares for your privacy".
The government will not receive you now without a cite, arranged by phone or web, so you can't just walk into the building and show your ID card to ask what they want. If you think that you can just visit the gov web page, good luck with that. Your important messages are somewhere in that black hole, as unreachable as in the bottom of the ocean.
So you need a phone, but neither a normal desktop phone nor an old reliable Nokia will be accepted. You need to provide a mobile of the spy-phone type.
Because for example, to receive your covid passport you need to scan a barcode now. So you must have a camera in your phone and an OS able to install an run an external app to scan 3d barcodes. Do you want to know why asking for covid passport in bars was a failure? This.
And if you have an crash car and the police emits a traffic report, they will give you a ticket full of 3D Codes linking to the report, the extra info, the laws that apply, and your rights. No spy-phone?, you can't access to your info.
They could just provide a link, a short chain of characters that is the universal way to navigate internet, but not. That would be too easy.
I had been contacted by phone by somebody in the government encouraging me to use their services more. I agreed to provide a mail to receive more info and some weeks later received a mail, asking me to provide a phone in order to access the info (so they can call me asking for a mail maybe?).
So either you agree to have a phone that tracks all your life now, or you are treated as a sub-citizen with less rights.
It's kinda funny (in the sad way) that banks here are closing their branches and at the same time their online banking sucks (not even proper 2FA) and without the pandemic I still wouldn't be able to pay without cash in most bakeries. This is Germany.
Some important context that the article overlook: Spain was until recently the country with most bank branches per citizen, and after the financial crisis the number of banks has decreased from about 60 to about 6 due to M&A activity. Merges and acquisitions continue to be planned. In the last 5 years, a third of all branches has been closed.
Anyone happen to know the good reason retirees at 80 years old need hours extended outside the daytime window?
Of all segments, superficially seems they'd be the most able to visit a branch during business day. But a second thought says that's probably failing to think in their shoes.
For example, if they are less able to get around than younger segments, the issue could be being taken to the bank by a working family member who can only take them before or after the driver's working hours. (But driving is a US thing, while EU is chock full of busses, so maybe it's not driver, maybe it's availability of someone just 'accompanying' them.)
Other reasons?
As our population ages, and depending on the pool of problems causing the need for extended hours, I'm wondering if there's some service that could be offered to resolve whatever the collection of reasons are across not just banking but anything with limited hours that retirees need.
The real problem here is that there are no brick and mortar branche offices with regular business hours any more, only special appointments to be booked using an app.
Still, I wonder what legal the situation is in the U.S., for that sort of "just tell 'em that they have to use our..." corporate cost-cutting, at less-able customer expense.
> it hurts to see that the digital world has dehumanized us to the point that loyalty has lost all of its worth
sigh, this has almost nothing to do with the "digital" world as much as it does with the fact that corporations never cared. If they could have saved a single cent by moving to "tellers"/ATMS that were mechanical in nature, 51 years ago when he first opened his account, they would have. The corporations were never "loyal".
Sigh, it does have to do with the digital world actually (in that everyone now seems to think that everyone is on their platform. Further, it has been been observed that digital systems promote cognitive fatigue and empathy depletion across the board). There's no need to be so dismissive. Sigh.
Indeed. There are many things computers are amazing at doing (that's why I find them fascinating and enjoy working on them from time to time)—but human empathy isn't one of them.
This is a pet peeve of mine: I understand it can be liberating to blame those greed corporations for giving profit the top priority, but the truth is that corporations never cared because consumers never cared.
We, the consumers, have the nasty habit of looking for cheap before anything else. Whoever tries to sell quality, or to offer his hard-working employees a respectable wage, is painfully bitten by customers moving elsewhere.
People don't like that explanation, it's hard to look in the mirror and accept that you are part of the problem.
It's like printed high-quality investigation journalism. We all decry that it's on its way out but the vast majority of us won't consider paying a 300$/year subscription even if most of the HN reader base could absolutely afford it. We just don't want to pay for stuff.
It's the same thing (to a lesser extent) with stocks and investment. I own a bunch of REIT (real-estate trust fund) because they give a great stable return that loosely follow inflation. A few months ago, my landlord increased my rent by 5% I was angry, felt like it was too much etc... but my landlord is very much the result of my investments pushing for inflation-matching dividends. If they don't meet the market expectation they'll just drop in value.
Anyway long story short we are part of the problem.
You were never able to just research how credit works. You needed the bank teller for this.
You were not able to compare prices and service before.
It was critical for you as a necessity that you trusted them.
For consumers our time is much better than it was before.
And yes due to global optimization it's just something bound to happen.
Instead of complaining that we have much better options and are more enabled to do things out way we should start to think how we want to shape the future.
I would love to talk about how we can further enhance the life's of everyone and how we live together than discussed if we still need to support checks.
I look for competitive rates based on services offered. A shitty motel is cheaper than an airbnb but I use Airbnb because typically they offer nicer houses. I use a credit card that has a high annual fee because the rewards make it more than worth it. I buy the nicer toilet paper because it feels better than the shit kind.
Consumers are not valuing cheap over everything else. If I'm unaware of why a $100 bike lock is better than the $20 bike lock and I buy the $20 bike lock that isnt me being cheap. That is the $100 bike lock manufacturers failure to convey the value of their product compared to other, more affordable, options.
All of this is wrapped up in another issue as well. Wealth. I'm at a point financially where I can pick the better and more expensive option. At many times in the past I bought the shit toilet paper because it was half the price and that meant I could stretch my paycheck a bit further.
I'm not going to get into how that could be alleviated but consumers care when they have the financial comfortability to care and when they are aware why they should care.
perhaps, but those things are related. the necessity of live human interaction must have created regular feedback loops that arrested extreme user-unfriendly cost saving measures. the digital world reduces or outright removes those frictions.
I find it so obnoxious when people put sighs in comments as if they are talking down to a dumb child that my instinct is to immediately jump to insulting them.
The worst part is that the sigh always precedes some generic hot take with no evidence or actual argument, just some copypasta we've seen on twitter before.
If you think the response to someone is stupidly obvious, then don't say it. Keep it to yourself.
Last year my bank, Scotiabank, increased its profits be
from $6 billion the previous year, to $9 billion. And while they can be helpful, try calling them on the phone. A painful process to deter you from calling them. I had to call them yesterday. When I finally got to talk to a human, she took my number for a call back, I am still waiting . I have no idea how the elderly deal with this blatant corporate greed.
Just last week a friend who worked for a bank like that said, "If you don't like it, just buy the stock." His rationale was if they can get away with crap service and high service charges, along with being defacto permanent government oligopolies, any savings of yours that you can convert into bank stock will pay out multiples on what you pay in fees and irritation.
It just encourages them, but that's Canada, market economics don't apply here.
Tangerine online bank too. I switched from a standard debit card which I had previously used with Google Pay app. to a new card they offered. The activation steps didn't work. It's been 2 years trying to get someone on the phone, I don't want to wait the 2 hours stated on the voice message. Their chat chat is useless.
In Canada, credit unions aren't perfect, but usually worth paying a bit more for better service.
In Quebec, Desjardins (coop, on paper) has done lots of cuts and tries to compete with banks (many branches closed/merged), but when there are issues, I can easily get someone on the phone and they resolve it quickly and professionally.
Hopefully this is the moment we start realizing that capitalism is not serving the public the way we need it to. How can we expect the old to be cared for without a profit motive? How long will we ignore expert opinion that communism is the most ethical option in nearly every way? How many more cases like this man's will we need to see?
For communism to actually work well, I think you first have to fix human nature. And if you could fix human nature, maybe capitalism would work out better too.
I find myself sometimes asking the same questions when I have to tell banks "I don't have an Android or Apple phone and I am not looking forward to needing one".
I can see issues even now as a long-time computer user that older people or even younger than me (52) maybe have problems figuring out. Trends like popup menus that suddenly obscures what you were just looking at, "helpful" auto suggest that you may click by mistake, font size, fine motor control, mild dementia, just nervous around a complex expensive device.
Computers or at least services should be intuitive you a noob or an expert should not need to decipher what to do next.
My French bank was welcoming me for A YEAR AND A HALF with a blocking page (I neeed to click ok I understand twice to go further) when I was loggong in, saying in essence "because of the new law blah blah, you need to provide us the following document: ". And that is all there was. No mention of the nature of the document.
I called them every 15 days and the help line guy or gal was telling me "impossible, you cannot have this page". Despite having sent them a screenshot.
Then one day it was gone. Came back a year later, and gone again after two months.
I really like the bank so I did not switch but I was close to do so.
One thing that I do have to say about Spain: Pre-Corona there was literally a bank branch at every street corner. It was a bit too much. I get that old people have mobility issues, but where I live there were 3 branches within 500m of my house. And that was just for my bank, I had at least one branch from the other main ones within the same distance as well. I have never seen this density in other EU countries (I've lived in several and visited most) even before digitisation, except probably Romania.
Now what they've done is shuttered a lot of actual branches but left the ATMs. The density of bank branches now is comparable to the density of post offices (in my "barrio" there is only one post office and now only one branch of my brank). It's not like they have to walk 20km now especially in the city.
However I do really think old people should be able to keep doing transactions as they were. They should not be forced to go online.
163 comments
[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 80.3 ms ] threadhttps://www.ghacks.net/2018/09/25/ublock-origin-can-block-ja...
Why?
The way she had paid for it for the preceding 40 years was she would get the paper bill in mail, and then go down to the post office and organise payment using the details in that paper bill.
They switched her over to paperless billing with an email that they've done so but you can opt out.
She either did not understand the implications of this or missed the email, and is of the age where she would not remember when exactly she had last paid which bill. So without a paper bill to remind her, and her payment method being via the post office rather than the utility provider having billing details on record, she ended up not paying 3 months of bills and being cut off.
It's not like they've offered this option to new customers for at least 15 years. So stuff like this it feels like they should just eat the cost of 12 letters per year until the remaining people availing of it age out.
As a business it’s your duty to take care of your recordkeeping, print out the invoices if you so prefer.
Is this a weird american thing? At least here in the UK mortgage interest deductions are only applicable to businesses.
It was, which is why your comment starting with "As a business" was so bizarrely off-topic.
> Is this a weird american thing? At least here in the UK mortgage interest deductions are only applicable to businesses.
Yes. American homeowners can under most circumstances treat their mortage interest payments as tax deductable.
What do you mean by off-topic? Businesses receive utility bills too, and might genuinely be required to keep records of those.
As far as I can tell, barring some very special circumstances, individuals never need to keep such records.
This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance."
People don't want these records at hand purely for their own amusement, which seems to be the assumption you're operating under here.
> This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance."
I’ve certainly never needed to pull up my utility bills while paying taxes as a private person.
It really feels like you’re just coming up with stuff, utility bills aren’t normally tax deductible (unless you are a business). There’s no reason you’d ever need them for the taxman any more than your grocery story receipts.
> In what situation will an individual need to supply their utility bills to the taxman during an audit?
The bills would be useful if they expensed some of those payments, deducted them, or whatever. With a record number of people working from home, some portion of those expenses might be tax deductible for some people, some people might receive reimbursements from an employer, etc.
(nobody said anything about an audit)
> I’ve certainly never needed to pull up my utility bills while paying taxes as a private person.
I think we can all agree that if you have never done this, it's unthinkable that anyone would ever do this.
(Way, way upthread jacquesm cited tax audits as a reason for these records to be physically provided, but they're a useful and common means of communication when employing a tax preparer or bookkeeper as well. And back to the original point, this is all even more likely to be true of an "old" person.)
The cost of saving paper records, for an individual, is fairly close to zero, whereas it's a colossal pain in the butt to track down stuff later. Make that mistake once and you won't do it again.
I think you are just repeating original comment here. Regular people in regular situations will never need their old utility bills for tax purposes.
Those choosing to e.g. run a business, pick up various extra responsibilities in doing so. In that case it’s absolutely your own responsibility to maintain good records, and you should print electronic invoices if you so desire.
If you run a business and are using your utility bills as a basis for deductions, you’d have to be stupid to not safely store them (digitally or physically).
Paper invoices should be opt-in, not opt-out. Very few people actually require them.
Under IRS rules, some people who WFH can often deduct part of their home expenses, including utilities.
See IRS Form 8891 line 21, labelled "Utilities"
[1] https://www.irs.gov/publications/p936#:~:text=You%20can%20de....
What did matter in living memory (thus passed down to at least this generation) is that saving utility bills for 7 year can establish credit.
My parents still tell me to do this to this day, since that's how they were able to qualify for a home loan having not participated in the credit system otherwise.
Nowadays most such transactions are reported to a credit bureau, so they are either already on record or (almost?) no banks will care to see them.
My girlfriend just went though this process. She has no credit because she never got a CC and always saved up and paid for stuff like her car in cash. Over the winter she was looking to buy a house (didn't pan out for other reasons), and basically her only option was getting a loan manually underwritten. Part of that process was using a minimum of 2 years worth of bills as a replacement for a credit score. And the only loans available were several points more expensive than she could have gotten if she was able to do things the "normal" way.
I've never understood the value of "paperless" to the consumer. The benefit to the company is the savings of 3½¢ of postage and mailing expenses. But to the consumer...?
I pay my bills online, but I make sure I still get my statements by mail. I also balance my accounts from those statements each month, and every year I catch one or two errors, and they're almost always in favor of the banks.
Logically, I should be able to do the same thing by looking at my accounts online. But paper statements present the information in a different way than online, often to comply with laws about clear billing and communication. What's on paper sometimes very different from what's on the screen.
In Switzerland we luckily have a system where companies can send their bills directly into your eBanking system so they are all collected there. But if a company doesn't support that, it's much easier to keep the paper bill.
When you have to pay the postage and printing costs, it is far less attractive to throw out 10.000 scam mailings, because the ROI is quite likely negative. Edit: whereas with email, you proably need just one of the 10.000 to bite in order to break-even.
Whereas the phone company (or any legit business) can easily carry those extra €0.40 or so for each bill. They can even simply forward the costs to the customer.
Mailing invoices by snail-mail is a practical anti-scam measure, the more I think about it.
Scammers printing scam letters can just as easily print fake postmarks.
> When you have to pay the postage and printing costs, it is far less attractive to throw out 10.000 scam mailings, because the ROI is quite likely negative
Try to do think about the math here. What kind of scam mail are you sending to reach such bad ROI? Let’s imagine these are fake utility bills for around 50 euros and total cost to the scammer is 1 euro per letter. Your success rate would have to be incredibly bad for the ROI to be negative.
Now, target tenants of rental properties instead and tell them they need to pay their rent to a new account. Profits go up 10-100x, costs stay the same.
> Scammers printing scam letters can just as easily print fake postmarks.
-While that is true, it is impractical on at least a couple of levels:
a) You need to get that fake mail into the postal system, somehow - and do so in a way which escapes attention.
b) (The worrying bit, if you're a scammer) - You've just gone from attempted fraud (sending out scam emails) to defrauding the postal service of whatever country you try to pull this one off in; the authorities are quite likely to take a dim view of your efforts.
You pay some guy to drive around and stuff your envelopes into various post boxes 500-1000 at a time.
Or just find an insider at the postal service of your choice, crime forums are full of people offering this.
If you’re capable of accepting payments for fake bills, you already have people walking into banks with fake IDs to open accounts. Sending out letters is significantly less complex.
> b) (The worrying bit, if you're a scammer) - You've just gone from attempted fraud (sending out scam emails) to defrauding the postal service of whatever country you try to pull this one off in; the authorities are quite likely to take a dim view of your efforts.
Probably not, considering the amount of crimes involved in accepting money transfers to a drop account created with fake documents and the subsequent money laundering.
Defrauding the postal service is small potatoes.
In my country this is a real thing: fake invoices (in the sense that they are real invoices, but for fake services) mailed to companies hoping a few companies automatically pay them. They are called Spookfacturen (ghost invoices). And if ever we switch to full digital invoicing, this'll grow much bigger. Because now the costs of these scams are big.
Name and shame. The rest of us can't help people look out for scams if you're not going to tell us what to look out for.
A couple of weeks ago, I received this stern letter informing me that I'm "not acting in accordance with my cardholder agreement / unpaid bills / unfulfilled obligations / we've cancelled your account / etc." It lists a card number I don't recognize. I call them right away.
Turns out it was the personal VISA I cancelled two years ago. Around six months ago, a transaction went through on the account. Then I didn't pay off the transaction. Of course I didn't: I received no notice, no mail, no phone call, nothing. Why would I, for a card that at that point had been cancelled for 1.5 years? So after months of "defaulting" they freaked out, "cancelled" the card, put a black mark on my credit rating, and sent me that letter.
Meanwhile I have been doing business with the bank, and with my business VISA (same exact companies!) the whole time.
Trying to rectify this issue was a bureaucratic nightmare, where I got shuttled from my bank branch over to VISA and back again. It featured enjoyable conversations that started with things like, "for identity verification purposes, please give me the three digits on the back of your card" (hadn't had it in two years!) and ended with "I'm afraid we can't verify your identity".
What was especially frustrating was I managed to find the paperwork for the card cancellation. I have a signed and dated document that says right on it, "Card destroyed in branch".
After seven or eight interactions with VISA and my bank, I finally managed to get them to resolve the issue. But this all could have been avoided had they simply called me or mailed me a letter. Instead, they claimed that they'd sent statements to the "online portal" which, of course, I did not have access to, since I'd closed the account!
So now I do things one at a time.
E.g. To cancel a card, first move all money (or debts) from acct A to acct B. Go home. Couple of days later, pay any outstanding fees of acct A. Go home. Couple of days later, request cancellation. Inevitably find that something else needs to be done, so do that thing. Go home. Couple of days later....
You get the idea. It sucks big time, but I've found it's better that way, since the probability of error is somewhat lower (and even then it happens!)
As in not worth my time at all to fix some company's internal fuckups versus wait a few years for nobody else to care either.
Either you didn't or the bank who emitted the card might have a huge PITA due to passing the transaction to a bank account which should not be.
Before me, the car was owned by my then-partner, who had just moved from the UK to California. I was to sell the car on her behalf, and the registered owner being in a different country is a really suspicious warning sign so we changed the ownership to me so I could sell it more easily.
A week later, I did sell it, and did all the relevant change-of-ownership paperwork again.
Six months later, the police sent me — not my partner, not the new owner — a speeding ticket. It took more than one go for me to prove I didn’t own the car.
No consumers will eat the cost of a bunch of boomers who want to keep using cheques.
And here's what will happen: the non boomer consumers will choose a cheaper bank. So unless the government wants to pick up the bill any sensible company will tell those senior citizens to get with the times.
It pays to have empathy to all cross sections of society, not just the ones that are the most visible. :)
All of this just because our society is to stupid?
Old people are not stupid, they are just old. They should be able to either teach themselves or being teached.
Our society should focus on helping them to navigate the current world and not try to keep things like checks alive.
And I'm pissed about this though because I believe it's a mindset thing which needs to change to be able to act on real problems like climate change.
When I talk to old people about solar energy holy shit do they care more about how those Solarpanel look at buildings then the benefit of them.
If we don't help those people they are being limited by society one way or the other anyway!
No you don't. You can scan them in many cases these days, or mail them in. Can also deposit in ATMs.
I cash checks all the time and haven't physically been to my bank in over 20 years, as the nearest branch is ~3000 miles away.
The government invents money by the billions die these guys. The least they can do is provide some service.
Gov creates money not the banks. They do have operational costs.
And it is not one person who needs to accept checks, every branch has to support this.
I have not been to a bank for the last 10 years. They are obsolete. And those buildings are expensive and they have to be able to compete with online banks. It's not even an option for them to just keep those buildings.
PS I was just at my bank and I'm not even super old :)
Why I was at the bank? I had to cancel a credit card I never used, and had to show my latest ID.. Here in Europe banks are supposed to validate ID regularly now which is a real pain in the **. I don't get why either, it's not like I change identity very often :) It's just more distrust from the government I think.
No I didn't go there to withdraw money or to pay bills. Though it can still be done. In fact for some government transactions, like getting a new ID, it has to be done. You have to go to the bank with a government form, pay your 20 euros into the government account, and the bank stamps the form as proof that you did it. Then you take that to the police and they issue a new ID.
This is also in Spain by the way (like the article).
Yeah I hate this process too. But I like that old people can still do things the way they understand.
Very weird but unlucky you I guess :)
I used swipe typing and I was a little bit off and didn't notice it. Oops. But I think it's pretty clear from the sentence what I intended.
I work in technology enough to distrust it greatly. I had a multi-week saga one time because I used an electronic pdf signature instead of printing it out. I still get people freaked out when my resume is digitally signed in acrobat.
I will stick to my dead tree banking.
Your ageism is showing. Hopefully you're never in a management position in an American company, because that attitude will get you fired for violating federal discrimination laws.
Moreover, just wait. You'll get your turn.
Old people are exactly the type of people that would carefully study letters that come in the post. Unlike people my age that would bin anything that comes with the bill thinking it's probably just commercial crap.
But of course this is precisely the reason they do it by email. Dark pattern..
In my case, ISP charges you extra if you decide to keep the paper bills instead going for "eco bill" pdf file send by an email; same goes if you decide to opt-out from company selling your number elsewhere. Last time while getting new contract, 3 different people at local company's office tried to convince me that I can "win some fantastic rewards" if I decide to let them do with my number and personal information whatever they like.
I did opt-outed but they manage to sell all my numbers present on account elsewhere and somehow every month around time when bills arrive, I'm getting bombarded by robocalls - either about photovoltaics or central heating replacements. They claim they didn't do it but they can't explain why newly added number that has all opt-outs receives calls at the same time with the rest.
I'm old enough to remember when banks and other companies would charge extra for the privilege of paying online.
Then there is the group who are still going to insist on/need paper bills, but use technology enough to catch the email about changing and use the opt out process.
I wouldn't say it's a dastardly plot to kick my elderly neighbour off their service, but simple disregard that people like her that would fall through the cracks while they're trying to save money with the first group.
Probably what happened here was that a mid-level manager had a goal for 2021 to reduce paper billing by X percent. And came up with this as a quick trick to do it. Departments externalise negative effects to other parts of the company all the time. What they care about is their own goals and looking good to higher management. Not the interests of the company as a whole. This will only change when something causes a ruckus and top management finds out about it.
Also, the company is not really losing anything, the customer will sign up again, has to pay reconnection fees and will probably be forced to e-bill "because paper billing is no longer available for new customers". Triple win for the company really.
Of course the customer can move to another company but they'll probably want to keep their number and the whole portability rigmarole is much too difficult for this type of customer.
That's so horribly absurd - have just left a utility company, we would send you paper notices leading up to shut-off regardless of paperless opt-in status. Having a customer without water was considered far worse than wasting a little extra litter in the grand-scheme.
I've been of that age since I was 18
I'm only 59, but without my paper bills, I've missed a few deadlines for credit card. I used to look for the bill in the mail as my reminder to pay it for the month.
I'm 29 and the same thing also happened to me. It's also so annoying that every time you have to log in into their website to download the bill... They could at least email it to you.
The article was talking about a 78 year old, and you're 59, but this is a problem that will not go away if it isn't addressed.
One day even Zoomers will be confused by needing to pay their bills using their wet-wired neurolink to an orbiting drone, and they'll be unable to because their tiny house doesn't have a v9000 laser alignment defragmenter. And then the bank will send a Terminator to their doorstep to deactivate their iLegs for non-payment.
Dealing with real people, that you have a prior relationship with, in paper (or parchment, or papyrus, or clay) has a robust tradition that everybody can understand or at the very least deal with. I don't mind technological solutions, but they had better be as robust as being able to call up Dave and having him work out the problem.
I worked in a related field and the cost of this is really not the postage. Your billing system needs to support sending paper bills, everywhere you have customer communication you'll need to add the paper way, the format is different, you still need a way for your billing system to actually send those letters, you accounting needs to check for it etc etc. Also, every time you discuss a change in your systems, you need to consider the edge case of these 12 customers.
The letters themselves are cheap, supporting paper in every system you have is the real cost. I agree that they should have handled this better, no questions asked, but it's not like we're just talking about pennies in postage.
I try to get all bills on paper. Then I just write the due date on the envelope when it arrives and keep them sorted by due date in a neat pile on my desk. Impossible to miss a due date that way.
The researchers defined 4 levels of technology proficiency, based on the types of tasks users can complete successfully. There was a very good summary published here (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/) and excerpted below.
For each level, here’s the percentage of the population (averaged across the OECD countries) who performed at that level, as well as the report’s definition of the ability of people within that level:
"Below Level 1” = 14% of Adult Population
Being too polite to use a term like “level zero,” the OECD researchers refer to the lowest skill level as “below level 1.”
This is what people below level 1 can do: “Tasks are based on well-defined problems involving the use of only one function within a generic interface to meet one explicit criterion without any categorical or inferential reasoning, or transforming of information. Few steps are required and no sub-goal has to be generated.”
An example of task at this level is “Delete this email message” in an email app.
Level 1 = 29% of Adult Population
This is what level-1 people can do: “Tasks typically require the use of widely available and familiar technology applications, such as email software or a web browser.
There is little or no navigation required to access the information or commands required to solve the problem. The tasks involve few steps and a minimal number of operators.
The reply-to-all task described above requires level-1 skills. Another example of level-1 task is “Find all emails from John Smith.”
Level 2 = 26% of Adult Population
This is what level-2 people can do: “At this level, tasks typically require the use of both generic and more specific technology applications. For instance, the respondent may have to make use of a novel online form. Some navigation across pages and applications is required to solve the problem. The use of tools (e.g. a sort function) can facilitate the resolution of the problem. The task may involve multiple steps and operators.
An example of level-2 task is “You want to find a sustainability-related document that was sent to you by John Smith in October last year.”
Level 3 = 5% of Adult Population
This is what this most-skilled group of people can do: “At this level, tasks typically require the use of both generic and more specific technology applications. Some navigation across pages and applications is required to solve the problem. The use of tools (e.g. a sort function) is required to make progress towards the solution. The task may involve multiple steps and operators. Integration and inferential reasoning may be needed to a large extent.
The meeting room task described above requires level-3 skills. Another example of level-3 task is “You want to know what percentage of the emails sent by John Smith last month were about sustainability.”
Can’t Use Computers = 26% of Adult Population
The numbers for the 4 skill levels don’t sum to 100% because a large proportion of the respondents never attempted the tasks, being unable to use computers. In total, across the OECD countries, 26% of adults were unable to use a computer.
That one quarter of the population can’t use a computer at all is the most serious element of the digital divide. To a great extent, this problem is caused by computers still being much too complicated for many people.
Let that phrase sink in: across the OECD countries, 26% of adults were unable to use a computer. In some countries like Japan, the number is even higher (about 1/3 of Japan's population can'...
And older people have enough issues in their lives to be dealt another bunch of hardship from those that they are pretty much forced to do business with. But banks and other institutions have a hard time empathizing with the people whose representatives do not work at the bank.
Banks are rapidly shifting to going online completely, shutting down all of their offices and making it google-level impossible to contact them because that part costs them some money and they only really want the profitable parts of banking.
"don't read" and "can't read" aren't the same thing. Same for computers. A baseline ability to read is required to function in modern society. I'd argue the same is true for computers. That doesn't imply the user MUST use a computer or read books regularly on their own, only that they should be able to read or use a computer when life requires.
All that said, I do agree that there should be alternatives to online forms for paying bills, etc.
Now compare this to smartphone UIs based on swiping and hidden functionality. There's no chance.
Edit: Also 2FA, which requires complex interoperation on two different devices using dissimilar metaphors, each involving complex operations on their own. This is totally inaccessible.
I haven't done tech support for years (last was in ~2008) so I don't know if people are generally more savvy or not.
I also want to be clear: I'm not mocking anyone for lack of knowledge here. There is a huge population of people who cannot use computers properly. I don't believe that the solution is "make computers easier for people." I believe the solution is: customer service reps, paper billing, and other non-computer alternatives must be available for any service which is even remotely-important.
One of the persons in my sample is my father. He had an introduction to what must have been OS/2 Warp and even had a computer in the office, but never used it (there was still a secretary). In his retirement, he bought a book binder course on how to use an early version of Windows, but hadn't a computer to try it on his own, so this was yet again theoretical and mostly forgotten. At around 80, he finally acquired a laptop, but 10 years later he's essentially at the level described above. (Windows nowadays changing some of its metaphors on a regular basis, doesn't help.) On the other hand, at the age of 90, he's still able to adopt to the interface of a new camera. Partly, because camera UIs tend to be designed more on the principle of providing the least of an interference and mental load as possible, but also because he loves photography.
It is important to note that computing isn't a prime occupation for this generation: Yes, it's something they could do, yes, there may be interesting things, they try to participate, but overall, they can do without it and discovery is difficult, therefor, there's never an ultimate urge to adopt. Conversely, they are reduced to the most basic skill level, which doesn't especially promote interest, which in turn hinders progress. You could say, computers are inverse gamification devices for them. This is something to keep in mind, when designing accessible operations.
Edit: Adding alleged ease-of-access layers doesn't help. E.g., as may be inferred from the above, archiving and reviewing photos is a favorite occupation on the computer. Transferring and navigating stored photos is complex in its own and eventually mastered to a certain degree. (Still, I keep fixing the same míshaps.) However, adding layers like camera roll, moments or automatic links in the favorites bar, which eventually obscure the custom links placed for ease of access, doesn't help at all. On the contrary, it's just an opaque distraction and obstruction, which will be ignored at best, but will add to the confusion at least, because of their inherent time-based instability in what is supposed to be a stable layer of access. (Also, the "magical" appearance and disappearance of these items doesn't help the ability to form a stable mental model.) Don't do this, provide functionality like this as an option only. (Or, at least, have options to disable this.)
I've observed that any kind of "mode" that isn't extremely clear, visually is terrible for these sorts of folks (and, as with most things that give them trouble, are really terrible for everyone, we're just better at working past it than they are). Tabs that aren't extremely visually clear will leave these users "stuck" on the wrong one without realizing there even are tabs; filters or searches that don't make it super clear that you're "in" a filter or search will make them wonder where the hell all their stuff went, that kind of thing.
A nice example are non-modal security dialogs in web browsers: You initiate an action, which requires expressed acknowledgement to complete. The dialog is blocking, therefor requiring immediate response for the task not to stall. However, there's just a narrow ribbon sitting at the top of the content window waiting to be either acknowledged (probably requiring to initiate said task anew) or to be eventually dismissed by clicking its close button. This isn't natural to anyone, nor does it go with the flow of events, nor does it disclose itself easily to the uninitiated, nor does the addition of yet another element in the vertical flow of layout communicate the urgency and why the task is currently failing. – It's understandable that some users will give up at this instant and will therefor be locked out from using certain applications.
I would not have guessed that the statistics are _that_ bad. Even though most of the things I make are used by so called "non-technical" people - ignoring libraries and internal stuff tools. I just recently stopped a feature suggestion because we probed our client about the behavior and technical proficiency of their users. In SMBs it isn't even unusual that there is only a couple of or even just one technically literate person that does most of the computer work.
My take on this is as a developer is that we can pretty much ignore the 26% that doesn't use computers and the "below level 1"-ers except with pretty radical R&D. This might be a job for the Alan Kays and Bret Victors.
The assumptions about the rest of the users should probably be lowered drastically. Even stuff like the pancake/burger menu icon is on the table here (recently discussed on HN as being an UX-anti pattern). There is a book I want to read called "Calm Technology"[0], which is in part about accessibility but mostly about attention and the mental overhead associated with using computers.
[0] https://calmtech.com/
That's a foundational problem for practically everyone involved in the creation of apps, software, websites, remote controls, ATMs, car consoles, etc. We make assumptions based on a very small sample of friends and peers, or extrapolate from the work of successful devs/designers/creators that a certain interface convention must be the right way to do it. We end up with hipster designs and frustrating interfaces that do a great disservice to a large portion of the population.
I posted this in the earlier "hamburger vs sausage icon" thread, but it's worth repeating: I am now my de facto tech support for two families (my own and my parents). I suspect many other HN users are in the same spot.
Every week I get calls or emails from my parents requesting help figuring out something that's not obvious from the UI, is accidentally triggered by users, deliberately activated (by the app) during a software update, or buried deep in some settings or submenu. This week's selection includes:
- Turning off yet again the annoying computer voice announcing any navigation or volume change on my parents' new Samsung TV (accessibility option, not sure why it turned on, but it required me visiting their home in person again to turn it off)
- Trying to help my father disable the "get Outlook for iOS" line that suddenly started to be appended to the bottom of his work emails.
- Helping my spouse troubleshoot a Shopify app feature that prevents >1 item being subtracted from inventory at a time
- Figuring out how to enable a social media save shared photos to her phone's photo album
- Explaining to my spouse that the three dots icon will show the remaining part of a truncated gmail message.
Yes, sometimes software is so complicated and feature rich these items have to buried deep in the settings. But often I find that the lack of obvious text labels for basic features and navigation items is the problem. Hamburger menus and the three dots "more actions" icon are a poor substitute for clear text labels and links.
I turned superstitious and in these terms tried to get lower and lower level. I had a bag with every piece of paperwork ever and carried it with me every time that just got bigger and bigger for no reason. Horde everything you don’t know what you’ll need. Trial and error different phrases like they had magical powers. In a way funny at the time and still funny now not counting the stress and anxiety.
When people proverbially flip a table in frustration with technology I relate it to that experience and I think it fits pretty well. To me it’s bureaucracy to them it’s tech. I’ve had good success teaching people to use tech and in tech support and in event coordination by keeping this in mind.
Here’s another: a job I had changed to a certain digital system for job orders. Don’t worry they said, what you need will be printed by your manager. I said don’t you mean to say “should” be? What are we to do if they aren’t? If printed in advance can we be assured they’re not out of date? That won’t happen they say. It did happen. Failed after a week. Leaving us to nut it out, which we did. The old system had us doing that work so in the end nothing changed but it just got more complicated because new boss wanted some fancy thing to help him with 10 employees and the few things a day we did, it wasn’t Microsoft scale or something. Technology and damn computers copped the blame from the old fellas but it wasn’t really technology was it?
Edit: sorry I’ll add one more thing, the success I mentioned was mostly about being patient and going through what happens when something goes off plan. To the person saying they ask all the time left click or right click, show them both. I did mean left click but here’s what happens when you right click. See? It doesn’t explode, a menu just pops up. So it’s no big deal if you forget. Also: here’s the steps. Repeat those steps for me. Ok now I’m going to start you from a random area of the website, you have to get back to the starting place and then do the steps. Ok now a different place. So if that little print icon isn’t where you think it’s meant to be you’re just in a different area. It goes from being a rote series of steps to a basic understanding when you demystify and strip away consequence, including the shame of being of being an international level expert at something who can’t do something society expects as basic.
Because WSHTF principle.
I'm preparing that someday maybe i would not be able to use smartphone or internet or bank or electricity or any other single point of failure the system depends on.
As a guy with tremor, I can tell you that it sucks. There are some things I can't physically do now, even though my brain works fine.
Also lots of old people have arthritis.
Tell me next how people asking for accessibility options are a pain in your ass.
How'd that work out for them?
You will not be the one who transcends being old. Especially in the way that this story involves physical infirmity.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Weinberg#%22Don't_trust_a...
Still applies. Many of them will tell you so. I'm 35 and it seems like good advice to me.
Different people have different abilities and disabilities. That’s life, and if you cannot understand that and help the people who need to be helped, then you are even more of a burden.
1. lose access to your email. this can happen many ways -- whether your email account was compromised or your domain was lost or you forgot your password.
2. ??? welp good luck getting those oh-so-important bills and notices. and good luck resetting your access
Here's another scenario:
1. lose access to your email ten years ago and have to go through all that. now you're averse to any service even ten years later wanting to exclusively do business online
Speaking from experience.
Here's a third scenario:
1. don't "lose" access to your email. instead, get inundated with spam and phishing attempts. to combat that, create new emails. good luck changing your email address! I still have banks that send notices to email addresses that were completely removed from the account and present that same email address as a second factor for authorization; I'm very not-impressed with Chase bank. I fear the day that email address ever gets deleted specifically because so many businesses either don't allow changing the email or still use the email after it's been removed from the account
To have an opened bussiness in Spain now, you need to provide the government an email. The excuse is that they want to save paper and stop using the standard post. So you need to pay for internet access. There are still 5 millions of people in Spain that live in rural areas where they don't have a good access to internet or don't have access at all. Though luck if you are one of they. They will put all important legal messages related with your activity in that mail.
So if you lose the access to that email (or is hacked for a month and some mails are removed silently) now you have a problem. Missing the latest legal change or government requirement means that now you are doing things illegally or that you are refusing to provide them data about your company that they asked for. There is a liability and legal consequences attached.
But the mail just will tell you (genius move) that the government wants to tell you "something", but not what. To retrieve this message you need to provide a phone number so they will send you a code by watsup necessary to access the info. So now you need to use a Facebook app, want it or not, because the government "cares for your privacy".
The government will not receive you now without a cite, arranged by phone or web, so you can't just walk into the building and show your ID card to ask what they want. If you think that you can just visit the gov web page, good luck with that. Your important messages are somewhere in that black hole, as unreachable as in the bottom of the ocean.
So you need a phone, but neither a normal desktop phone nor an old reliable Nokia will be accepted. You need to provide a mobile of the spy-phone type.
Because for example, to receive your covid passport you need to scan a barcode now. So you must have a camera in your phone and an OS able to install an run an external app to scan 3d barcodes. Do you want to know why asking for covid passport in bars was a failure? This.
And if you have an crash car and the police emits a traffic report, they will give you a ticket full of 3D Codes linking to the report, the extra info, the laws that apply, and your rights. No spy-phone?, you can't access to your info.
They could just provide a link, a short chain of characters that is the universal way to navigate internet, but not. That would be too easy.
I had been contacted by phone by somebody in the government encouraging me to use their services more. I agreed to provide a mail to receive more info and some weeks later received a mail, asking me to provide a phone in order to access the info (so they can call me asking for a mail maybe?).
So either you agree to have a phone that tracks all your life now, or you are treated as a sub-citizen with less rights.
Of all segments, superficially seems they'd be the most able to visit a branch during business day. But a second thought says that's probably failing to think in their shoes.
For example, if they are less able to get around than younger segments, the issue could be being taken to the bank by a working family member who can only take them before or after the driver's working hours. (But driving is a US thing, while EU is chock full of busses, so maybe it's not driver, maybe it's availability of someone just 'accompanying' them.)
Other reasons?
As our population ages, and depending on the pool of problems causing the need for extended hours, I'm wondering if there's some service that could be offered to resolve whatever the collection of reasons are across not just banking but anything with limited hours that retirees need.
Still, I wonder what legal the situation is in the U.S., for that sort of "just tell 'em that they have to use our..." corporate cost-cutting, at less-able customer expense.
sigh, this has almost nothing to do with the "digital" world as much as it does with the fact that corporations never cared. If they could have saved a single cent by moving to "tellers"/ATMS that were mechanical in nature, 51 years ago when he first opened his account, they would have. The corporations were never "loyal".
My favorite example of this being restaurants that, when you ask for a menu, give you a QR code (with no explanation of course).
Computers are not feeling machines, they’re calculators.
Humans are greatly varied, contradictory creatures with a seemingly bottomless internal mode.
You will get everything under the sun from out of humans. You will get discrete numerical calculations of out a computer.
This is a pet peeve of mine: I understand it can be liberating to blame those greed corporations for giving profit the top priority, but the truth is that corporations never cared because consumers never cared.
We, the consumers, have the nasty habit of looking for cheap before anything else. Whoever tries to sell quality, or to offer his hard-working employees a respectable wage, is painfully bitten by customers moving elsewhere.
The race to the bottom is a bit*h.
It's like printed high-quality investigation journalism. We all decry that it's on its way out but the vast majority of us won't consider paying a 300$/year subscription even if most of the HN reader base could absolutely afford it. We just don't want to pay for stuff.
It's the same thing (to a lesser extent) with stocks and investment. I own a bunch of REIT (real-estate trust fund) because they give a great stable return that loosely follow inflation. A few months ago, my landlord increased my rent by 5% I was angry, felt like it was too much etc... but my landlord is very much the result of my investments pushing for inflation-matching dividends. If they don't meet the market expectation they'll just drop in value.
Anyway long story short we are part of the problem.
You were never able to just research how credit works. You needed the bank teller for this.
You were not able to compare prices and service before.
It was critical for you as a necessity that you trusted them.
For consumers our time is much better than it was before.
And yes due to global optimization it's just something bound to happen.
Instead of complaining that we have much better options and are more enabled to do things out way we should start to think how we want to shape the future.
I would love to talk about how we can further enhance the life's of everyone and how we live together than discussed if we still need to support checks.
Consumers are not valuing cheap over everything else. If I'm unaware of why a $100 bike lock is better than the $20 bike lock and I buy the $20 bike lock that isnt me being cheap. That is the $100 bike lock manufacturers failure to convey the value of their product compared to other, more affordable, options.
All of this is wrapped up in another issue as well. Wealth. I'm at a point financially where I can pick the better and more expensive option. At many times in the past I bought the shit toilet paper because it was half the price and that meant I could stretch my paycheck a bit further.
I'm not going to get into how that could be alleviated but consumers care when they have the financial comfortability to care and when they are aware why they should care.
The worst part is that the sigh always precedes some generic hot take with no evidence or actual argument, just some copypasta we've seen on twitter before.
If you think the response to someone is stupidly obvious, then don't say it. Keep it to yourself.
It just encourages them, but that's Canada, market economics don't apply here.
In Quebec, Desjardins (coop, on paper) has done lots of cuts and tries to compete with banks (many branches closed/merged), but when there are issues, I can easily get someone on the phone and they resolve it quickly and professionally.
Citation needed.
Computers or at least services should be intuitive you a noob or an expert should not need to decipher what to do next.
I called them every 15 days and the help line guy or gal was telling me "impossible, you cannot have this page". Despite having sent them a screenshot.
Then one day it was gone. Came back a year later, and gone again after two months.
I really like the bank so I did not switch but I was close to do so.
Now what they've done is shuttered a lot of actual branches but left the ATMs. The density of bank branches now is comparable to the density of post offices (in my "barrio" there is only one post office and now only one branch of my brank). It's not like they have to walk 20km now especially in the city.
However I do really think old people should be able to keep doing transactions as they were. They should not be forced to go online.