Bonum Certa Men Certa

This Holiday Season Dump Companies That Offload Everything to Skinnerbox "Apps", Un-Encrypted E-mail, and 'Webapps' (Proprietary JS Applications in 'Web Site' Clothing)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 27, 2024

Smartphone User

Society is getting worse in the way it treats customers because more companies do not treat customers at all, or just barely (if customers find the right tree to bark under). It's basically a race to the bottom because "everyone is doing it" or "they're all the same". They don't serve customers, they don't even listen to customers, and sometimes they let them play "games" on phone menus (voice menus that tell them site addresses to visit instead, usually because "it's easier online," according to them or their read-only bot - reading a mindless and dishonest script) and - worst of all! - chatbots. It's a sort of collective gaslighting which leaves more people unemployed, as jobs get eliminated despite them being very much necessary (appreciated and much-needed by customers). The queues on the line gradually get longer to discourage human interaction and increase phone bills (while employing fewer people whose workload is untenable and whose callers are more rude/impatient because they waited on the queue for ages). The Cybershow spoke about this in many past episodes and hours ago it published a new episode about efforts to replace musicians with CG junk, derived from entire catalogues and disguised as "AI" rather than mass plagiarism. Have a listen; I did...

Today I received a message after I had canceled an insurance policy (having had enough after more than a decade). I asked for paper confirmation, but thus far they only sent an E-mail that seems very generic and thus probably automated, not even personalised except 2-3 'fields'/'text tokens'. To quote:

Dear Doctor Schestowitz

We wanted to let you know that we’ve cancelled your Home Insurance, as requested. We can confirm that the policy’s been cancelled with effect from 29 December 2024.

We’re sorry we had to decline your claim, but sometimes we can’t avoid this.

If you’re due a refund, we’ll be in touch within the next 7 days, explaining how and when you’ll receive this.

We hope you’ve found the cover that’s just right for your home elsewhere.

If you’d like to tell us more about why you’re leaving please let us know and we hope you’ll consider us for your home insurance needs in the future.

If you’ve got any questions or need any help please contact us using the details below.

Thanks

RSA Customer Services Team on behalf of Nationwide

Signed by "RSA Customer Services Team", but was this written by an actual team member?

The message is moreover spyware; all the links go to some tokenised tracker URLs at http://williamsleatag-emails.wlt.com/ and there are embedded elements in the message (HotLinking in an E-mail that's a Web page or HTML pretending to be E-mail). There are also broken links. This is sheer incompetence and disrespect/arrogance towards clients' dignity. They even spy on their cancellation E-mail.

Notice how they didn't write anything about reasons, they just plugged in the date and name in a genetic template. It's very likely no actual person even bothered to review this E-mail. Is there any point or purpose for a human reading it? Sentences that say (for example) "If you’d like to tell us more about why you’re leaving" suggest they don't know why; I spent a long time explaining that to them already. So they ask me to sort of communicate with their bots (maybe for reasons to be textually scanned and summed up in bland statistics, then converted into a mere number in a tally for a pie chart). It's like nobody listens and interacts here.

Home insurance will be resumed with another company, but I probably should have done this years ago. Are other companies better? Maybe not. Maybe this is "normal" now... the standards have been lowered, unlike costs. Their fiscal surplus is your agony/mistreatment/free labour/time-wasting. They shift or 'offload' (outsource to the client) all the work. This is unfair and it lowers productivity in society (people less specialised doing all the work very slowly). Imagine them telling you, "build your own home, we'll send you the materials and instructions, just pay us a fee for it..."

I did not record our 36-minute conversation, but a lot of it was just voice menus and me being passed around between 3 "real people" to politely discuss my honest concerns with their (dis)service. Of course they have a nagging "retention" department (sometimes they call it "loyalty", not "cancellations"... too negative a word apparently, describing gatekeepers blocking the exit); it's meant to tire customers down (or cool them down by slowing them down, changing emotions/sentiments); they train people to do this, passing burden and blame to alter narratives post hoc.

An anecdote here is that this British insurance provider/company hid the option of snail mail, but eventually said yes (they said wait 10 days even though mail takes 1-2 days to arrive, so they probably batch and automate it to bulk-send), albeit only when we explicitly requested it; they don't like paper trails, except for themselves, as that puts in a position of disadvantage the customer. Same for pension providers, in my experience (which was documented here last year). This is grotesque, more so than offloading things to so-called "hey hi" (AI) in order to escape liability/accountability.

Are people meant to interact with E-mail bots? Is that what things nowadays boil down to? Customers wasting time interacting with opaque algorithms? It's like people having to deal with Windows botnets that spew out spam, except this is being done by large and supposedly "reputable" companies that have official registrations and managers with 6- or 7-figure salaries.

There's an even bigger blunder or widespread phenomenon here, albeit lurking somewhere in the details.

Another one instance is, British banks keep telling customers that some services are "online-only", but if one insists, then suddenly that's no longer the case. They do that in branch, too, albeit typically with unhappy faces (like asking for actual service is verboten and frowned upon). "Online" is not about speed. Any mistakes make? Blame the customer. Zero risk for the bank and its workers, who can always blame the customer after doing something he or she isn't even trained to do (and probably never experienced before). Some people I spoke to last week theorise that throwing people onto apps and online GUIs may also mean they cannot negotiate or haggle, e.g. play off one bank against another or seek a better deal/rate. It's a blackbox of bad choices and dark patterns (online and in apps). Banks without branches or without in-branch services must be avoided and let to fail (as a business). Only that way we stand a chance of rescuing what was once known as "customer service" rather than bot disservice.

Many banks do not offer insurance policies; they're just resellers for the likes of RSA. So even "small" or "local" banks basically relay you to Wall Street (another country/continent) under some other branding.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Accessibility Isn't Overrated
Making things simpler typically means better accessibility
Microsoft said “GitHub and its leadership team will continue its mission as part of Microsoft’s CoreAI organisation.” But it's just an empty shell created earlier this year.
In short, it's not too clear what Microsoft has just done except dumping GitHub - i.e. mostly a Web site that loses a ton of money (it always lost money) - into some mysterious new bucket
IBM Layoffs in MCC, or Marketing, Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
IBM and Microsoft inflate their share price by circular financing
 
Microsoft Windows in Croatia at New Lows
We've been keeping track of this trend for a while
Using the Best Tool/s for the Job: RSS Feeds and RSS Readers
Use RSS feeds. Reject those "modern" Web things
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 19, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Gemini Links 20/08/2025: Neovim, XML, and Alhena 5.2.9
Links for the day
The Register's Slopfest
Remember when The Register UK (yes, UK) had better standards?
Latest Version of Windows (Vista 11) is a Failure 4 Years After Its Fake 'Leak'
Vista 11 became more scarce this month
Improving Our Archives
Our old archives are still accessed a lot. Making them better is well worth the investment.
Things One Learns as a Litigant in Person at the UK High Court
Don't fear the official manuals
Slopwatch: Lots of Fake Articles From Fake "Linux" Sites and About "Linux"
Google says it's committed to "AI" (it means slop, not AI); that seems like an excuse to dodge accountability
Links 19/08/2025: "Eavesdropping on Phone Conversations Through Vibrations" and Air Canada in Chaos
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/08/2025: Niche Spaces and "AI Pasta Sauce"
Links for the day
Links 19/08/2025: "NASA Is Giving Up on Climate Change Science" and "Earth's Continents Are Drying Out at an Unprecedented Rate"
Links for the day
Phil Wyett evidence & Debian Zizian plagiarism, modern slavery tendencies
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
In Many Countries People Move Away From Vista 11
Vista 11 has been available for download for 4 years already, but adoption has been poor
Desktops/Laptops Fall to All-Time Lows in the UK, So Why Does British Media Quote a Famous Criminal on "End of the Smartphone Era"?
mobile usage (for Web access) has never been higher, based on an Irish surveyor, statCounter
The Groklaw Web Site Has Been Hijacked by Scammers
Groklaw.net isn't a safe site to access at this time
The Register MS gets Lazy, Uses Slop
Unlike 3-D renderings or "Classic" CG, slop images aren't quite original and definitely not fair use
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 18, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 18, 2025
Online Safety Act Does Not Tackle the Worst (and Biggest) Culprits
if our governments are serious about tackling online harms, then they need to look closely at GAFAM and social control media giants
Chat Control (1 and 2) in the European Union Sends the Wrong Message
This is an EU law
Slopwatch: Google News and Serial Sloppers (Fake Articles About "Linux")
Calling out the culprits
Gemini Links 19/08/2025: Digital Legacy and Chat Control
Links for the day
English Law Misused by Americans and Irishmen Against Brits is Unfair
There's always a way to improve existing laws
Overly Maximalist, Expensive, Localised Patent Law is Dooming Western Companies, Argue 3-D Printing Champions
We've long warned (over 7 years already!) that China's approach to patents will impress WIPO by gaming the totals but will doom the West
Links 18/08/2025: "Microsoft Store" Gets Increasingly Hostile, "Cracking Abandonware DRM"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/08/2025: Summer "Gone" and Web Reposts in Gemini
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows in Gabon: Still Moving Down
What is this Unknown? Who knows...
Links 18/08/2025: LLM Reputation Damaged, Australia Catches Google Foul Play
Links for the day
Geeks Like GNU/Linux
The technical community seems to be consolidating and rallying around GNU/Linux
GNU/Linux is 486 in Ireland
4.86% that is
End of Reliable Media
it makes the world a worse place, it renders the Web a misinformation machine
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 17, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 17, 2025
GitHub Won't Last Much Longer
Many things at Microsoft are going to go the way of the Skype (or "dodo"). GitHub will be among those.
We've Never Used Large Language Model (LLM)
we just never used an LLM
"Secure Boot" is a Security Problem, Not a Solution
These people don't try to improve security but to undermine security
Gemini Links 18/08/2025: Retro and Endless Escape from the WWW
Links for the day