Enshittification is Everywhere: You Pay More, the Services Get Worse
Some days ago I wrote about how postal services all around the world* are failing us, in particular international shipping [1, 2]. As promised, 3 days ago I went on and surveyed some local "post offices" (what's left of them is some shops where you can buy cigarettes and maybe have a letter delivered, if they speak English at all). They now charge about 3-4 pounds just to send around 3-4 sheets of paper "First Class" (which isn't even so reliable anymore; they try to upsell). In the not-so-distant past one stamp was enough to get this done and it cost nowhere near a pound. So we get worse services and pay a lot more for that.
It's the same as technology, which seems to be getting worse (worse reliability, worse customer services etc.) while costs go up.
So maybe it's just a sort of new normal: patents get worse, jobs (or workplaces) become worse, the food is definitely getting worse (there are plenty of articles about this; healthy food is priced out of reach for most people), health services get worse and more stingy.
"Enshittification" is a term coined by an online friend; I increasingly use this term to describe what's happening even outside the realm of technology (which it was adopted to describe). █
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* This issue is not uniquely British. USPS is also besieged, has long been under attack, and with the Cheeto back in The House it's reported it might get sold off to Amazon. I also experienced logistical issues with Dutch postal workers (or customs), who return parcels without explanatory notes and who take almost a month to contact the recipient, then ignore the input.