So who is to be first against the wall? The traditional view is that it should be the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. While anyone who could call a robot “Your plastic pal who’s fun to be with” deserves their fate, bear in mind that Douglas Adams died before the triumph of the chatbot.
“For God’s sake, chatbots, let me talk to a human being”, cries Jessie Hewitson in the Times. She had a rotten time when both her bank cards stopped working.
Cross though the bus driver looked, he took pity on me and waved me to a seat. When I got off at the Tube station I tried again with the card readers at the gates. Same problem. My cards weren’t working, so there I stood, stranded, unable to get to work.
I called Barclays. After ten minutes of extreme faffery, an automated voice told me that I had to use the chat function because I had downloaded the phone app. So, thumbs frozen outside the tube, I typed my problem into the “chat”.
It was more like an endurance test, where the bank pushes you to the limit of your resolve. To see how long you will hang on to speak to a real person, if indeed you can figure out when you finally are.
In comparison to that “your plastic pal” doesn’t seem so bad. At least you can hit it. Let us spare the Sirius Cybernetics Corp. for a little while and execute the entire British banking establishment instead. But even they, citoyens, do not go first. So far, Ms Hewitson’s article is a pretty standard moan about the way the telephone number of your local bank now sits alongside the nuclear codes as a closely-guarded secret. Things are indeed grim. They, the chatbots, have taken to giving themselves names. Happy female names, mostly amusingly mis-spelled variants of human ones. We may also have to kill everyone who has ever used the term “customer engagement”. But bad as our current plight is, there are very few bad situations that government “help” cannot make worse:
Why are financial companies doing this? The obvious reason is money, but there’s another one: banks, broadband providers et al are keenly aware of the complaints figures that are given to the Financial Conduct Authority and other regulators.
If they manage to reduce these, customers view them as more trustworthy. The harder they make it for you to speak to a person, the fewer complaints that will be logged. And so you have a warped situation where the good banks that encourage people to raise problems look worse than the bad ones that don’t.
I present my revised schedule for the public entertainments on Day One:
3. The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
2. BarcWestLloydHSBCrap
1. The Financial Conduct Authority
To be precise it was the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation who wioll haven been up against the wall when the revolution willan on-camen. If I have my tenses right; I don’t have my copy of Dr Streetmentioner to hand.
You should try to contact a living person in the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
My last ten calls have triggered the recorded “Call volume has exceeded capacity. Please try again later”, followed by disconnection.
But if I fail to send them disputed amounts in time, the dread penalties and interest commence. These do not go away completely even if you are proven correct later.
A bot would be a refreshing step up.
TomJ, “To be precise it was the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.”
When dealing with the SCC, precision is not required. Kill ’em all and let God sort them out.
bobby b, Believe me or believe me not, but the employees and ex-employees of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs that I have met in person have been nicer than average people. Obviously they do not wish to spoil this good impression by picking up the phone.
Go into a branch of your bank and actually speak to someone face-to-face. Don’t leave until they have it sorted out.
That may be one reason why the banks are so keen to close down their branches left, right and centre. Never mind the inconvenience to their customers. Pity the inhabitants of the Isles of Scilly, where Lloyd’s Bank will close the only bank in the archipelago later this spring, blithely referring their customers to their ‘nearest’ branch in Penzance on the mainland … a three-hour ferry crossing or a £135-each-way helicopter flight away.
Okay, okay – I know the sophisticates will sneer: “It’s 2022 not 1922 – who goes to a bank branch any more, when they can bank through their smartphone or over the internet?” But not everyone wants to do that in a world of malware, hacking and phishing. Less risky to bank over the counter in a local branch with a name-badged cashier whom you know and who knows you.
If the banks were operating in a genuinely free-market economy, they’d be eager to keep the branches open as one more way of serving their customers. Because they know they’re ‘too big to fail’, they don’t have to worry about this any more and can get away with treating customers with contempt.
I suspect that when that sad day actually comes:
10. The Marketing Department of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
9. Alphabet/Google upper management
…
4. Facebook Upper Management (Because the Mob isn’t rational, otherwise Alphabet would be here)
3. CNN/MSNBC/CBS/etc. journalists
2. Well known bureaucrats at various agencies.
1. Politicans
In a true “free market” environment there would be almost no banks serving consumers. There’s not enough money in it, and it’s a freaken hassle.
You’d have some real estate loan organizations, some commercial banks to serve businesses, and some banks that served wealthier clients that worked more like investment advisors.
But there is almost no way to make money on the average bloke. He doesn’t leave his money in the bank long enough for the bank to use it, and he’s generating problems (bouncing checks etc.) on a regular basis.
Make a complain. If complains pick up in numbers it will have an effect.
Aristos, aristos, a la lanterne! And this is why I carry cash.
@bobby b
My last ten calls have triggered the recorded “Call volume has exceeded capacity. Please try again later”, followed by disconnection.
Whenever I hear the apologetic cry “your call is very important to us….” my immediate thought is “but not important enough to hire enough people to answer the call volume”.
That along with the “our options have changed recently so please listen carefully…” — why have your options changed? Because you deliberately want to make it more difficult for people?
Oh, and while I am ranting, what about that stupid control on your phone for setting a time? You have to spin through every digit from 0 to 59, because I am ALWAYS setting an alarm for 2:37 — 2:35 and 2:40 won’t do… I had this app that showed a clock face and you could tap the hour and then the minute in two dimensions rather than the dreadful one dimensional thing that the super smart people at Apple invented. For some reason though they, against my will, updated it with the new modern crappy control… That’s progress for you.
Oh, and get off my lawn.
And . . . and . . . why do hot dogs come in packs of ten and buns in packs of eight?! Why, damn them?!
😉
It seems no one has mentioned it so far, so I will: perverse incentives. There we go.
In terms of “up against the wall” I can’t but feel that Shakespeare had it right when he had one of his characters say, “First thing we do, kill all the lawyers.” Perhaps followed by strangers who say, “How are you?”
Sure, but that’s what we pithily call a “Traditional High Street Bank”. The Post Office still offers basic banking facilities and has offices on Tresco, Bryer, St. Agnes, St. Martins and St. Mary’s. As long as you turn up outside peak hours (same applies to High Street Banks) then a human being will be able to help with any small issues that you have, albeit larger issues may be referred to the dreaded call centre. Again, not really any different from the High Street Banks who simply act as an intermediary to their own call centre’s (albeit with a different priority number to avoid queues).
Far rather deal with Joe at the Post Office who drinks with the lads down the Old Hen rather than some haughty faceless bank bureaucrat.
The New York Times has been spouting woke drivel and outright lies for decades but this morning they went too far and deleted my Wordle history.
This will not stand, you know.
At least you’ve retained your sense of proportion. Freedom’s nice, but an unbroken track record at Wordle has a price beyond rubies.
Well-known? Power is more unconstrained when those who wield it are not even known to their victims.
(In ‘The Face of the Third Reich’, Joachim Fest makes this idea central to his study of Martin Bormann’s career.)
Watching ‘Yes, {Prime} Minister’, we are very aware of Sir Humphrey Appleby, but in the fictional world of the series, most voters know Jim Hacker’s name, not Sir Humphrey’s.
I know that the foreword to the proposal to ban conversion therapy was (officially, at least) written by Liz Truss – that is, she signed her name to it. But who wrote the rest of this proposal to give themselves great power over us (and maybe, for all I know, drafted the foreword too)?
Secrecy is a great enabler of power without responsibility – even the responsibility of being by-name disliked by those you have banned from saying so.
Can’t get through to a call centre? Kept on hold while “Money, Money, Money” blares down your phone? If your problem is not that urgent, find out the address of the head office, and send a nice letter, either by recorded delivery or registered post, to the CEO by name, marked “Personal for”. Explain your problem, and reason for having to write, and invite him, or her, to personally reply within a reasonable period of time, say 7 days. So far, it has worked for HMRC, where a non reply meant they accepted I do not owe them the money they claimed I did; Vodafone over a disputed bill; and a few others. Perhaps others should try it? If enough do, it may concentrate various minds somewhat.
It should be noted in passing that the Scilly Isles (off the western tip of Cornwall for those unfamiliar) escaped the Income Tax until 1954, when a Conservative government included them in a mainland Cornwall tax district.
In terms of call centres, this ‘Hitler phones an Indian Callcentre‘ video is far too close to real experiences I have had (but mine without swearing, at least when on the phone).
@Zerren Yeoville
Pity the inhabitants of the Isles of Scilly, where Lloyd’s Bank will close the only bank in the archipelago
TBH, I don’t pity them. If you live in a place like Scilly, you get a lot of benefits from the rural island setting. However, there are some downsides too, and there is this idea that you shouldn’t suffer them — here in the USA non rural dwellers are massively subsidizing the cost of rural broadband, for example. If you want a bank branch you can always move to the lovely little town of Helston on the mainland, which I used to frequent, and enjoyed very much.
Okay, okay – I know the sophisticates will sneer: “It’s 2022 not 1922 – who goes to a bank branch any more, when they can bank through their smartphone or over the internet?” But not everyone wants to do that in a world of malware, hacking and phishing. Less risky to bank over the counter in a local branch with a name-badged cashier whom you know and who knows you.
I’m not at all convinced that you are safer banking in a branch than over the internet, even if you do know the cashier, and her grandmother. Carrying physical things around (like cash or cheques) is far more risky and prone to theft that secured transactions over highly encrypted channels. However, again, if you want the extra service of a fancy bank branch do you think it is reasonable to expect to pay for it? I do. Why should smartphone users subsidize this preferred banking habit.
If the banks were operating in a genuinely free-market economy, they’d be eager to keep the branches open as one more way of serving their customers. Because they know they’re ‘too big to fail’, they don’t have to worry about this any more and can get away with treating customers with contempt.
That is definitely true. In the situation in the Scillys it would seem you describe a business opportunity to open a simple little bank to serve the people there. After all, banks aren’t, fundamentally, all that complicated a business. But the regulations involved in creating a new bank are overwhelming here in the USA, and, to the best of my knowledge, you can’t even start your own bank in the UK (it might require an act of Parliament, but perhaps a British lawyer can tell me I am wrong.)
This is why, if possible, I do my banking and computer purchases locally. If something goes wrong with my account, I can go and scream at a real banker. If something goes wrong with my computer, I can point out that I bought it all from them, so it doesn’t matter which part went wrong, they sold it to me.
I had an example of something similar a few years back. Got rear-ended on the Interstate Highway. The other driver and I had the same insurance company, so it was rapidly settled with no fuss.
There is a serious side to all this – for example the forced of Technocracy, Collectivist Totalitarian world “governance”, the WEF and so on, are now saying “we told you so” in relation to the protests by the truckers in Canada and elsewhere. This is because the World Economic Forum (and international corporate and government forces generally) have long argued that trucks and cars should be computer controlled – so that people can not just go where they like, resist “Public Health”, “Social Justice” and the rest of the Collectivist Totalitarian United Nations Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030.
As for Credit Money banking and finance (including payment services) – the left (the Collectivist Totalitarians – including the Corporate ones, the “Davos” types) are getting a stranglehold on all this by the Environment and Social Governance (ESG) system – the Western version of the Chinese Social Credit system.
Non “Woke” people will not be allowed to run a business, or have a job, to quote Trotsky about Stalin (although, as Max Eastman pointed out, it would have been equally true if Trotsky was in charge) “Opposition means death by slow starvation” – as both running an independent business or even having a job (if you are not in accord with the regime – in the modern West the emerging power of the Woke Technocracy) would be impossible.
Payment by actual cash (physical gold or physical silver – if only a spec of such substances in a clear plastic coin) makes such totalitarianism (Corporatism – “Davos ism”) much more difficult.
It is no accident that Saint-Simon (the leading French totalitarian thinker) targeted Credit Bubble bankers as possible leaders of his “Scientific” Collectivism – some two centuries ago.
Technology had caught up with the evil (and they were and are evil) dreams of Saint-Simon and of Sir Francis “New Atlantis” (1610) before Saint Simon.
The Collectivist Totalitarianism of someone like Dr Klaus Schwab is nothing new – it can be traced all the way back to Plato.
A group of “Guardians” meeting to control everyone – this time in the name of science. Plato would have seen nothing much new in this – it is just the TOOLS (such as computers) that are new.
Even that is not a new idea – Sir William Petty (like Thomas Hobbes a follower of Sir Francis Bacon) dreamed of using mathematics to “scientifically plan” the lives of everyone, perhaps by using some sort of MACHINES (which we call computers).
Sir William Petty, Sir Francis Bacon, Saint-Simon, Plato….. – they would all have loved the Corporate and Government “Davos” crowd.
A revolution?
The old meaning of the word “revolution” (before the horror show of 1789 and afterwards – Rousseau’s bastard children) was to revolve back, to RESTORE lost liberties.
Want to do that now?
Then go back to money lending being from REAL SAVINGS (not Credit Bubbles) and money being actual commodity (gold or silver – or both as long as the exchange rate is NOT fixed, and most certainly NOT a gold “standard”) although ownership of the commodity might be transferred electronically – no need to physically carry enough gold to buy a large company (or whatever).
That is all that really needs to be done to overthrow the current Cantillon Effect system of a handful of “Woke” Corporations (backed by Credit Bubble banks and institutionally corrupt governments) controlling the economy. The half of the economy.
“Paul, Bitcoin is the new gold”.
I am an old man – I do not understand Bitcoin. But you may be correct – I do not know.
What I do know is that the present Credit Bubble fiat money system is going to go.
Good – the Credit Bubble fiat money system can Burn In Hell.
“Your plastic pal”- since they use plastic, they must be evil! And this attempt to use robots as surroguettes is dehumanizing. Will your plastic pal be your best friend at your wedding? Or be the thing you are wedding? The only good robot is a disassembled one!!!