The Internet is a massive load of crap. Well, to be more specific, companies that try to provide customers with Internet-based services do so in such a crap way, it's obvious that they're designed and developed by expensive, professional companies that know what they want to the extent of ignoring what's useful to its end users.
I entered my details into NatWest’s site three times to apply for Internet banking, in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. “There’s something wrong with your data,” it says. What a crap message that is. “There’s something wrong, and we’re going to blame you, but we're not going to tell you what the problem is.” It’s not my bloody information – which you keep referring to as data (I’m thinking of complaining about this) – that’s at fault, it’s you. I’m just the person entering his personal details, which he’s had for a very long time and knows that they’re just fine, thank you very much.
Of course, it is for reasons of security that they don’t tell you why your “data” are “wrong”. Yet get this: After the third attempt, they invite you to print out your details and send them to an address that bears the words, “Online Banking.” Oh, great. So I have to post an envelope advertising that it has banking details in it to an anonymous postal worker who, purely on the basis that he/she works for the Post Office, I'm supposed to be able to trust. Even worse, the enclosed banking details include sort code, account number, security number, full name and date of birth.
I decided to go the whole hog and send it in a Company envelope. If the thief already knows my personal and full bank details, he may as well know where I work while he's at it.
And Yahoo! is just as crap. It’s just one of the many examples of how a company panics when it realises (far too late) that it’s out of date, and throws huge amounts of time and money at trying, and failing, to improve its service*. The only result in the case of Yahoo! is that the user interface it has provided, the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta, is overloaded with detail and functionality. And, of course, it’s horrendously slow.
Why is it that the more mature a company gets, the more immature it acts?
* See tomorrow's post.
2 comments:
This blog ends up with the point about immaturity of companies, and this is a rant I have been letting form for quite some time. I would like to see one on this blog too.
It is hard to say for sure what is cause and what is effect, but all of society is becoming more immature, and the message is simple: don't bother growing up, don't bother being intelligent.
When we were small, and everyone before us, text books were black and white and banking and insurance was grey and dealt with by dusty old men. Now we have an obscene illusion: insurance and banking are cool and young, just like everything. Text books use cool speak and stupid cartoon characters that should be unsuitable for infants, not sixth formers. The repeated message is: we will come down to your level, a retarded, childish level we will assume your mind works at...we will not present facts seriously and let you grow up if you want to get an education.
It is about desperately trying to fudge education results and hiding the level of dumbing down behind a funny bi-concave mirror so they look as though they get better. If you got A-level physics in the past 7 years, you wont know what a bi-concave mirror is.
If you tell people not to grow up, you tell people to be dependent on others, and have no ambition; drift into a worthless, opportunity-free degree and go on to benefit. If you aren't already a criminal.
Please also write a blog on the use of "sexy" images to promote everything, especially when it is inappropriate.
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