It seems to me that in our online digital world that whilst some things have become a lot easier, other things are much harder.

Today's example. I am changing the tin-top. This morning, the dealer confirmed delivery of my 2.5 year old car will be on Monday. I recently moved my tin top insurance to Saga. Foolishly thinking that making a change of car from a 10 year old to a 2.5 year old of a similar model would involve a quick call and a few extra pounds premium, I called them this afternoon. The nice lady took all the details and then told me that to continue cover with Saga would require a change of underwriter. She then quoted the new price. Very nearly double the original premium. I thanked her and said I would shop around. A comparison web site data entry later and I got a quote on the new car. The cheapest was 5% more than for the old one. With Saga.

Once blood pressure returned to normal, I called Saga again. A different nice lady listened carefully to my tale and then said that her systems would not allow her to put it through as a policy change. She transferred me to another agent. The new agent turned out to be in a "new business department" - and obviously spent a lot of his time resolving issues like mine.

A waltz through the small print showed that my cheapest new quote wasn't for the same level of policy. A few minutes later and he had a price for me on a like for like basis with the old policy. At 20% more than the original. He did take the time to explain that annual mileage makes a much bigger difference to premiums than we expect and made me check my annual mileage properly. Once I accepted this, he told me the only way he could process this was to charge me the full premium and issue a refund for the balance remaining on the old policy. Apparently, the change of underwriter was the sticking point.

All together, the whole job took over an hour - even with the phone being answered relatively promptly by Saga on each occasion. Each agent was very helpful and very courteous. But their systems and procedures must have been created by Homer Simpson.

Why-oh-why did they have to make it so difficult?

I fully understand your plight, it drives me to the end of my tether too.

Try this one:

I needed to issue a money transfer to a holiday company for a group ski trip to Italy, because of the high amount of money involved I wanted to enter the payee's name in full. This wasn't possible because the online banking site didn't have enough capacity for all the letters.

To this end I called Santander to get them to do it at their end, it was such a fuss and a drawn out nonsense involving passwords, last transaction amount, direct debit information and monthly deposits into the account, none of which I had readily availably I told them after about half an hour not to bother and that I would write a check instead.


Only to find that the cheque was bounced and my account frozen, which necessitated a trip to the nearest branch (10 miles) an interview with the manager and proof of ID. just to get things back on track. The manager insisted that the cheque did not bounce, that was till I produced it with "refer to drawer" stamped all over it.


I'm now with Nationwide and a whole lot calmer.

To err is human, to really screw things up requires a computer...

How does that go for people who work with computers ?

I suspect we're really screwed up!

OTOH we're able to tell the difference between it being a fault of the computer system and poor software design

How true Tim!

True, but it was a person who designed the software...

I have met a few - that's still open to question in some cases.

I have worked with some who could seem to see the end result as the user would. It was sometimes fancy and clever but confusing to the user, especially if they weren't technical.
A simple example was the occasion I was asked to do a test commission of a yacht instrument system. I set it up on a desk in the company's boardroom, and proceeded to check all the instruments responded as they should. I came to the depth sounder where I had an error message. Couldn't see anything wrong so called in the engineer. He told me it was showing an error as the sounder wasn't in the water. Once the yacht was in the water it would be OK. I asked him how I would check it was working before I put the yacht in the water, as I would normally complete the installation and checking before launching, especially if it was a new yacht. A minor software change sorted that.