‘I’m Old, Not an Idiot.’ One Man’s Protest Gets Attention of Spanish Banks
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Why?
The way she had paid for it for the preceding 40 years was she would get the paper bill in mail, and then go down to the post office and organise payment using the details in that paper bill.
They switched her over to paperless billing with an email that they've done so but you can opt out.
She either did not understand the implications of this or missed the email, and is of the age where she would not remember when exactly she had last paid which bill. So without a paper bill to remind her, and her payment method being via the post office rather than the utility provider having billing details on record, she ended up not paying 3 months of bills and being cut off.
It's not like they've offered this option to new customers for at least 15 years. So stuff like this it feels like they should just eat the cost of 12 letters per year until the remaining people availing of it age out.
A couple of weeks ago, I received this stern letter informing me that I'm "not acting in accordance with my cardholder agreement / unpaid bills / unfulfilled obligations / we've cancelled your account / etc." It lists a card number I don't recognize. I call them right away.
Turns out it was the personal VISA I cancelled two years ago. Around six months ago, a transaction went through on the account. Then I didn't pay off the transaction. Of course I didn't: I received no notice, no mail, no phone call, nothing. Why would I, for a card that at that point had been cancelled for 1.5 years? So after months of "defaulting" they freaked out, "cancelled" the card, put a black mark on my credit rating, and sent me that letter.
Meanwhile I have been doing business with the bank, and with my business VISA (same exact companies!) the whole time.
Trying to rectify this issue was a bureaucratic nightmare, where I got shuttled from my bank branch over to VISA and back again. It featured enjoyable conversations that started with things like, "for identity verification purposes, please give me the three digits on the back of your card" (hadn't had it in two years!) and ended with "I'm afraid we can't verify your identity".
What was especially frustrating was I managed to find the paperwork for the card cancellation. I have a signed and dated document that says right on it, "Card destroyed in branch".
After seven or eight interactions with VISA and my bank, I finally managed to get them to resolve the issue. But this all could have been avoided had they simply called me or mailed me a letter. Instead, they claimed that they'd sent statements to the "online portal" which, of course, I did not have access to, since I'd closed the account!
So now I do things one at a time.
E.g. To cancel a card, first move all money (or debts) from acct A to acct B. Go home. Couple of days later, pay any outstanding fees of acct A. Go home. Couple of days later, request cancellation. Inevitably find that something else needs to be done, so do that thing. Go home. Couple of days later....
You get the idea. It sucks big time, but I've found it's better that way, since the probability of error is somewhat lower (and even then it happens!)
As in not worth my time at all to fix some company's internal fuckups versus wait a few years for nobody else to care either.
Before me, the car was owned by my then-partner, who had just moved from the UK to California. I was to sell the car on her behalf, and the registered owner being in a different country is a really suspicious warning sign so we changed the ownership to me so I could sell it more easily.
A week later, I did sell it, and did all the relevant change-of-ownership paperwork again.
Six months later, the police sent me — not my partner, not the new owner — a speeding ticket. It took more than one go for me to prove I didn’t own the car.
Either you didn't or the bank who emitted the card might have a huge PITA due to passing the transaction to a bank account which should not be.
I've never understood the value of "paperless" to the consumer. The benefit to the company is the savings of 3½¢ of postage and mailing expenses. But to the consumer...?
I pay my bills online, but I make sure I still get my statements by mail. I also balance my accounts from those statements each month, and every year I catch one or two errors, and they're almost always in favor of the banks.
Logically, I should be able to do the same thing by looking at my accounts online. But paper statements present the information in a different way than online, often to comply with laws about clear billing and communication. What's on paper sometimes very different from what's on the screen.
In Switzerland we luckily have a system where companies can send their bills directly into your eBanking system so they are all collected there. But if a company doesn't support that, it's much easier to keep the paper bill.
As a business it’s your duty to take care of your recordkeeping, print out the invoices if you so prefer.
Is this a weird american thing? At least here in the UK mortgage interest deductions are only applicable to businesses.
[1] https://www.irs.gov/publications/p936#:~:text=You%20can%20de....
It was, which is why your comment starting with "As a business" was so bizarrely off-topic.
> Is this a weird american thing? At least here in the UK mortgage interest deductions are only applicable to businesses.
Yes. American homeowners can under most circumstances treat their mortage interest payments as tax deductable.
What do you mean by off-topic? Businesses receive utility bills too, and might genuinely be required to keep records of those.
As far as I can tell, barring some very special circumstances, individuals never need to keep such records.
This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance."
People don't want these records at hand purely for their own amusement, which seems to be the assumption you're operating under here.
> This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance."
I’ve certainly never needed to pull up my utility bills while paying taxes as a private person.
It really feels like you’re just coming up with stuff, utility bills aren’t normally tax deductible (unless you are a business). There’s no reason you’d ever need them for the taxman any more than your grocery story receipts.
> In what situation will an individual need to supply their utility bills to the taxman during an audit?
The bills would be useful if they expensed some of those payments, deducted them, or whatever. With a record number of people working from home, some portion of those expenses might be tax deductible for some people, some people might receive reimbursements from an employer, etc.
(nobody said anything about an audit)
> I’ve certainly never needed to pull up my utility bills while paying taxes as a private person.
I think we can all agree that if you have never done this, it's unthinkable that anyone would ever do this.
Under IRS rules, some people who WFH can often deduct part of their home expenses, including utilities.
See IRS Form 8891 line 21, labelled "Utilities"
What did matter in living memory (thus passed down to at least this generation) is that saving utility bills for 7 year can establish credit.
My parents still tell me to do this to this day, since that's how they were able to qualify for a home loan having not participated in the credit system otherwise.
Nowadays most such transactions are reported to a credit bureau, so they are either already on record or (almost?) no banks will care to see them.
My girlfriend just went though this process. She has no credit because she never got a CC and always saved up and paid for stuff like her car in cash. Over the winter she was looking to buy a house (didn't pan out for other reasons), and basically her only option was getting a loan manually underwritten. Part of that process was using a minimum of 2 years worth of bills as a replacement for a credit score. And the only loans available were several points more expensive than she could have gotten if she was able to do things the "normal" way.
Old people are exactly the type of people that would carefully study letters that come in the post. Unlike people my age that would bin anything that comes with the bill thinking it's probably just commercial crap.
But of course this is precisely the reason they do it by email. Dark pattern..
In my case, ISP charges you extra if you decide to keep the paper bills instead going for "eco bill" pdf file send by an email; same goes if you decide to opt-out from company selling your number elsewhere. Last time while getting new contract, 3 different people at local company's office tried to convince me that I can "win some fantastic rewards" if I decide to let them do with my number and personal information whatever they like.
I did opt-outed but they manage to sell all my numbers present on account elsewhere and somehow every month around time when bills arrive, I'm getting bombarded by robocalls - either about photovoltaics or central heating replacements. They claim they didn't do it but they can't explain why newly added number that has all opt-outs receives calls at the same time with the rest.
I'm old enough to remember when banks and other companies would charge extra for the privilege of paying online.
Probably what happened here was that a mid-level manager had a goal for 2021 to reduce paper billing by X percent. And came up with this as a quick trick to do it. Departments externalise negative effects to other parts of the company all the time. What they care about is their own goals and looking good to higher management. Not the interests of the company as a whole. This will only change when something causes a ruckus and top management finds out about it.
Also, the company is not really losing anything, the customer will sign up again, has to pay reconnection fees and will probably be forced to e-bill "because paper billing is no longer available for new customers". Triple win for the company really.
Of course the customer can move to another company but they'll probably want to keep their number and the whole portability rigmarole is much too difficult for this type of customer.
Then there is the group who are still going to insist on/need paper bills, but use technology enough to catch the email about changing and use the opt out process.
I wouldn't say it's a dastardly plot to kick my elderly neighbour off their service, but simple disregard that people like her that would fall through the cracks while they're trying to save money with the first group.
That's so horribly absurd - have just left a utility company, we would send you paper notices leading up to shut-off regardless of paperless opt-in status. Having a customer without water was considered far worse than wasting a little extra litter in the grand-scheme.
When you have to pay the postage and printing costs, it is far less attractive to throw out 10.000 scam mailings, because the ROI is quite likely negative. Edit: whereas with email, you proably need just one of the 10.000 to bite in order to break-even.
Whereas the phone company (or any legit business) can easily carry those extra €0.40 or so for each bill. They can even simply forward the costs to the customer.
Mailing invoices by snail-mail is a practical anti-scam measure, the more I think about it.
Scammers printing scam letters can just as easily print fake postmarks.
> When you have to pay the postage and printing costs, it is far less attractive to throw out 10.000 scam mailings, because the ROI is quite likely negative
Try to do think about the math here. What kind of scam mail are you sending to reach such bad ROI? Let’s imagine these are fake utility bills for around 50 euros and total cost to the scammer is 1 euro per letter. Your success rate would have to be incredibly bad for the ROI to be negative.
Now, target tenants of rental properties instead and tell them they need to pay their rent to a new account. Profits go up 10-100x, costs stay the same.
> Scammers printing scam letters can just as easily print fake postmarks.
-While that is true, it is impractical on at least a couple of levels:
a) You need to get that fake mail into the postal system, somehow - and do so in a way which escapes attention.
b) (The worrying bit, if you're a scammer) - You've just gone from attempted fraud (sending out scam emails) to defrauding the postal service of whatever country you try to pull this one off in; the authorities are quite likely to take a dim view of your efforts.
You pay some guy to drive around and stuff your envelopes into various post boxes 500-1000 at a time.
Or just find an insider at the postal service of your choice, crime forums are full of people offering this.
If you’re capable of accepting payments for fake bills, you already have people walking into banks with fake IDs to open accounts. Sending out letters is significantly less complex.
> b) (The worrying bit, if you're a scammer) - You've just gone from attempted fraud (sending out scam emails) to defrauding the postal service of whatever country you try to pull this one off in; the authorities are quite likely to take a dim view of your efforts.
Probably not, considering the amount of crimes involved in accepting money transfers to a drop account created with fake documents and the subsequent money laundering.
Defrauding the postal service is small potatoes.
In my country this is a real thing: fake invoices (in the sense that they are real invoices, but for fake services) mailed to companies hoping a few companies automatically pay them. They are called Spookfacturen (ghost invoices). And if ever we switch to full digital invoicing, this'll grow much bigger. Because now the costs of these scams are big.
Name and shame. The rest of us can't help people look out for scams if you're not going to tell us what to look out for.
I'm only 59, but without my paper bills, I've missed a few deadlines for credit card. I used to look for the bill in the mail as my reminder to pay it for the month.
The article was talking about a 78 year old, and you're 59, but this is a problem that will not go away if it isn't addressed.
One day even Zoomers will be confused by needing to pay their bills using their wet-wired neurolink to an orbiting drone, and they'll be unable to because their tiny house doesn't have a v9000 laser alignment defragmenter. And then the bank will send a Terminator to their doorstep to deactivate their iLegs for non-payment.
Dealing with real people, that you have a prior relationship with, in paper (or parchment, or papyrus, or clay) has a robust tradition that everybody can understand or at the very least deal with. I don't mind technological solutions, but they had better be as robust as being able to call up Dave and having him work out the problem.
I'm 29 and the same thing also happened to me. It's also so annoying that every time you have to log in into their website to download the bill... They could at least email it to you.
I worked in a related field and the cost of this is really not the postage. Your billing system needs to support sending paper bills, everywhere you have customer communication you'll need to add the paper way, the format is different, you still need a way for your billing system to actually send those letters, you accounting needs to check for it etc etc. Also, every time you discuss a change in your systems, you need to consider the edge case of these 12 customers.
The letters themselves are cheap, supporting paper in every system you have is the real cost. I agree that they should have handled this better, no questions asked, but it's not like we're just talking about pennies in postage.
I try to get all bills on paper. Then I just write the due date on the envelope when it arrives and keep them sorted by due date in a neat pile on my desk. Impossible to miss a due date that way.
I've been of that age since I was 18
No consumers will eat the cost of a bunch of boomers who want to keep using cheques.
And here's what will happen: the non boomer consumers will choose a cheaper bank. So unless the government wants to pick up the bill any sensible company will tell those senior citizens to get with the times.
It pays to have empathy to all cross sections of society, not just the ones that are the most visible. :)
All of this just because our society is to stupid?
Old people are not stupid, they are just old. They should be able to either teach themselves or being teached.
Our society should focus on helping them to navigate the current world and not try to keep things like checks alive.
And I'm pissed about this though because I believe it's a mindset thing which needs to change to be able to act on real problems like climate change.
When I talk to old people about solar energy holy shit do they care more about how those Solarpanel look at buildings then the benefit of them.
If we don't help those people they are being limited by society one way or the other anyway!
No you don't. You can scan them in many cases these days, or mail them in. Can also deposit in ATMs.
I cash checks all the time and haven't physically been to my bank in over 20 years, as the nearest branch is ~3000 miles away.
The government invents money by the billions die these guys. The least they can do is provide some service.
I used swipe typing and I was a little bit off and didn't notice it. Oops. But I think it's pretty clear from the sentence what I intended.
Gov creates money not the banks. They do have operational costs.
And it is not one person who needs to accept checks, every branch has to support this.
I have not been to a bank for the last 10 years. They are obsolete. And those buildings are expensive and they have to be able to compete with online banks. It's not even an option for them to just keep those buildings.
PS I was just at my bank and I'm not even super old :)
Why I was at the bank? I had to cancel a credit card I never used, and had to show my latest ID.. Here in Europe banks are supposed to validate ID regularly now which is a real pain in the **. I don't get why either, it's not like I change identity very often :) It's just more distrust from the government I think.
No I didn't go there to withdraw money or to pay bills. Though it can still be done. In fact for some government transactions, like getting a new ID, it has to be done. You have to go to the bank with a government form, pay your 20 euros into the government account, and the bank stamps the form as proof that you did it. Then you take that to the police and they issue a new ID.
This is also in Spain by the way (like the article).
Yeah I hate this process too. But I like that old people can still do things the way they understand.
Very weird but unlucky you I guess :)
Your ageism is showing. Hopefully you're never in a management position in an American company, because that attitude will get you fired for violating federal discrimination laws.
Moreover, just wait. You'll get your turn.
I work in technology enough to distrust it greatly. I had a multi-week saga one time because I used an electronic pdf signature instead of printing it out. I still get people freaked out when my resume is digitally signed in acrobat.
I will stick to my dead tree banking.
sigh, this has almost nothing to do with the "digital" world as much as it does with the fact that corporations never cared. If they could have saved a single cent by moving to "tellers"/ATMS that were mechanical in nature, 51 years ago when he first opened his account, they would have. The corporations were never "loyal".
This is a pet peeve of mine: I understand it can be liberating to blame those greed corporations for giving profit the top priority, but the truth is that corporations never cared because consumers never cared.
We, the consumers, have the nasty habit of looking for cheap before anything else. Whoever tries to sell quality, or to offer his hard-working employees a respectable wage, is painfully bitten by customers moving elsewhere.
The race to the bottom is a bit*h.
Consumers are not valuing cheap over everything else. If I'm unaware of why a $100 bike lock is better than the $20 bike lock and I buy the $20 bike lock that isnt me being cheap. That is the $100 bike lock manufacturers failure to convey the value of their product compared to other, more affordable, options.
All of this is wrapped up in another issue as well. Wealth. I'm at a point financially where I can pick the better and more expensive option. At many times in the past I bought the shit toilet paper because it was half the price and that meant I could stretch my paycheck a bit further.
I'm not going to get into how that could be alleviated but consumers care when they have the financial comfortability to care and when they are aware why they should care.
You were never able to just research how credit works. You needed the bank teller for this.
You were not able to compare prices and service before.
It was critical for you as a necessity that you trusted them.
For consumers our time is much better than it was before.
And yes due to global optimization it's just something bound to happen.
Instead of complaining that we have much better options and are more enabled to do things out way we should start to think how we want to shape the future.
I would love to talk about how we can further enhance the life's of everyone and how we live together than discussed if we still need to support checks.
It's like printed high-quality investigation journalism. We all decry that it's on its way out but the vast majority of us won't consider paying a 300$/year subscription even if most of the HN reader base could absolutely afford it. We just don't want to pay for stuff.
It's the same thing (to a lesser extent) with stocks and investment. I own a bunch of REIT (real-estate trust fund) because they give a great stable return that loosely follow inflation. A few months ago, my landlord increased my rent by 5% I was angry, felt like it was too much etc... but my landlord is very much the result of my investments pushing for inflation-matching dividends. If they don't meet the market expectation they'll just drop in value.
Anyway long story short we are part of the problem.
The worst part is that the sigh always precedes some generic hot take with no evidence or actual argument, just some copypasta we've seen on twitter before.
If you think the response to someone is stupidly obvious, then don't say it. Keep it to yourself.
Computers are not feeling machines, they’re calculators.
Humans are greatly varied, contradictory creatures with a seemingly bottomless internal mode.
You will get everything under the sun from out of humans. You will get discrete numerical calculations of out a computer.
My favorite example of this being restaurants that, when you ask for a menu, give you a QR code (with no explanation of course).
It just encourages them, but that's Canada, market economics don't apply here.
In Quebec, Desjardins (coop, on paper) has done lots of cuts and tries to compete with banks (many branches closed/merged), but when there are issues, I can easily get someone on the phone and they resolve it quickly and professionally.
1. lose access to your email. this can happen many ways -- whether your email account was compromised or your domain was lost or you forgot your password.
2. ??? welp good luck getting those oh-so-important bills and notices. and good luck resetting your access
Here's another scenario:
1. lose access to your email ten years ago and have to go through all that. now you're averse to any service even ten years later wanting to exclusively do business online
Speaking from experience.
Here's a third scenario:
1. don't "lose" access to your email. instead, get inundated with spam and phishing attempts. to combat that, create new emails. good luck changing your email address! I still have banks that send notices to email addresses that were completely removed from the account and present that same email address as a second factor for authorization; I'm very not-impressed with Chase bank. I fear the day that email address ever gets deleted specifically because so many businesses either don't allow changing the email or still use the email after it's been removed from the account
To have an opened bussiness in Spain now, you need to provide the government an email. The excuse is that they want to save paper and stop using the standard post. So you need to pay for internet access. There are still 5 millions of people in Spain that live in rural areas where they don't have a good access to internet or don't have access at all. Though luck if you are one of they. They will put all important legal messages related with your activity in that mail.
So if you lose the access to that email (or is hacked for a month and some mails are removed silently) now you have a problem. Missing the latest legal change or government requirement means that now you are doing things illegally or that you are refusing to provide them data about your company that they asked for. There is a liability and legal consequences attached.
But the mail just will tell you (genius move) that the government wants to tell you "something", but not what. To retrieve this message you need to provide a phone number so they will send you a code by watsup necessary to access the info. So now you need to use a Facebook app, want it or not, because the government "cares for your privacy".
The government will not receive you now without a cite, arranged by phone or web, so you can't just walk into the building and show your ID card to ask what they want. If you think that you can just visit the gov web page, good luck with that. Your important messages are somewhere in that black hole, as unreachable as in the bottom of the ocean.
So you need a phone, but neither a normal desktop phone nor an old reliable Nokia will be accepted. You need to provide a mobile of the spy-phone type.
Because for example, to receive your covid passport you need to scan a barcode now. So you must have a camera in your phone and an OS able to install an run an external app to scan 3d barcodes. Do you want to know why asking for covid passport in bars was a failure? This.
And if you have an crash car and the police emits a traffic report, they will give you a ticket full of 3D Codes linking to the report, the extra info, the laws that apply, and your rights. No spy-phone?, you can't access to your info.
They could just provide a link, a short chain of characters that is the universal way to navigate internet, but not. That would be too easy.
I had been contacted by phone by somebody in the government encouraging me to use their services more. I agreed to provide a mail to receive more info and some weeks later received a mail, asking me to provide a phone in order to access the info (so they can call me asking for a mail maybe?).
So either you agree to have a phone that tracks all your life now, or you are treated as a sub-citizen with less rights.
The researchers defined 4 levels of technology proficiency, based on the types of tasks users can complete successfully. There was a very good summary published here (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/) and excerpted below.
For each level, here’s the percentage of the population (averaged across the OECD countries) who performed at that level, as well as the report’s definition of the ability of people within that level:
"Below Level 1” = 14% of Adult Population
Being too polite to use a term like “level zero,” the OECD researchers refer to the lowest skill level as “below level 1.”
This is what people below level 1 can do: “Tasks are based on well-defined problems involving the use of only one function within a generic interface to meet one explicit criterion without any categorical or inferential reasoning, or transforming of information. Few steps are required and no sub-goal has to be generated.”
An example of task at this level is “Delete this email message” in an email app.
Level 1 = 29% of Adult Population
This is what level-1 people can do: “Tasks typically require the use of widely available and familiar technology applications, such as email software or a web browser.
There is little or no navigation required to access the information or commands required to solve the problem. The tasks involve few steps and a minimal number of operators.
The reply-to-all task described above requires level-1 skills. Another example of level-1 task is “Find all emails from John Smith.”
Level 2 = 26% of Adult Population
This is what level-2 people can do: “At this level, tasks typically require the use of both generic and more specific technology applications. For instance, the respondent may have to make use of a novel online form. Some navigation across pages and applications is required to solve the problem. The use of tools (e.g. a sort function) can facilitate the resolution of the problem. The task may involve multiple steps and operators.
An example of level-2 task is “You want to find a sustainability-related document that was sent to you by John Smith in October last year.”
Level 3 = 5% of Adult Population
This is what this most-skilled group of people can do: “At this level, tasks typically require the use of both generic and more specific technology applications. Some navigation across pages and applications is required to solve the problem. The use of tools (e.g. a sort function) is required to make progress towards the solution. The task may involve multiple steps and operators. Integration and inferential reasoning may be needed to a large extent.
The meeting room task described above requires level-3 skills. Another example of level-3 task is “You want to know what percentage of the emails sent by John Smith last month were about sustainability.”
Can’t Use Computers = 26% of Adult Population
The numbers for the 4 skill levels don’t sum to 100% because a large proportion of the respondents never attempted the tasks, being unable to use computers. In total, across the OECD countries, 26% of adults were unable to use a computer.
That one quarter of the population can’t use a computer at all is the most serious element of the digital divide. To a great extent, this problem is caused by computers still being much too complicated for many people.
Let that phrase sink in: across the OECD countries, 26% of adults were unable to use a computer. In some countries like Japan, the number is even higher (about 1/3 of Japan's population can't use computers, which may reflect the aging population, poor interface design, or some other factor.)
Now compare this to smartphone UIs based on swiping and hidden functionality. There's no chance.
Edit: Also 2FA, which requires complex interoperation on two different devices using dissimilar metaphors, each involving complex operations on their own. This is totally inaccessible.
I haven't done tech support for years (last was in ~2008) so I don't know if people are generally more savvy or not.
I also want to be clear: I'm not mocking anyone for lack of knowledge here. There is a huge population of people who cannot use computers properly. I don't believe that the solution is "make computers easier for people." I believe the solution is: customer service reps, paper billing, and other non-computer alternatives must be available for any service which is even remotely-important.
One of the persons in my sample is my father. He had an introduction to what must have been OS/2 Warp and even had a computer in the office, but never used it (there was still a secretary). In his retirement, he bought a book binder course on how to use an early version of Windows, but hadn't a computer to try it on his own, so this was yet again theoretical and mostly forgotten. At around 80, he finally acquired a laptop, but 10 years later he's essentially at the level described above. (Windows nowadays changing some of its metaphors on a regular basis, doesn't help.) On the other hand, at the age of 90, he's still able to adopt to the interface of a new camera. Partly, because camera UIs tend to be designed more on the principle of providing the least of an interference and mental load as possible, but also because he loves photography.
It is important to note that computing isn't a prime occupation for this generation: Yes, it's something they could do, yes, there may be interesting things, they try to participate, but overall, they can do without it and discovery is difficult, therefor, there's never an ultimate urge to adopt. Conversely, they are reduced to the most basic skill level, which doesn't especially promote interest, which in turn hinders progress. You could say, computers are inverse gamification devices for them. This is something to keep in mind, when designing accessible operations.
Edit: Adding alleged ease-of-access layers doesn't help. E.g., as may be inferred from the above, archiving and reviewing photos is a favorite occupation on the computer. Transferring and navigating stored photos is complex in its own and eventually mastered to a certain degree. (Still, I keep fixing the same míshaps.) However, adding layers like camera roll, moments or automatic links in the favorites bar, which eventually obscure the custom links placed for ease of access, doesn't help at all. On the contrary, it's just an opaque distraction and obstruction, which will be ignored at best, but will add to the confusion at least, because of their inherent time-based instability in what is supposed to be a stable layer of access. (Also, the "magical" appearance and disappearance of these items doesn't help the ability to form a stable mental model.) Don't do this, provide functionality like this as an option only. (Or, at least, have options to disable this.)
I've observed that any kind of "mode" that isn't extremely clear, visually is terrible for these sorts of folks (and, as with most things that give them trouble, are really terrible for everyone, we're just better at working past it than they are). Tabs that aren't extremely visually clear will leave these users "stuck" on the wrong one without realizing there even are tabs; filters or searches that don't make it super clear that you're "in" a filter or search will make them wonder where the hell all their stuff went, that kind of thing.
A nice example are non-modal security dialogs in web browsers: You initiate an action, which requires expressed acknowledgement to complete. The dialog is blocking, therefor requiring immediate response for the task not to stall. However, there's just a narrow ribbon sitting at the top of the content window waiting to be either acknowledged (probably requiring to initiate said task anew) or to be eventually dismissed by clicking its close button. This isn't natural to anyone, nor does it go with the flow of events, nor does it disclose itself easily to the uninitiated, nor does the addition of yet another element in the vertical flow of layout communicate the urgency and why the task is currently failing. – It's understandable that some users will give up at this instant and will therefor be locked out from using certain applications.
And older people have enough issues in their lives to be dealt another bunch of hardship from those that they are pretty much forced to do business with. But banks and other institutions have a hard time empathizing with the people whose representatives do not work at the bank.
Banks are rapidly shifting to going online completely, shutting down all of their offices and making it google-level impossible to contact them because that part costs them some money and they only really want the profitable parts of banking.
"don't read" and "can't read" aren't the same thing. Same for computers. A baseline ability to read is required to function in modern society. I'd argue the same is true for computers. That doesn't imply the user MUST use a computer or read books regularly on their own, only that they should be able to read or use a computer when life requires.
All that said, I do agree that there should be alternatives to online forms for paying bills, etc.
I would not have guessed that the statistics are _that_ bad. Even though most of the things I make are used by so called "non-technical" people - ignoring libraries and internal stuff tools. I just recently stopped a feature suggestion because we probed our client about the behavior and technical proficiency of their users. In SMBs it isn't even unusual that there is only a couple of or even just one technically literate person that does most of the computer work.
My take on this is as a developer is that we can pretty much ignore the 26% that doesn't use computers and the "below level 1"-ers except with pretty radical R&D. This might be a job for the Alan Kays and Bret Victors.
The assumptions about the rest of the users should probably be lowered drastically. Even stuff like the pancake/burger menu icon is on the table here (recently discussed on HN as being an UX-anti pattern). There is a book I want to read called "Calm Technology"[0], which is in part about accessibility but mostly about attention and the mental overhead associated with using computers.
That's a foundational problem for practically everyone involved in the creation of apps, software, websites, remote controls, ATMs, car consoles, etc. We make assumptions based on a very small sample of friends and peers, or extrapolate from the work of successful devs/designers/creators that a certain interface convention must be the right way to do it. We end up with hipster designs and frustrating interfaces that do a great disservice to a large portion of the population.
I posted this in the earlier "hamburger vs sausage icon" thread, but it's worth repeating: I am now my de facto tech support for two families (my own and my parents). I suspect many other HN users are in the same spot.
Every week I get calls or emails from my parents requesting help figuring out something that's not obvious from the UI, is accidentally triggered by users, deliberately activated (by the app) during a software update, or buried deep in some settings or submenu. This week's selection includes:
- Turning off yet again the annoying computer voice announcing any navigation or volume change on my parents' new Samsung TV (accessibility option, not sure why it turned on, but it required me visiting their home in person again to turn it off)
- Trying to help my father disable the "get Outlook for iOS" line that suddenly started to be appended to the bottom of his work emails.
- Helping my spouse troubleshoot a Shopify app feature that prevents >1 item being subtracted from inventory at a time
- Figuring out how to enable a social media save shared photos to her phone's photo album
- Explaining to my spouse that the three dots icon will show the remaining part of a truncated gmail message.
Yes, sometimes software is so complicated and feature rich these items have to buried deep in the settings. But often I find that the lack of obvious text labels for basic features and navigation items is the problem. Hamburger menus and the three dots "more actions" icon are a poor substitute for clear text labels and links.
I turned superstitious and in these terms tried to get lower and lower level. I had a bag with every piece of paperwork ever and carried it with me every time that just got bigger and bigger for no reason. Horde everything you don’t know what you’ll need. Trial and error different phrases like they had magical powers. In a way funny at the time and still funny now not counting the stress and anxiety.
When people proverbially flip a table in frustration with technology I relate it to that experience and I think it fits pretty well. To me it’s bureaucracy to them it’s tech. I’ve had good success teaching people to use tech and in tech support and in event coordination by keeping this in mind.
Here’s another: a job I had changed to a certain digital system for job orders. Don’t worry they said, what you need will be printed by your manager. I said don’t you mean to say “should” be? What are we to do if they aren’t? If printed in advance can we be assured they’re not out of date? That won’t happen they say. It did happen. Failed after a week. Leaving us to nut it out, which we did. The old system had us doing that work so in the end nothing changed but it just got more complicated because new boss wanted some fancy thing to help him with 10 employees and the few things a day we did, it wasn’t Microsoft scale or something. Technology and damn computers copped the blame from the old fellas but it wasn’t really technology was it?
Edit: sorry I’ll add one more thing, the success I mentioned was mostly about being patient and going through what happens when something goes off plan. To the person saying they ask all the time left click or right click, show them both. I did mean left click but here’s what happens when you right click. See? It doesn’t explode, a menu just pops up. So it’s no big deal if you forget. Also: here’s the steps. Repeat those steps for me. Ok now I’m going to start you from a random area of the website, you have to get back to the starting place and then do the steps. Ok now a different place. So if that little print icon isn’t where you think it’s meant to be you’re just in a different area. It goes from being a rote series of steps to a basic understanding when you demystify and strip away consequence, including the shame of being of being an international level expert at something who can’t do something society expects as basic.
Because WSHTF principle.
I'm preparing that someday maybe i would not be able to use smartphone or internet or bank or electricity or any other single point of failure the system depends on.
Still, I wonder what legal the situation is in the U.S., for that sort of "just tell 'em that they have to use our..." corporate cost-cutting, at less-able customer expense.
Now what they've done is shuttered a lot of actual branches but left the ATMs. The density of bank branches now is comparable to the density of post offices (in my "barrio" there is only one post office and now only one branch of my brank). It's not like they have to walk 20km now especially in the city.
However I do really think old people should be able to keep doing transactions as they were. They should not be forced to go online.
Of all segments, superficially seems they'd be the most able to visit a branch during business day. But a second thought says that's probably failing to think in their shoes.
For example, if they are less able to get around than younger segments, the issue could be being taken to the bank by a working family member who can only take them before or after the driver's working hours. (But driving is a US thing, while EU is chock full of busses, so maybe it's not driver, maybe it's availability of someone just 'accompanying' them.)
Other reasons?
As our population ages, and depending on the pool of problems causing the need for extended hours, I'm wondering if there's some service that could be offered to resolve whatever the collection of reasons are across not just banking but anything with limited hours that retirees need.
I called them every 15 days and the help line guy or gal was telling me "impossible, you cannot have this page". Despite having sent them a screenshot.
Then one day it was gone. Came back a year later, and gone again after two months.
I really like the bank so I did not switch but I was close to do so.
Computers or at least services should be intuitive you a noob or an expert should not need to decipher what to do next.
https://www.ghacks.net/2018/09/25/ublock-origin-can-block-ja...
Citation needed.