Some time ago I wrote to you regarding a cyber issue. I appreciated your response and it seems like you took my input seriously and changed accordingly so as to alleviate concerns about online scams and communication over E-mail.

Today I want to give some input regarding your branch at Manchester City Centre (Market Street).

In a nutshell, my wife and I had a 9:30 appointment and spoke to an employee whom we liked and has been very helpful to us in the past. We appreciated how she solved an issue and even communicated with us several time, by landline, to ensure the issue had been solved.

Today it seems like when handling us she was being supervised from the desk to us (accompanied from afar), where a person we assume to be her manager eavesdropped on our communication and threw mildly demeaning remarks our way (if not microaggression, definitely micro-managing the lady who served us, based on our intuition). The lady we sat with wanted to offer the services that we scheduled the meeting for, however this was interrupted by the other lady, who insisted we needed to do it using an “app” (which we don’t have) on our own. It was rather unpleasant, probably not only for us but also for the lady who served us.

After this appointment my wife and I spent some hours discussing this matter in a coffee shop down the road and decided to write to you about it. We want to be heard and we amicably ask for our input to be humbly considered. We write with good intentions, no bad faith here.

To keep this tidy, I wanted to take this opportunity to raise a number of pertinent concerns only partly related to this appointment (some are more general). The appointment started OK, but ended with some disappointment, not appointment per se.

1. Online Pressure and Discrimination Against ‘Offline’ Banking

When online banking was phased it more than 2 decades ago we were assured it would mostly enhance services rather than exclude or discriminate against people (e.g. things exclusive to some customers, not available to those who don’t opt in; some cannot feasibly opt in, see point (3) below).

My wife and I are both Computer Scientists and prefer for banking to be done in person. We know why. We know how computers work. Herding clients into “apps” and Web sites is not only unsafe; it’s also a risk. It is possible that things will not be done correctly, then blamed on the customers. Instead of saving time it might end up costing the customers a great deal of time, even distress.

2. In-Branch Services

We were told that there is guarantee of access to a branch, however the branch where we both opened out accounts more than a decade ago literally became a casino (the branch got closed, only to be replaced by a gambling shop near Piccadilly Station) and it looks like senior staff – i.e. people who know us and vice versa – was removed over time, only to be replace by much younger people who are less experienced and very dependent on colleagues. That slowed things done. Things that can (or could) take just 5 minutes would take up to an hour, sometimes even longer.

It moreover seems like every year more things become “online-only”, thus we are led to assume the end goal is for the bank to just become some “app” and Web site with no physical presences, no staff to approach, and no collaterals or assets with which to back savings. This seems like a risky gambit and a worrying trajectory that does not inspire confidence.

With banking, it all boils down to trust and confidence. People need to sense that they can confidently withdraw their money. They need to feel like the money is in safe hands.

3. Accessibility

For the sake of people with disability/ies (all of us are likely to become at least partly disabled at one point our our lives) it is crucial to maintain in-person services and imperative that assurances to this effect are given. Contrary to this, the impression given to us today is that such a commitment is gradually being phased out and banking with a human touch (as such) will be only temporarily available, leaving clients grappling to face persons who are qualified and familiar with the particular processes.

Please, can you investigate and clarify these matters? Our aim is not to belittle or insult anybody; we just try to do our best to improve the service or the perceived customer experience. We felt like we witnessed today competing interests: the profit motive against the clients’ genuine interest.

4. Customer-First Approach

In 2000 I was already a very early adopter of online banking, but now I partly regret what became of it; it seems to be means of outsourcing labour from bank staff to the clients, both at the expense of staff and clients and at risk (accountability) to staff and clients, for neither stands to benefit from this role-passing, i.e. it’s detrimental to us all, even your own staff, whose future seems increasingly uncertain. There is no lack of manpower (there are many people out there eager to find a job), there is just a race to the bottom in terms of filling up positions (or simply deprecating them altogether).

Let me explain.

Today at the till I was served by the same lady whom I reported before, after she had stolen one pound from me (in change) THREE TIMES IN A ROW…

Not kidding.

I’ve been trying to avoid her since then and when reporting her I said the goal wasn’t to get her sacked but to stop the stealing (it’s impossible to get such basic maths wrong “by accident” three times in a row).

Today I could not avoid her. She just sat in place of a colleague when I was in a queue (taking a colleague’s seat)… and did it to me ONCE AGAIN the same short-changing (one pound; same as always) along with the same excuse, so again I had to wait there for a boss to “correct” the mistake, then stood there at Customer Service to report the person (who already did this to me and is still there… and still up to the same old things). My assumption is that she can short-change (one pound) about 10 people per shift and then pocket a tenner without the register detecting an anomaly. Maybe she tips herself (bonus) that way… but at whose expense and at what cost to the reputation of the business, the time/patience/composure of the customers and so on?

But wait, it gets worse.

At first Customer Service turned down my request to report this worker or their stealing, in effect covering up for her. They decided to say all the managers were “at the/a meeting” (which I doubted, it’s just a classic excuse and that shop has about 10 managers on duty). I persisted, persevered, and only after (several other) further arguments they magically found a manager who could come out and pick the report. He seemed a little junior for a manager, but let’s not be too judgemental of appearances. They then made an excuse for why a manager becomes available when the issue becomes more of a nuisance or a risk. Why lie to the customer? Never lie to the customers. Whether the customer is “always right” or not, do not lie.

This is really awful and I said that if they have staff stealing from the shop, that’s one thing, but don’t steal from the customers. Pay them better perhaps; one man next to me at the till had a good joke about how “they need to make money”. He didn’t doubt this was intentional; it kept happening. It will probably keep happening unless I can avoid this cashier every time in the future. But what about other people? They might think it’s an accident or not even notice.

Businesses being apathetic to staff that steals is a very big problem. I’ve already spent about an hour (all combined) dealing with and reporting this issue. They don’t compensate me for the time and trouble; heck, it doesn’t seem like they even do anything with my reports, so what’s the point reporting it to them? Maybe even an external entity would treat this issue as too “low-value” to merit proper investigations. This means people can get away with a lot of cheating (or petty thieving) as long as it’s not “big enough”.

In hindsight, it was always hard to get a hold of a boss to report these issues too. It was slow, cumbersome, almost impossible – maybe by design. Maybe Customer Service people even get trained in stonewalling people.

The world is becoming a cruel place, not just to staff but also to customers.

Labour Party, please investigate!

The UK riots killed almost nobody. If the experimental vaccine has caused the deaths of more than 1,000 people per week (until now!), then we must know. Knowing if the first step towards accountability.

I’ve just checked bank accounts (it’s taking a long time because the login processes have become super-cumbersome), having already phoned BT several times, and the issue remained unsolved for several months. It was starting to seem like it’s intentional, a pattern, not some accident. It’s hard to imagine how you get it wrong three times in a row, but then again all services getting worse seems like the “new normal” and “enshittification” was coined to describe this phenomenon.

The other day I told the energy supplier to quit spamming me about spymeters (they nagged me about it over 100 times over the years) and after they said they’d stop they merely started doing it every single day, i.e. it got even worse. The spam comes through the box (physical), inbox, and sometimes even phonecalls.

We need to demand change, not learn to accept this degradation of services.

EVERAL years ago I wrote about the spamming I had been receiving about spy meters. I must have been nagged about it about 100 times already. It’s very time consuming at this rate and frequency. They even phone us sometimes to nag us about it.

By their own admission, more than a third of their clients do not want spy meters. So we’re not some tiny minority or a ‘fringe’.

Anyway, in recent days they kept spamming me some more and even a day after they told me it would stop they carried on as usual. See below.

E.ON Next wrote on 19/02/2024 15:20:
> Hi Roy Schestowitz,????
>
> Thank you for your email.
>
> I am Shameemah Your Energy Specialist that will be assisting you today.
>
> We have reviewed your account and due to what you have mentioned we have updated your email address on the account to the one you have provided us with [...].
>
> We have done a few health checks on the account and we can see that we do require up to date meter readings this is to avoid your readings being estimated and we need regular readings to bill your account accurately to that you won’t be under or over charged as this could lead to future debt onto your account and we do not want that.
>
> To avoid this I know the days can get busy and can forget we do see that you are eligible to have a free smart meter installed its not complicated basically like the normal meter, however with a smart meter we will be getting readings automatically without you have to send manual readings regularly, your account will be billed regularly and accurately, you will also receive a free in home display a monitor which you will be able to monitor your usage.
>
> Before I can book your appointment there are just a few questions I need you to answer so I can ensure the appointment is correct and the engineer has all the information they’re going to need on the day.

I already told you, REPEATEDLY, to stop spamming me about this.

You agreed but didn’t keep the promise.

You’re still doing this.

Please STOP.

Ross from E.ON Next wrote on 19/02/2024 18:42:
> Hello Roy.
>
> I will remove correspondence about this from your account.

Nonsense. The SPAM continues just less than 24 hours later.
I will relay to you the SPAM.

At this stage I might just terminate the contract with you and report the SPAM, or unsolicited mail.

Notice the date on this email

——– Forwarded Message ——–
Subject: smart meters
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2024 11:30:47 +0000
From: Shameemah from E.ON Next <shameemah.bowers@eon-next-cabac46b5ea2.intercom-mail.com>

Hi Roy Schestowitz,????

Thank you for your email.

I am Shameemah Your Energy Specialist that will be assisting you today.

We have reviewed your account and due to what you have mentioned we have updated your email address on the account to the one you have provided us with ….

[then pushing for spy meters again]

WO months ago a BT advisor said I would not be charged 10 pounds (spurious fee). He assured me it would not happen and if it did happen, I should phone to rectify it.

Weeks passed and they did charge me, contrary to what their staff had said. So I phone up, waited on the line for a very long time, and they then said they would remove that charge. They even sent a formal E-mail to confirm the charge would be canceled.

Today the bill came and the correction has still not been made. This means that I already needed to get on the phone with BT thrice to rectify the issue. Maybe the strategy is to tire me down, hoping that a very busy lifestyle would lead to defeatism and make BT a little richer (just due to these tiring barriers and several false promises).

That’s a lot of trouble to go through, basically to argue over money that is barely worth the time anymore.

I am still on the phone at this very moment. Maybe all those calls have thus far totalled at one hour and it’s still not resolved.

Quick update: Moments ago the person on the line (third person already) said he would escalate this to his manager because something went wrong. It’s not my fault but theirs; the person I spoke to does not even know how to sort this out.

Just over a day ago I went to the local bank and then visited 2 more banks. I could not help but notice that the people facing public at the bank are young and inexperienced, maybe by intention. This makes them not only cheap to employ but also rather useless as advisors or whatever else you might need. It’s like talking to an intern, not even a clerk, or a person herding people into “apps”/self-checkout (the latter is a good analogy for what bank “apps” actually are).

I spoke to a friend about it and he told me it is the same at the one remaining bank office where he lives. He said “they probably get minimum wage, if that…”

Maybe part-time temporary hanging by a thread, obeying every request from just about anyone else in the branch.

Just for the record, Nationwide had a young and borderline rude ‘clerk’, who wasn’t even a clerk and was totally not helpful, probably even lying to prevent me talking to the supervisor (lying is bad, no matter what). At NatWest, however, they had like a 50-year old, who not only escorted me for advice at the cushy office but also phoned the number for me and let me have the room for myself (to talk to “Richard” over the telephone). I thanked her at the end. That was good service. In the past I ranted a lot about NatWest, but on that occasion the service was better. Having said that, they too try to send people to “apps” and “Web sites”…

I am neither young or old, so I can probably not be accused of ageism when I say older workers tend to be nicer, at least at banks; or as a friend put it, “probably the youngest are not just rude but full of rage and lash out or more commonly just plain mean…”

I said that when you are 20-25 and have no prospect of long-term career in the discipline, the desire to learn in depth the job – and its context – may diminish because there is something to be said about giving assurances to professionals and consistent specialities.

But this leads me to the main subject/purpose of this post, which is to rant about banks expecting people to carry around a mobile “phone” and then install (and in turn learn) proprietary “apps” instead of doing things over the counter. According to media in Zimbabwe, as per a report from the other day, banks there got rid of about 75% of their workers. Not only is this bad for employment; it also means that many services previously done by skilled people are no longer offered. The banks go through a process of “enshittification” for the purpose of “cost-savings” and we all – collectively – pay the price. Resist and don’t let them get away with it. Demand that they have staff you can speak to, not some “app” you can download if you carry around a spying device (you ought not).

Summary: Today we conclude this week’s series, which explained how Sirius isn’t just funded by the British government but is also protected by the British government; HMRC is not responding to fraud reports (sent exactly 4 weeks ago) and Action Fraud, overseen by a client of Sirius (since 2013), does not seem to have even opened the Pension Fraud complaint (it sent a template response after exactly 4 weeks^*)

WHEN we finally reach Tuesday or Wednesday (next week) it will be 4 weeks since my Member of Parliament contacted Action Fraud regarding the pension fraud complaint that Action Fraud is ignoring. Action Fraud has still not bothered responding to her. I’m not the sole victim of this fraud. Former colleagues were robbed as well (a lot of money was covertly stolen). For the time being we’re closing this series and will post another further update/s anew. This isn’t the end. This is only the beginning of a rather broad political scandal. Can one trust a government to regulate itself or its contractors? Can one complain to a government about abuse against its own workers? This in many ways resembles the EPO scandals. The EPO even invented its own Ombuds office or “EPO’s Ombuds service”, created and controlled by those who spent over a decade committing crimes at the EPO. Such “Ombuds” is farcical; it’s an exercise in optics (giving people out there the mere illusion of accountability).

Gaslighting and/or self-induced defeatism (learned helplessness) is a potent weapon leveraged against the impatient and unmotivated. We’re neither impatient nor unmotivated, so this will carry on and on until a resolution is found and the perpetrators of the crime are arrested.
_____
^* Out of business hours on a weekend. It seems safe to assume no actual person sent that.

moved to fibre-optics earlier this year. It was already possible in 2021, but following a series of blunders I decided to delay the transition by nearly 2 years.

The thing about it this year is, BT lied about various things. It also lied about speeds (downstream and upstream) of the connection. How do I know? Well, the other day I did large uploads and then BT all of a sudden phoned me. It was a sales rep. He almost immediately started asking me if I wanted to upgrade speeds. I politely declined and explained why.

But now it’s changing some more. It now ‘feels’ different; now they seem to be severely throttling my uploads (probably to upsell again after a ‘free trial’ which lasted a fortnight; after this trial they tried to upsell it several times). How desperate are they for extra money?

Everyone knows that fibre should not be 100kB/sec upstream, no matter what (unless there is something wrong at the other end, the receiving end).

They want more money, so they hobble/throttle by upstream speeds and then phone me to ask me to pay more. They want me pay yet more money to get what I ALREADY paid for. Not nice. Will they be doing so more aggressively once they’ve transitions almost everyone to fibre-optics, under-delivering intentionally?

Your misery and impatience should not be their profit prospect. Because then they have a financial incentive to make you miserable or less productive.

BT “customer services” may fancy saying they don’t intentionally slow down connections, but of course they do. Selling you back the “real” speed is part of the business model. It’s a class system.

THE power supplier we have is not the power supplier we chose. It was inherited by us when we moved in a decade ago and it has since then been acquired by another company, which I’ve endlessly ranted about in the past. The original company, nPower, was relatively OK, but E.ON Next sucks. The above recording is my phonecall or reach-out to E.ON Next regarding what happened with Cadent Gas Limited — a company that basically ruined my entire day and might ruin several more days ahead. Cadent Gas Limited management is unapologetic about it, but at least E.ON Next promises to follow up with a call some time later (unspecified time), so maybe there will be updates ahead.

Is it not astounding that E.ON Next charges almost 150 pounds just to turn off the gas? It sounds like a penalty, not a sane bill for such a trivial job. In a free market of true competition, would such penalties exist? Also, why aren’t the pipes managed by the Council anyway? Why has everything been outsourced to opportunistic privatisers?