The dumbing down of services via the internet

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nunz

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#237598 9-Jun-2018 13:18

I know I'm getting older and older folk tend to get cranky about stuff but the internet / cloud services are dumbing down basic services more and more and more.

Technology is meant to improve our lives not limit our options and cause as much grief as it does.

Case in point

Bank balances, since banks were created and had ledger books (so at least 200 plus years) have had a simple formula.

Opening balance, plus all ledger entries = final balance.

Not any more. Westpac have confirmed this is not always the case. Now I understand there maybe pending transactions (uncleared) but the way that is handled is there is a discrepancy between AVAILABLE BALANCE and LEDGER BALANCE that takes this into account. What I do not expect is that my ledger balance does not equal opening balance,plus transactions.

200 plus years of standard practice flushed because of technology. I spent a wasted hour trying to balance my cashbook against the Westpac balance and failed to do so until I phoned them to figure out the discrepancy.

It turns out I'm not the only person asking how why this isn't so - having trouble reconciling bank accounts. Westpac say this is just the way it is.

Thanks Westpac cloud services and technology. Basic processes broken again. 200 plus years of common practice flushed for no good purpose. Well done. You've made the world a dumber and more difficult place. Good job!

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#2032490 9-Jun-2018 13:22

Change banks?

nunz

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#2032526 9-Jun-2018 14:10

afe66:

Change banks?

Not the point.

Cloud services are dumbing things down. Choice is being eroded (e.g. cloud services make 1 update changing things for everyone) - old software gave you the choice to remain or change.

Cloud services are low cost services, high turn over low profit - employing people in poorer countries who will work for peanuts but who conversely cant provide great service. We are becoming used to hearing that you have to wait 30, 60, 120 minutes for service. Its now normal and not considered absolutely pathetic client service.

Cloud services crowd source solutions so your support for paid products often involves asking that great pool of ignorance known as the community blog / forums. you have to wade your way through mis-informed guess work to finds a nugget of pure gold. google i'm looking at you for that one.

Cloud services, like Westpac, employ people who are more interested in style than substance. Look at the new updates to apps, OS interfaces etc - giving us muck we don't want or need but eroding basic functionality. The knobs who think that ledger balances dont need to match transactions - as that's their process - are idiots and managed by idiots. After all the managers let them do stuff that is so stupid its unbelievable.

Got a moto phone from work. Contacts - cant put them in groups so cant do group texts. New outlook - puts my emails into focused and other groups - which have no overlap as 'unfocused' new emails don't show in the other list. Had to turn all that crud off to actually see emails i was missing and install a better contacts app.

The single button fingerprint enabled control is no where near as easy as the three button version and finger print recognition is still rubbish. I've registered one of my fingers three times, trying different angles trying to get it to consistently recognize my print - it cant - the joys of outdoor work, glue, scraping, dirt etc. makes basic usage really tough.

moto - its a phone - I love the camera and hardware but phoning and texting now requires more pushes of buttons and is dumbed down functionality. you've missed the point. Oh yeah -no notifications in the icons so I cant tell if the beep was a new email, text or missed call - without swiping down the notifications at the top. Style over substance.

this is the new normal in tech - especially cloud services. freshbooks bought out version two. The app now needs 2-3 more button pushes to track time and lists (like contacts) are ordered by last used date and no way to order contacts by something completely weird like maybe names? this is the new tech normal - especially for cloud services

Maybe I'm old and cranky or maybe it is that age lets you remember how some things used to be. Like my bank let me walk in the door and gave me a proper ledger balance. Oh yeah - they also smiled and said hello. Lets see cloud services doing that.

amiga500

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#2032574 9-Jun-2018 15:54

I had similar problems with the Nokia 6 finger print setup. As one gets older the finger prints get fainter and fainter. However, I'm sure this does not worry police as other age related ravages to the body preclude most from taking up burglary as a nice little earner.

nunz

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#2032625 9-Jun-2018 16:48

amiga500:

I had similar problems with the Nokia 6 finger print setup. As one gets older the finger prints get fainter and fainter. However, I'm sure this does not worry police as other age related ravages to the body preclude most from taking up burglary as a nice little earner.

> I'm sure this does not worry police as other age related ravages to the body preclude most...

Speak for yourself :) Just turned 50 and am stronger than I've ever been. At the gym it is the guys in their late 40s and 50s who are lifting the largest weights and pushing more iron. Even with a crippled leg I am still leg pressing 2 -3 times more than anyone I've seen under 30 or so years of age.

Wood work and manual work seems to be my biggest issue. I think I'm sand papering my prints off almost daily. But you have given me an idea .... :b

DaveB

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#2032660 9-Jun-2018 17:05

nunz:

afe66:

Change banks?

Not the point.

Cloud services are dumbing things down.

maybe it is that age lets you remember how some things used to be. Like my bank let me walk in the door and gave me a proper ledger balance. Oh yeah - they also smiled and said hello. Lets see cloud services doing that.

You are quite correct, we are being dumbed down. Afe66 suggests to change banks and you are quite correct that is not the point. A change of service provider does not achieve much in most cases, because the service provided by their competitor is not much better.

I struggle with what I experience nowadays, but I don't blame those poor underpaid, slow responding, responsibility avoiding staff that appear to be so prolific nowadays. It's not their fault. Technology in business has taken responsibility away and many employees are no longer provided an opportunity to take ownership of a problem. I'm quite sure, most would stand up and be counted - if they could.

But fear not. We have a other things going on and making headlines within the internet that will improve our lives:-

Google removes egg from salad emoji, makes it vegan-friendly
The emoji redesign gives us "a more inclusive vegan salad."

I like my generation gap. I think it must be my warped sense of humour, because I see so much weird PC stuff going on.

tdgeek

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#2032669 9-Jun-2018 17:32

I dont quite get the dumbed down aspect.

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Journeyman

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#2032675 9-Jun-2018 17:41

nunz:

200 plus years of standard practice flushed because of technology. I spent a wasted hour trying to balance my cashbook against the Westpac balance and failed to do so until I phoned them to figure out the discrepancy.

What's a cashbook?

nunz

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#2033242 10-Jun-2018 19:32

tdgeek:

I dont quite get the dumbed down aspect.

Ledgers, cashbooks, accounts systems in general run on simple rules. e.g. Opening balance plus transactions = ledger balance.

So when you open a bank account, add in all the transactions you should get a balance equal to the equation above.

With westpac you don't. The balance does not equal what should be there. That's dumb - or worse than dumb - completely screwed!! How do you balance your accounts if they cant give you correct ledger balances.

Other examples:

contact lists have always been name order ascending, with the ability to search in other ways. Freshbooks app is now ordered by last used so the names are in the order you last saw them in - with no way to search through alphabetically. Unless you entered them alphabetically- then they are never ever ever in a sensible order to find stuff.

Moto contact book - cant put people in groups so you cant group text or see who is in a group.

Don't even get me started on the crippleware aspects of online office, MYOB online, xeros deficiencys compared to traditional software or a raft of other examples such as - can excel online do a pivot table? (clue - the answer is no).

We are being pushed into subscription based, cripple ware that they then change as they please leaving you at the mercy of the designers who think trendy is better than practical or even working.

nunz

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#2033246 10-Jun-2018 19:42

Journeyman:

nunz:

200 plus years of standard practice flushed because of technology. I spent a wasted hour trying to balance my cashbook against the Westpac balance and failed to do so until I phoned them to figure out the discrepancy.

What's a cashbook?

Oh you poor dear. Imagine not ever having the joy of having real money, with a positive balance instead of debt, and actually getting to look at a book and add up lines of numbers.

Cash - Analog money now replaced by digital balances and electronic systems. Always positive balance. No debt.

Book - analog blog or web page, now replaced by facebook and web sites where you cant find the data you just looked at 2 seconds ago coz its updated.

=> Cashbook - an analog system that didn't change your balances automatically, and let you manage your own money, without ripping out new and user improved fees and penalties. It let you see how much money you had, and manage your budget, even if you had no batteries or internet connection. Vastly superior to todays stuff :)

Whoops sorry - introduced another anachronism - budget = actually planning what you'll do with your money and saving up for stuff - proactively.

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#2033364 10-Jun-2018 20:58

Does that Google salad have any veggies? Only asking because we need to be inclusive of the fruitarians too. :-)

mudguard

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#2033384 10-Jun-2018 22:09

I'm not sure I've ever noticed a discrepancy between pending transactions and the actual balance being incorrect. I don't have any desire to go 30 years back in time either. The only time I see a pending transaction is when I've filled up at say Gull and it charges $150, then it drops off to the correct amount a few days later. I see it as the price to pay (temporarily) to fill up and avoid people queuing to get coffee. Or if I've purchased something overseas.

If there is a discrepancy then it should be fairly straight forward to reconcile, put it in writing and email it in and ask. Otherwise change banks.

Is the finger print reader compulsory on your phone? I can't install alternate apps on my work phone, so at least that's a bonus for you. The native contact app on my personal phone, an LG has groups. I rarely send text messages so I don't have the need, but it can be done.

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#2033580 11-Jun-2018 11:52

Is there an actual need to balance transactions up to now or yesterday? Surely you can get the internet banking to only display transactions older than say 3 days ago. So any pending transactions should have processed by then. And the ledger balance should then tally up with your transactions.

Benjip

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#2033621 11-Jun-2018 12:40

nunz:

Oh you poor dear. Imagine not ever having the joy of having real money, with a positive balance instead of debt, and actually getting to look at a book and add up lines of numbers.

More like oh you poor dear, having to manually manage a "cash book" in 2018. Let the bank software do its thing – that's what it's there for.

Or should we go back to a cash-only society so you can literally count your physical dollars & cents every day?

Some of the things you've mentioned have merit but they just sound like poor product design (fingerprint scanners not working – you could try Face ID instead and not have to worry), rather than a "dumbing down" of technology.

I for one am loving the new age of subscription-based services (eg. Adobe CC and Office 365), meaning everyone is on a level playing field and I don't have to back-save my files when sharing with other users.

nunz

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#2034852 13-Jun-2018 09:59

mudguard:

I'm not sure I've ever noticed a discrepancy between pending transactions and the actual balance being incorrect. I don't have any desire to go 30 years back in time either. The only time I see a pending transaction is when I've filled up at say Gull and it charges $150, then it drops off to the correct amount a few days later. I see it as the price to pay (temporarily) to fill up and avoid people queuing to get coffee. Or if I've purchased something overseas.

If there is a discrepancy then it should be fairly straight forward to reconcile, put it in writing and email it in and ask. Otherwise change banks.

Is the finger print reader compulsory on your phone? I can't install alternate apps on my work phone, so at least that's a bonus for you. The native contact app on my personal phone, an LG has groups. I rarely send text messages so I don't have the need, but it can be done.

You can circumvent fingerprints using patterns but you are still stuck with a single button that you need to manipulate and it responds to not only direction of movement but also length of movement. Also it doesn't respond. Talking to folks post 50 many of them struggle with touch screen as it doesn't read or sense their touch. Possibly age changing electro-static stuff on the skin.

nunz

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#2034860 13-Jun-2018 10:07

Aredwood: Is there an actual need to balance transactions up to now or yesterday? Surely you can get the internet banking to only display transactions older than say 3 days ago. So any pending transactions should have processed by then. And the ledger balance should then tally up with your transactions.

Yes. How can you know you have not made a mistake if you cant balance? Also (not being rude here) why should a bank suddenly change hundreds of years of standard, industry best practice?

Westpac doesn't give a balance from three days ago - another dumbing down is each line no longer has a running total so you can only rely on final balance. if its wrong you are toast..

I have no issues with pending transactions. Industry best practice is:

Opening balance + transactions processed = ledger balance.

Available balance = ledger balance - (pending transactions + uncleared funds. )

Simple - effective, helpful, workable, and best (in fact only) practice.

Balancing the books means you know

If you have made a mistake.
Someone hasn't mis-processed a transaction

You can track unpresented items, pending items etc so you know how much money you have left after all committed funds are accounted for.

Also IRD - if I'm doing my GST then I need to know my figures are correct otherwise I am under / over paying and then have to do a correction next GST return and if you do too many adjustments the IRD are going to look at you funny.

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