Nothing Is Straightforward Anymore
I find that every task these days requires jumping through various hoops in order to prove who you are. The last few weeks have been a nightmare with 3 different scenarios having to prove your identity even though they know it is you.
My daughter when renewing her British passport for the third time had to get a chartered accountant to verify who she was. It was either a chartered accountant or a member of parliament which for some reason we should all know one personally. This delayed her renewal process because the chartered accountant had to log on and fill out a 10 minute questionnaire and also submit a copy of his passport. These are serious hoops to jump through which I consider road blocks designed to slow the process down.
This week I was busy claiming an policy that came due and it involved having to fill out various forms which is the easy part and then having to have my passport copies verified at the police station. The payment that is due is going back into the same bank account that has been paying the monthly debit orders for the last 20 years. I can understand all the security checks if the policy was going to a different name or being paid into a different bank account. Common sense should tell you I am the person who has been paying this and the same person who is now claiming what is owed.
The same story with my National Insurance number required by the people who pay me monthly. They have it on record because I see it partially on the pay slips even if 4 of the digits are x'ed out for security reasons. When I had to phone an external agency to help me retrieve the number she queried why I didn't just ask the payroll people. When I told her they would not hand over the number she said no worries and someone who I have never had any dealings with before can get hold of it within 7 days. There was no funny questions and all she required was a copy of my passport via a photograph. No verification process by having someone else tell them I am who I say I am which is ludicrous.
I do understand that the entire system is under scrutiny due to identity theft along with the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants wanting your passport. In Calais the one year we had our passports stolen and I managed to get mine back, but apparently these are hot ticket items where most stolen passports are used to try and get someone into the country by using and doctoring that same passport.
The system which used to run fairly smoothly with the occasional hiccup is no longer a simple process and I do think it has been designed this way on purpose. Firstly it creates more jobs due to having added many more steps and the people employed are not exactly the smartest. Surely some type of security steps over the phone would be far easier and more efficient.
Last week both my children's bank accounts were compromised when the bank had a data breach . My daughter managed to secure her funds, but my son had money removed which the bank will now reimburse. I checked and there has been no news of this by FNB which was the bank involved.
The digital world should be making things easier and not harder yet here I am struggling to see where the improvements are. My thoughts are you can make it as efficient as you want it and on the evidence I have experienced they are making it as inefficient as possible for a reason.
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I'm sorry you have had to go through all of that.
Crazy really when the same bank account paid this policy for 25 years and then they query your identity. I understand if it was going to another bank account, but it is not.
Yeah, that is ridiculous!
I "try" to be patient with things like that only because of the identity theft thing that happens so much. I try to convince myself the hassle is worth it if it keeps some thief from being able later to get something that belongs to me. It doesn't make it fun, but "if" it works, I guess I can understand.
I don't know what the answer is, I'm not that smart, but there are folks that are smart enough to have figured out a good while back, how to get some of the theft stopped. That's my theory anyway.
Every single day at some point my wife and I find ourselves saying "Why doesn't anything in this country work any more ?"
Whether it's problems with Royal Mail, unnecessary bureaucracy around something which should be simple, endless railway maintenance and delays, having to take three separate days off work because an installer didn't turn up for the first two appointments..... nothing in the UK works.
It's embarrassing. A lot of it is companies using automation to save money on staff, and just as much is spurred by crazy legislation. How much of it is down to incompetence and how much is malice is an interesting discussion all of it's own.
As the owner of a small business, I see larger suppliers deliberately making pointless work for us through policy changes etc, and I believe it's entirely down to malice. They work on the logic that tying small companies up in pointless administrative tasks will prevent them growing and becoming a competitor in the future.
Not makes much sense anymore. Services in general have disappeared and not many seem to care and just see their work as a job and nothing else. The larger companies are the worst offenders and I try and only deal with smaller firms.
Govt things and regulatory mechanisms are always complex from the get-go.
More digitization is needed to meet the emerging issues, instead of bureaucratizing it.
Exactly that's too hectic to do. It takes alot of time to renew all the things which are already once completed