When did life get so complicated?

I consider myself to be reasonably au fait with technology.  I can use a smart phone, a laptop and know what buttons to push to get results. However, if something goes wrong, I am less knowledgeable about how to fix it. My poor hearing also lets me down when I have to telephone somebody to resolve the problem. I've had a week where I was grappling with technology and not very well at that. 

First off, I had ordered something from Amazon 16 days ago and it had not arrived within the two days predicted. Looking at my online account, I soon saw that it said Delivery Date Currently Unavailable. Not sure what that meant I had rung Amazon customer services and the person on the end of the line spoke poor English. That with my poor hearing made for a very awkward conversation. What I think I eventually understood was that he would contact the seller and also give me a £5 voucher to use in future for my inconvenience. Five days later, I still had not received the item, nor heard from the seller, nor received the £5 voucher, although I was able to see on my Amazon account that my call had been relayed to the seller as "the product was not what I thought it was"!! So another call to Amazon. This time I hope I was able to relay that I'd like a refund. Having checked again online, I think I have been successful as I have received an email to say a refund will be issued.

Another problem was a few days ago. I woke to find my landline was out of order. It was converted to the BT Digital Voice service a year ago and is now dependent on having broadband. Obviously when the broadband  goes down, you need a separate (mobile) phone to contact BT. When I picked up my landline handset a voice  told me I could not make calls and to contact BT on another phone system. Yet my laptop was working on broadband and my mobile was receiving broadband signals from my broadband too, so I deduced the problem must be solely with the landline itself.  I tried ringing customer services from my mobile, but was directed by bot chat to unplug all internet router and phone leads, reconnect and see what happened. Still nothing and still the voice saying I couldn't use my landline. Eventually on my laptop I was able to arrange for a BT engineer to call in two days' time. The following day, the landline was still out of action, but then a few hours later I got an incoming call and when I tried the landline I found at last I could make outgoing calls again. What caused the problem and how it resolved before the engineer appointment I have no idea. Suffice to say, the blimmin thing was working again,  I could heave a sigh of relief and cancel the engineer.

The third thing to give me grief this week was when I tried to access a savings account I have online. Up to now, I have always dealt with this company (let's call them Savings R Us) by letter. A few months ago I had decided to access my account online and had set up a password and some security questions as is the norm these days. On accessing the account online, it refused to accept my email address and password and after three attempts, locked me out of the account. I was then advised to contact customer services either by chat bot or by phone. I thought chat bot would be simpler and not cause me stress if I couldn't hear, so proceeded to chat to Luciano. I was asked for my name, address and email address, all of which I passed with flying colours, but when I was asked for my National Insurance Number, I was told I had given the wrong information and was I sure? Luciano asked could I check again?  I had given the correct NI number, so Luciano said he was sorry, but I would have to complete a form as there was a discrepancy. I clicked on the link for the form, but then saw it was asking me what was my old address and now what was my new address. I have lived at the same address for over 38 years, so didn't know why I was being asked for an old address. All very weird. In the end, I told bot Luciano to **** off, as we were clearly not on the same wavelength. I then tried to ring Savings R Us. After pressing options 4, then 2, then 6 I finally got to speak to a human being. He had a thick accent from goodness knows where, so again I was having huge problems communicating. I think in the end he felt sorry for the old biddy I was sounding like, so sent me a link to change my password. I made the password "Savings R Us is a pain in the a*se" and finally got through to my account. When I checked my profile, I noticed that my NI number was not remotely like mine (and therefore obviously the stumbling block getting the correct security question posed by Luciano). So I then had to ring Savings R Us up again. I finally got through to someone who spoke beautifully enunciated English. It is a complete mystery why they had the incorrect NI for me. I was told it was obviously a mistake by the person in the company who had initially recorded my NI number over 25 years ago! It has now been changed recording the correct number.

I thought technology was supposed to make life easier, but in my experience, when it goes wrong, it goes wrong in annoying proportions that cause more trouble than it is worth.