What are products and services that promise “convenience” but in practice have the opposite effect?
Example: I’ve never seen Apple Pay work correctly. It’s supposed to be this new innovation that’s going to make purchases faster and more secure, and you’ll never carry a credit/debit card ever again! But in reality, I’ve never seen it work smoothly. When I see someone waving their phone in front of the credit/debit machine, I move to another line, because they’re going to be at that for a while.
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I don’t think I ever paid a “Convenience fee” that I felt good about. For example, my theater only lets you buy tickets online, even at the box office you are buying tickets on their web site, but they charge a “Convenience fee”. Yes they waive it if you buy there at the box office or if you join their program but really? What convenience am I getting?
Those blister packs for pills. I hate those things. Takes me 5 minutes to get my stupid pill out, usually for something I need immediately, like nausea or migraine pills. Bastards. I think it’s just extra torture for the ill disguised as “convenience”.
I have clients that pay with apple pay. I don’t see how it is any faster, but I don’t see it as any slower either. They punch some stuff on their phone and wave it at the card reader, and “beep” transaction complete.
I would assume that it is because either the customer or the cahier is unfamiliar with the technology that causes the hold-up.
Now, as far as a “for your convenience” story that really wasn’t… I have Amazon for that. I kept noticing that deliveries that were supposed to be on saturday wouldn’t show up, then on monday (the only day that we are closed), I’d get a nasty call from the amazon delivery person demanding to know our hours (which are on the door, the website, and the facebook page), or a door tag from one of the other shippers. After some investigation, I found that Amazon had decided that since we were having “issues” with weekend deliveries, they would disable them, “for your convenience”, and reschedule it for monday, even though I’ve never had an issue with a weekend delivery that came before 7pm, and we are closed on Mondays.
Here in shanghai a number of stores have sprung up where you scan items, and pay, using your phone.
It’s far slower than conventional shopping because no app can beat the speed of a scanning device designed for that one and only purpose. Plus you may need to connect to their Wi-Fi if your phone signal sucks, some items inexplicably don’t work and you need assistance anyway, and other problems.
Fortunately many of those stores have converted to a hybrid model where you can use a checkout machine and just use your phone to pay.
I’m certainly familiar with it and I’m quite good at using it, although I don’t use it too often these days since I have a contactless credit card now which is a bit quicker. However, contactless cards are rare in the USA.
I once had a credit card company issue me a new card, without my asking, and claim it was for my convenience and an upgrade of some sort. But it was a truly new card with new numbers, which meant I had to go an change my information with every vendor I did business with regularly.
Cancelled the card. It would have been bad enough for them to merely take this action, but trying to claim it was for my convenience and benefit was ***ing offensive.
They do that when your credit card has been compromised. It’s a minor inconvenience compared to having to deal with the credit card company to remove charges – especially since the charges can come in as long as the card is valid.
I did notice years ago that when a company does something for your convenience, they’re doing it for their convenience, but in the case of the credit card, it benefits both of you.
The Keurig coffee machine. Hate them. We have well water so I had to lug home bottles of water. The filters are useless and expensive to replace . It takes twice the time to use it, plus the pods are stupid. And the coffee is bad.
French press for me.
I use Google Pay whenever I can, and it’s normally a lot faster to process than chip and PIN.
One issue I’ve seen is that in most Point-of-Sale systems require the cashier to select if the customer is paying using the card terminal. It’s pretty much automatic for them to do if they see the customer with a card in hand, but they don’t think about it when they see you holding a phone.
Similar to the smartphone/pay issue, the smartphone/boarding pass - a paper printout gets you thru in about one second, but with the phone you have to have it zoomed-in correctly, and at the exact correct angle. Unfortunately, you cant just go to another line, like at the store, so you WILL be there for a while.
That never once came up in the documentation they sent with the new card (that I subsequently cancelled) or when I spoke with them at length on the phone. And I’ve never had any false charges or security issues that I know of. Is there a reason they wouldn’t have told me if my card had been compromised in some way? They certainly seemed to be trying very had to get me to change my mind about closing the account.
And then there was the time I accidentally sent my electronic boarding pass into the trash (I tapped the wrong spot on the touchscreen by mistake) just as I was about to go through security. From then on, it’s paper every time.
I doubt that’s done for convenience; probably the opposite, like clamshell packaging you need an axe to open: they’re trying to make it a pain to get to one, so you won’t take too many.
I’ve heard that home washers & dryers were supposed to make laundry much simpler, but it had the opposite effect… people used to not have so many clothes and would send them out to be cleaned, and do a little spot cleaning during the week. Now that houses all have washers & dryers, somebody has to devote half a day every week (at least) to keep up with all the laundry.
IDK, I never get done with laundry. Since my early married days through 3 kids and lots and lots of dirt. It just never ends. I think Hell is a place full of dirty towels and clothes.
This has been my experience with self-checkouts; with one exception, every time I used one, I ran into problems and had to call an employee over, and it took MUCH longer than if I had simply waited in line for a cashier.
The one exception was a couple years ago when I was at Target and had two items, and EVERY.OTHER.LANE was several people deep with customers (excuse me, “guests”) who had overflowing carts, and there must have been a dozen people waiting in line at the express lane. :eek: I took my chances at the self-checkout, and had no issues - that time, anyway.