My Top Ten Tech Pet Peeves

The latest weasel-y development from Amazon: If they discover (usually because of massive numbers of customer complaints) that a product on their site is fraudulent, rather than banning the vendor from the site (which might entail costly investigation and/or litigation) they put this innocuous message on the product listing. 

Something about technology that doesn’t work properly just sets me off. I know I’m overreacting, but that doesn’t stop me. I can fume about it for hours, and even for days if it’s not resolved. I just expect things to work, or to be simple to correct when they don’t. When you buy something, I’ve always believed, there’s an implicit contract that says you should get what you paid for, no delays, and no questions asked.

What’s worse, I know that it’s (usually) unfair to blame people and companies for these failings. Of course they’re trying to maximize profit, but they know that (unless there’s no competition) they can’t continue to provide shoddy products and crappy service and expect to stay in business. But that just makes it more maddening when things don’t work properly.

Here are my current ‘top 10’ most annoyingly dysfunctional technologies and tech-based companies and services:

1. Amazon: The image above demonstrates how low Bezos & Co are willing to stoop to avoid incurring any costs involved in removing fraudulent products from their site. In some cases if you look for a product and sort the results “price: low to high” you will get page after page of these messages before you find something that is (possibly) legit. Behind the elegant ‘storefront’, Amazon has degenerated into a sleazy, unregulated, junky flea market, full of knock-offs pretending to be brand names, fly-by-night operators, and bizarrely-named companies trolling for customers that sell only junk, or repackaged used and damaged goods, or in some cases sell nothing at all. If you dare challenge why you never got that Amazon product (probably because it didn’t actually exist, and/or never shipped) they won’t investigate, just give you a refund. They’re too busy going after the many fraudsters claiming refunds for goods they did actually receive, to be bothered investigating the fraudsters ‘inside’ their ‘store’.
2. Bluetooth: This ‘standard’ (it’s not a company) remains on my top 10 hate list because it still doesn’t work reliably most of the time. There is a much better ‘standard’ for wireless data transmission: It’s called wi-fi. But product makers won’t use it because it would make their products more expensive. There’s a thread on Reddit showing the multiple steps users need to follow to connect, ‘pair’, then ‘unpair’, then ‘re-pair’, and then ‘re-connect’ every time they try to use devices with the ghastly Bluetooth standard. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad, and true. And heaven help you if you need to go to the bathroom with your Bluetooth earbuds, out of direct line of sight of the transmitter.
3. No-reply emails: These are the height of corporate irresponsibility. They always include bad news: Someone ‘may’ have tried to hack into your account. You ‘may’ have been affected by a data breach. And they always include some tedious steps that you have to do, immediately. Unhappy? “This is an unmonitored email address and replies to it will not be read.” So STFU and do what we told you.
4. Junk fees: Initiated by the airline industry, these extra fees never provide any benefit whatsoever to the customer, and are usually used to disguise fake low-ball prices. Once they’ve sucked you in with the ‘base’ price, they then present you with dozens of wildly-overpriced ‘extras’ that are in fact basic necessities (seat selection, baggage allowance). Banks are notorious for these, which can run up to 25% surcharges for small withdrawals. Amazon makes the list again for these, allowing its courier services to add on junk “service charges” and “processing fees” greater than the price of the product, added on top of the stated ‘delivery’ charge and “grand total” price. If you don’t pay the extra junk fee, the courier (DHL is especially bad) will “destroy” the product.
5. Synching tools: If you have multiple devices (like a laptop and phone) it’s useful to be able to sync content between them (for ease of use, and for backup). But the makers of software make no attempt to make this possible if your devices aren’t all from one manufacturer. My Google Messages for Mac can only “find my (Android) phone” if it’s right beside the Mac, not ‘asleep’, and open to the Messages app. And synching my Apple Music library with my Android phone is precarious, complicated, and never goes smoothly.
6. Companies without email addresses or phone numbers: Big corporations that provide no way for customers to contact them, generally (if they have any support at all beyond the FAQ pages) use outsourced call centres that insulate management from customers and don’t empower the call centre staff to actually solve problems. This must be humiliating to the always-underpaid usually-third-world call centre staff, who have to constantly admit they can’t do anything to help you beyond what you can do yourself. “I’m sorry I’m not authorized to do that.” They basically act as human bots. Don’t want the corporation’s important management members to have to deal with the trifles of mere customers; they’re busy finding new ways to cut costs and raise prices.
7. Small appliances designed to wear out: Some appliances (blenders and frothers notoriously) rarely last longer than the 1-2 year (overpriced) ‘extended’ warranty period, so they just add to the landfill. Fix-it folks I’ve spoken with say they can’t be fixed because the problems are in circuit boards or parts that simply wear out and can’t be replaced. Poor design.
8. Everything DRM: If I buy a book, I can lend it to my friend. But I can’t do that with my e-book. In fact, I can’t even read it on another device that uses a different ‘reader’, or port it to a flash drive and read it on another device from there. Yeah, I know, Amazon again. I guess damn Bezos is too busy wrecking WaPo to pay attention to business.
9. Microsoft Office: I bought it every time I got a new computer, because no one could tell me how to port it across so it would work. Now my latest version won’t work (upside-down text, constant crashes) because I’m told I have to buy a subscription, and pay again, every month. I use my free Mac equivalent software when it’s just for my own use, but so many people use Office that I have to use it when I get sent files, or else spend time constantly saving everything in two (not entirely compatible) formats.
10. Ad-blocker blockers: If online ads actually worked, I could understand why the companies using them would object to blocking them. But not only have I never, ever bought any product or service that I saw an online ad for, I mentally ‘blacklist’ any vendors that waste my time serving me these ads. Ads and other forms of misinformation are destroying the internet. They should be moved to “shopping” pages only, where people who are actually looking to buy something can view them. What’s really excruciating is when they appear in the middle of a song or podcast. You really think I’m going to buy your product when you do that?

Some (dis-)honourable mentions:

• 90% of the sites I visit, including news sites and for-profit organizations, are constantly begging for money; it’s absurd, and obscene
• Apple Music’s non-configurability
• Google’s “sunsetting” of every feature that was free
• ChatGPT’s verbose, time-wasting attempts to answer questions requiring data <3 years old (“I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable response)
• Coffee pods
• Paywalls (especially the ones that only show up after you’ve seen the first paragraph of the story)
• Email systems that don’t auto-detect and auto-delete spam and phishing (surely AI can at least get that right); especially egregious are systems like GMail that won’t let you block or blacklist paying PR company spammers like PRNewswire
• “Our terms of service have changed. Click here to agree to the new terms.”