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Techno-admin will ruin your life The Post Office scandal is a perfect example of its cruelty

Computer says no. (Little Britain/BBC)


February 5, 2024   4 mins

An older relative of mine — I’ll call her Jan — moved house a couple of years ago. She’s in her late seventies, and technology scares her: she doesn’t like the fact that everything is done via app or website. When she moved, she had to go online to switch energy provider. This was the beginning of what we refer to as The Bill.

A couple of weeks after the switch, a bill of around £1,000 arrived on her mat. She had only been living in her new home for a few days. For weeks, then months, Jan emailed and phoned. She spoke to customer service bots, payment teams, even engineers. She created accounts and new passwords. At one point a new customer account offered hope, before another £1,000 bill was autogenerated. The Bill remained; nothing could shift it.

The case is unresolved. One computer-literate family member has dedicated dozens of hours to The Bill, but still it looms. Nothing and no-one can win an argument with the automated system. Months of Jan’s life have been consumed by this; and her confidence in dealing with any kind of technology is now irreparably damaged.

Jan is a victim of “techno-admin”: it’s a pervasive phenomenon, whereby we customers are forced into infuriating, confusing, absurdly time-consuming and bleakly unrewarding tasks by a machine. You probably have a similar story. How many incorrect bills, unprocessed address changes, reminder notices printed in error? How many sleepless nights? It is the scourge of our age.

It’s all over the news, too. The energy company EDF recently issued artist Grayson Perry with a £39,000 monthly electricity bill, which to a machine seemed like a perfectly normal £38,700 increase on the previous one. Perry spent three tedious hours fixing it. And of course, there is the Post Office Horizon scandal: techno-admin at its cruellest. At the sharp end, postmasters were incorrectly told by Fujitsu’s accounting software that they were in arrears, and the Post Office subsequently hounded them, ruining hundreds of lives, careers, and reputations. At the softer end, thousands endured hours of stressful, fruitless phone calls and complaints. All because the people in charge found it easier to trust a machine than ask difficult questions of their own organisation.

We are all sub-postmasters these days: each of us daily dealing with computer systems which make our lives harder. How much of your workday is taken up with tasks like the following: filling in a lengthy online form, which crashes just as the finish line draws near; spending hours trying to cancel an online subscription; coming face-to-face with the dreaded “Schrödinger’s account”: you try to sign into an it using your email address, only to be told there is no such account; you try to create a new account with the same email address, and you are told one already exists.

These are rarely the consumer’s fault. Companies make errors, which you end up paying for. When Hackney Council was the victim of a ransomware attack a couple of years back, the service disruption was well-documented. Less discussed is the amount of techno-admin imposed on the borough’s 250,000 residents as a result. The fact that legitimate organisations routinely make such enormous mistakes makes it a lot easier for criminals to operate. I know of one person whose number plate was ‘cloned’: someone is driving around with his registration on their car, and this poor chap has spent hours appealing fines because ‘the system’ can’t or won’t recognise that it is not actually his car.

And last week, I spoke to a fraud professional who told me his son-in-law’s identity was stolen by SMS fraudsters who pretended to be his phone provider. They re-registered his number, got into his mobile banking and tried to take out loans in his name. After two months of effort, he still hasn’t got his old mobile number back. It’s unfair to blame the victim: many banks insist on some text-based communications, although they aren’t as secure as people assume. It won’t be long before everyone is terrified of answering their phone, lest it be a sophisticated scam.

Could the UK’s productivity problem, which has flatlined since 2010, be partly caused by the surge in techno-admin? Large firms use automation and digitisation to cut staff and reduce overheads, especially when it comes to customer service — but what they have actually done is outsource the admin work to us, the customer. We are the ones now form-filling, changing passwords and fixing mistakes. We are the ones paying to sit in a telephone queue for an hour. And don’t forget techno-admin has to be carried out during work hours, because lines close at 6pm.

Forcing us to do techno-admin doesn’t even save the companies much money. One business processes specialist I spoke to explained that the moment things are automated and digitised, complicated software is involved. Which means that whenever there is a problem, you need high-skilled and, therefore, well-paid staffers. Or you need to call on the software providers — the Fujitsus of this world — which just adds more layers and delays and expense. This is probably why the UK’s chief auditor recently claimed that the government could save £20 billion by — among other things — modernising its IT systems. In the NHS, outdated IT systems are thought to have contributed to multiple deaths.

“Automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency”, claims Bill Gates, but “automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” In other words, automation mostly works when you can standardise inputs and outputs. But humans aren’t a Ford factory production line: we’re messy and things go wrong all the time.

In the coming years, more decisions and tasks will be outsourced to ever smarter AI: decisions relating to spending, sentencing, military tactics, housing allocation. But ever fewer people will understand how any of these systems actually work. Staff won’t dare to question them.

Picture the frictionless future of ubiquitous smart machines: you head downstairs in the morning to make a coffee when — oh! The smart coffee machine needs a software upgrade! Unfortunately, you’ve lost your account details, and cannot recall which of your 25 email addresses you signed up with in the first place. But no time to fix that now, because you are struggling to log into the kids’ remote homework platform. Apparently, your laptop needs a new app, which will only work if you download some other software first. In the meantime, the bank’s been in touch with an urgent fraud warning — at least, the voice on the line sounded like the bank, but who can really be sure these days — so now you need to change all your passwords.

It won’t be long before simply living will be a full-time job. And at that point, UK productivity will finally hit zero. Then, and only then, when the economy has collapsed into a black hole of rage and wasted time, might we rebel against the pointless, painful scourge of techno-admin.


is the author of The People Vs Tech (2018) & The Dark Net (2015)’. 

JamieJBartlett

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N Satori
N Satori
8 months ago

A lengthy and not very insightful techno-phobic whinge by Bartlett – we’re all doomed!
Anyway, there was more to the Horizon scandal than misplaced faith in a defective IT system. The Post Office seemed suspiciously keen on closing down sub-post offices without proper investigation.

Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald
8 months ago
Reply to  N Satori

Ah, the authentic patronising tone of the IT-wallah! You’re missing the point of the article – it’s not about IT or computing, it’s about the inadequacy of the corporate mediocrats who set the systems up and don’t know how they work, and the hyenas of shareholder value who drive corporations towards profit against the interest of their monopoly-trapped customers. Automation is a brilliant tool but a bad master ( or whatever the saying is).

N Satori
N Satori
8 months ago

Oo-er! A response bearing the familiar very patronising tone of one of UnHerd’s below-the-line professors [no shortage of those!].
Try reading the article again. You don’t get Techno Admin without the Techno bit (ie. IT). Bartlett’s last paragraph, by the way, is quite silly doom-mongering.
Note the reference in the byline to Bartlett’s 2018 techno-alarmist book: The People Vs Tech: How the internet is killing democracy (and how we save it). Judging by the endorsements on Amazon the book is a firm favourite with those literary types who love to despise high-tech while enjoying the benefits.
As for the managerial class failing to understand the technology that’s drives their wealth – that problem long pre-dates computers and IT and is particularly prevalent among the middle class English where disdain for technology is almost an indicator of one’s social status.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
8 months ago

I’m sure this essay is familiar to all of us. Twice I’ve been forced to exchange text messages with computers. Frickin computers!! Both times it ended up being useless. So you call and call and call, and end up being put on hold for literally hours, until you finally talk to someone in Asia.

John Dellingby
John Dellingby
8 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Had a similar experience when my bank decided to suspend my card without telling me, meaning our weekly online food shop didn’t get processed, which was fun.

In the relatively recent past, I was able to ring up the bank, certify it was me and be transferred to a human. I’d get asked to confirm a few transactions were legitimate and the card would be restored (this hadn’t happened for some 6-7 years in fairness). Now though, even finding the phone number was a mission after discovering the bot was absolutely useless. When I did call, I had to verbally explain to a machine what the problem was, and guess what? It didn’t know what I was talking about, even though I clearly said the words “card” and “payment” among other things. I don’t have an accent or speech impediment, but even so, it was like talking to an elderly grandparent who refuses to wear a hearing aid. Got sorted in the end as all I needed to do was go out and use the card, but use the pin. Could have just told me that in the first place.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
8 months ago
Reply to  John Dellingby

I wonder how many of us have had similar experiences? It’s gotta be a good percentage of the population.

Helen Nevitt
Helen Nevitt
8 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I wonder how many people haven’t had similar experiences. I doubt it’s many.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago
Reply to  John Dellingby

Oh, God. I just had the same thing happened to me two days ago when I called Amazon. The computer said to explain my problem just as though I was talking to a person. I did that three times, each time making my problem simpler to understand. On the fourth try, I let loose like a drunken sailor and hung up. I found a number that allowed me to speak to a human, after calming myself down for twenty minutes.

Paul T
Paul T
8 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

In these situations I try to get through to someone in India as quickly as possible since they are friendly, knowledgable, will try several different ideas, very helpful and won’t threaten you with putting the phone down immediately if you are a tiny bit annoyed.
You know if you are going to a British call centre; the automated voice will issue a stern warning that their snowflake, sociopathic, staff are clearly much more important than their customers and they have a right to [immediately put the phone down] respectful treatment blah blah.

peter lucey
peter lucey
8 months ago

An entertaining piece, thanks.

I noted “spending hours trying to cancel an online subscription” – this is often the business strategy, rather than the software. Businesses make it much harder to cancel a subscription than start one…

Chris Van Schoor
Chris Van Schoor
8 months ago
Reply to  peter lucey

Yup. Try cancelling your UnHerd sub. I cannot it seems. Welcome to Hotel California..

Simon Davies
Simon Davies
8 months ago

Its in the faq’s.
“How do I cancel my subscription? You can cancel your subscription any time by emailing us on [email protected]. Your cancellation will be effective from when your subscription term reaches its expiry date.”
A quick google search on ‘Unherd cancel subscription’ brings it up.

Mark Phillips
Mark Phillips
8 months ago

Just cancel the unherd DD. They will get back to you soon enough.

Paul T
Paul T
8 months ago

I had a tantrum and cancelled mine a couple of years ago. Emailed them and they did it literally within minutes. I sheepishly joined again when I realised there is nowhere else like here.

2 plus 2 equals 4
2 plus 2 equals 4
8 months ago

If you want your elderly relative’s case resolved you should write to one or both of two people.
First, address your complaint by name in a letter to the CEO of the company in question. She or he obviously won’t read it themselves, but their office will redirect it to customer services and that is often enough to get it dealt with.
Second, write to a consumer affairs column in a national newspaper. From what I can see journalists like Anna Timms in the Guardian have a new faultless record in getting these issues resolved.

Cam Marsh
Cam Marsh
8 months ago

Also…..if you have a Twitter account flag it up there. I’ve used Twitter in the past and named and shamed companies directly. Had an almost immediate response every time and a fairly quick resolution every time. Companies are very fearful of a Twitter Storm.

2 plus 2 equals 4
2 plus 2 equals 4
8 months ago
Reply to  Cam Marsh

Indeed.
And don’t be afraid to lay it on thick. Stress how old and vulnerable she is. That she served in a war/worked for the NHS for 50 years and deserves better. Hashtag in some relevant charities and celebrities – if you can get Carol Vorderman to amplify your tweet the problem will be fixed before you can say “Consonant please, Carol.”
I have no problem with fighting dirty to get suppliers to treat their customers with basic courtesy and efficiency.

Lizzie J
Lizzie J
8 months ago

Find a non-executuve director on LinkedIn and write to them. You may have to take out a month’s subscription but it works.

Alternatively, get through to the press or investor relations department and tell them you’re a freelance investigative journalist.

2 plus 2 equals 4
2 plus 2 equals 4
8 months ago

Computers deal with most issues just fine and vastly increase efficiency. Collectively in the UK we buy and manage everything from mobile phones to streaming services to holidays to electricity to car loans to sex to god knows what else online. Literally millions of transactions every day pinging backwards and forwards seamlessly.^
The problem usually comes when suppliers don’t provide a suitably flexible escalation route for when cases get complicated. This typically happens for one of two reasons: because the supplier wants to avoid resolving problems; or because the supplier wants to reduce costs. Flexibility means human intervention and humans are expensive to employ.
In my view the automation of processes is fine, but suppliers should be held to a minimum standard of using humans to deal with exceptions and anomalies.
The Post Office scandal is actually of different nature to most of these cases which are typically to do with inherent inflexibility of automated systems. The Horizon system had design and build flaws which made it not fit for purpose. This was known but obfuscated by those in authority.
^ Its easy to forget what a huge change this is in a relatively short space of time. When I left home in the mid-1980s, to rent my first TV I had to go to the Radio Rentals shop in town and have what was basically an interview, then go back in a couple of weeks when an appropriate model was available. For the TV licence I had to queue in the post office. For electricity I had to go to the Southern Electricity Shop every quarter and pay my bill in cash or cheque (which I couldn’t initially do because my bank didn’t issue cheque guarantee cards until you’d had an account for a year). From memory it took 6 weeks to get the phone line transferred to my name.
This was just how it was just how everything was done. Maybe in some ways it was less hurried and better. But it is certainly much easier now when I can sign-up to Netflix in 10 minutes on my phone and be watching straightaway.

John Riordan
John Riordan
8 months ago

I agree with the point above that IT for many large companies has really just been an effective way to make us do admin work for free. It’s a crucial insight, but why then can’t we all just send these companies invoices for our time?

Atticus Basilhoff
Atticus Basilhoff
8 months ago
Reply to  John Riordan

You can do better, stop doing business with them at the same time you shame them on line. No business likes negative press.

STEPHEN GILDERT
STEPHEN GILDERT
8 months ago

I had a car tax query recently. Phoned DVLA in Swansea and after navigating 4 layers of “Press 1 for this…” got to a message that said ” Sorry we are busy call back whenever” and cut me off. Absolutely useless. No matter when I phoned what submenu I went through…same result. Totally shocking

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago

Presumably you also got that frankly insulting ditty “Would you like to hear this message in Welsh”? ….The ungrateful toads!

Geoffrey Collyer
Geoffrey Collyer
8 months ago

I am in the Kafka-esque situation at the moment of trying to order a land line from BT. Since giving them notice on 29th December of moving home (on 19th January), I have spent hours and hours speaking to, so far, 31 different people. Someone or something at BT keeps cancelling my orders without telling me. Every time I get passed on to the next ‘guide’, I have to give all of my details again, and again and again. It’s utterly absurd. Recording everything for training purposes only works when some actual person listens to the tapes and reacts. Which has yet to happen. Everyone I speak to is perfectly helpful – it’s just a stupid system, if one could actually call it that. And from one of the country’s biggest IT companies, it’s a total shambles.

Gordon Hughes
Gordon Hughes
8 months ago

As someone who runs broadband companies that provide telephone services, can I explain the problem. All conventional phone lines are being switched off by the end of 2025. In many areas BT Retail (who you are dealing with) cannot offer you a new landline because there is a stop on selling them. Since the switchover is not well publicised and BT Retail’s systems are awful it is probable that their call centre staff have no idea about what is going on. For practical purposes the only way to get a phone line in 2024 is to ask your broadband supplier to provide you with a Voice over IP (VoIP) line. If you don’t have a broadband go to a supplier with a decent reputation for customer service – Zen and Andrew & Arnold are two (I have used both but have no commercial interest in either). They will talk to you and sort things out. It is well worth paying for proper customer service!

Mark Phillips
Mark Phillips
8 months ago
Reply to  Gordon Hughes

Interesting, thank you.

Richard C
Richard C
8 months ago

An excellent article and one that strikes close to the bone for every frustrated consumer.
A good term, “techno-admin”, well done Mr. Bartlett!
Gates, on this occasion, is right, ” ….“automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
Although its not necessarily about efficiency but more about the way that the company regards the customer. If you think that all of your customers are important, you design the system to be helpful and allow operators some room for judgement. If you think that all of your customers are pests or crooks and that your employees are stupid or dishonest, you make the system very rigid.
Who has the most rigid and aggravating systems? The Government and its myriad agencies, whether local, regional or national.

Chris Van Schoor
Chris Van Schoor
8 months ago

This is hilarious, given that I am currently struggling to cancel my UnHerd subscription – with no success at all..

Mark Phillips
Mark Phillips
8 months ago

Just cancel the DD. They will contact you. Works for other businesses.

John Ormston
John Ormston
8 months ago

The two biggest lies of the modern world (1) “your call is very important to us; (2) “we are experiencing higher than normal call volumes”

Lynette McDougall
Lynette McDougall
8 months ago
Reply to  John Ormston

I saw a meme a while ago that I use all the time now when on hold. “Please hold, your call is important to us, until it is no longer important to you.”
As for voice recognition software, I speak Australian English which I always thought was easily understood. I was trying to contact Centrelink by phone, and everytime I tried to say the few words that would get me through to a human being, I was told “sorry, I don’t understand”, no matter how slowly and distinctly I said the words.
I locked myself out of my bank account once when I couldn’t get my password right. After a couple of press this numbers I got to speak to a charming young man. He asked the usual identify questions, and then asked me for a recent transaction on my account. I was stumped for a minute, then remembered my last grocery shop. Password reset and I was back in business. Would a computer have been able to do that? I don’t think so.

Katja Sipple
Katja Sipple
7 months ago

Are you familiar with the Scottish accent voice recognition lift skit? https://youtu.be/HbDnxzrbxn4?si=7f83cngbctnt5khs
I am from Dorset, but mostly speak with an RP accent until I encounter another person from Dorset.

Chipoko
Chipoko
8 months ago
Reply to  John Ormston

Also: “We record all calls for training and monitoring purposes.” For ‘monitor’ read ‘checking that you don’t commit a hate crime for which we will send a copy of your recording to the police’!

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
8 months ago

If the phone rings and it’s not my husband, son, or daughter, I will not answer. A friend will leave a message or text.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
8 months ago

A good reason to insist on physical money mandated to be legal tender, and to prevent any sort of “social credit”.

2 plus 2 equals 4
2 plus 2 equals 4
8 months ago
Reply to  Talia Perkins

“Legal tender” doesn’t mean what you think it does.

It’s nothing to do with what form of payment a supplier will accept in return for goods or services. It is a very specific concept relating to settlement of debt.

Still, it’s not unusual for you to get confused about basic facts.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
8 months ago

Behind all technology lie human beings. Never forget that. When someone tells you, “Well, that’s what the computer says,” that’s a false claim. The computer doesn’t say anything beyond what it has been programmed to say. Glitches occur. They always have. It’s why one company after another provides tech support to help its customers unravel snarls. Technology can often be very helpful but it is also a prison of sorts and one of our own making.

John Tyler
John Tyler
8 months ago

So true n many ways!
One point: “Could the UK’s productivity problem, which has flatlined since 2010, be partly caused by the surge in techno-admin?” I think the answer is mainly negative. Low productivity is caused by a mixture of things, but primarily by short-term managerialism, unions power-grabbing, and a lazy workforce.

Peter B
Peter B
8 months ago

Flanders and Swann nailed this in 1956 with “The Gas Man Cometh”. Superbly updated as “My Disappointment with BT (The Gas Cometh)” by David Coleman (YT comment: “”Excellent. They should use this as the holding music when you call BT customer services ;-)”). Admittedly about customer service rather than billing (but if they’d had modern billing in those days they’d have done that too). Both available on YouTube.

Paul T
Paul T
8 months ago

Use Apple. Sorry to sound like a “fanboy” but I never have to remember passwords (although I do know my Apple ID – all 16 digits of it) or account numbers or email addresses. This may make me frighteningly reliant on Apple but it never goes wrong. The computers never crash, passwords are never lost, accounts can always be accessed. They even answer the phone, and everyone knows that if you go to a store a human will deal with you and they might even just give you a new version of whatever it is you were having a problem with on the very rare occasions they do break down – as they have for me several times including an iMac. Laptops and phones last 4 or 5 years longer than non-Apple products with none of the awful anti-virus software. If anything happens to Apple I will be cast adrift but I cannot think of any company that comes remotely close to their customer service and reliability.
This is not a paid for comment – I just remember before Apple and with Apple as entirely separate parts of my life somehow.

Pat Rowles
Pat Rowles
8 months ago
Reply to  Paul T

Use Apple.

Seriously? The issue is not the manufacturer of the hardware/operating systems via which people interact with faceless, computerised bureaucracies, but the systems set up by said bureaucracies.

I never have to remember passwords or account numbers or email addresses.

Neither do I, and I use Windows computers. I don’t know where you got the idea that your exclusive use of Apple devices negates or circumvents the problems raised in the article; a badly designed/implemented software system will still p1ss you about and make your life a misery, regardless of whether you communicate with it on an iPhone, iMac, Android mobile or Microsoft laptop.

Chipoko
Chipoko
8 months ago

The notion of ‘customer service’ no longer exists. ‘Customers’ are ‘valued’ only as sources of money. Once they’ve parted with their cash they are of no further interest – except as ongoing or potential sources of cash. The removal of human interaction from the relationship between customers and service providers has been chiefly to the profitable benefit of businesses and very little, if any, to consumers. The corporately ingrained managerialism that drives this dynamic is an egregious reality of our 21st Century techno-environment.

Adam M
Adam M
7 months ago

Very well said indeed! We all now live in the Kafka’s nightmare but unlike in Terry Gilliam’s film ‘Brazil’ all of the tedious bureaucracy is not represented physically but hidden neatly within computers. This makes it harder for ordinary people to point out. But if things continue like this ‘The Machine’ will eventually stop under its own weight.
It’s ironic that the usefulness of AI based platforms like chat GPT is largely due to the number of meaningless admin tasks we’re forced to do. That are much better suited to automated systems. Maybe this is how the whole thing finally eats it’s self. We just end up with computers talking each other and fulfilling their own meaningless tasks…