There are some services which are essential, in the UK at least. Access to the emergency services via a telephone or a personal alarm. Electricity for cooking, lighting, heating – most forms of heating need electricity to run the pump and controls, even if they are gas-fired, oil-fired, or heat pumps. Banking – it is now impossible to function without a bank account. There are services which you may not be using, but where you still need to deal with the paperwork, like television licences. All of them are now provided by privately run companies. You have to decide for yourself which company is trustworthy and will give you the best value. You have to sign up with the company, and pay for them regularly. Then there are constant mistakes which you, the customer, are responsible for dealing with. This is becoming increasingly difficult, because in order to save money and maximise profits for the shareholders, more and more of these services have to be accessed remotely, either online or by telephone. And this is not always easy or even possible. Often, it doesn't work.

Living on the fringes

Most of the decisions being made by companies about how their services will be accessed are made by people living in big cities. They clearly do not understand that in many areas of the British Isles, services which they take for granted are not available. For example, I live in the Orkney Islands, off the north-east coast of Scotland. A large number of people don’t even know where the Orkney Islands are. I have been asked in a post office in London if they were part of the UK. Recently, I had to change my mobile phone, broadband and electricity suppliers. All of these changes were prompted by an update in technology which is barely supported by the telecommunications in Orkney.

Digital Voice is a good example. All landline telephones are currently being changed to Voice over Internet Protocol or Digital Voice, for good and sufficient reasons. But Digital Voice “landlines” use broadband and don’t work during a power cut. And we get a lot of power cuts, often quite long ones. And large areas of Orkney have no mobile phone signal at all. You can look this up on the Ofcom website. I am not living in an isolated croft with no neighbours – I am not that stupid at the age of seventy-four. I live in a village, the third largest settlement in the island group. Until a year ago, the western half of my village had no useful mobile phone signal. My neighbours did report that they could usually get a couple of bars if they hung out of an upstairs window. I could get a signal by walking down to the beach 50 metres away, unless the weather was stormy (which it often is up here), when the signal disappeared. It didn’t matter because I used my landline when I was at home. So how does an old lady living alone call an ambulance or the fire brigade during a four-hour power cut if she can’t get a mobile phone signal? Fortunately one of the companies has improved its signal, so I switched providers and can now use my smartphone inside my house. I also changed broadband supplier to a company which appeared to have planned the switch better than my old one.

I have also changed my electricity supplier because I have storage radiators and needed to have a smart meter installed. They are discontinuing the radio signal which has controlled the off-peak electricity supply up till now. Many people in Orkney who have had smart meters installed have found that they do not work, because they cannot get a signal. I therefore changed to a company which has a better reputation regarding bills from smart meters than the old one. There are some scary stories out there about people having their bank accounts emptied without warning because the technology wasn’t working. Getting the money back can be a big problem unless you are a celebrity. Finding out which of these stories are true proved to be difficult. Nearly everyone I asked locally was dead scared of having a smart meter. When I get mine, I'll let you know!

You can’t get through to them

All of these changes have required multiple phone calls and emails. None has gone smoothly. I have spent hours on the telephone, pressing first one series of buttons and then another, waiting for 20 minutes or so with silly music playing. I then had to try to communicate with an operator in the face of crackling phone lines, a thick accent, and background noise from an open-plan office. And what about the times you are put on hold while they redirect your phone call to the right department, you hang on for half an hour and then the phone goes dead? Or you wait in a queue, only to be told to ring a different number, and when you finally get through after waiting in the queue yet again, you are told to ring the first number again? Often you have to contact the company over and over again, before you can get through to someone who understands what the problem is, and how to put it right. Frequently it appears that the database on which my records were stored has got scrambled up somehow. I already HAVE high blood pressure, thank you very much! In the past you could go into an office and speak face-to-face with a human being, who could liaise on the spot with someone more experienced if the problem was beyond them. But the offices are gradually being closed down.

The alternative is to do it online. My experience with attempting to book hotel rooms, train tickets, and flights has discouraged me from even trying to do this. And from what I have heard, many other people, including people of working age who are trying to sort things during their tea break or on their commute home, have trouble with this. Some websites are just badly designed or “not working properly that day, please try again later”. Sometimes you cannot do it yourself, you have to have help from someone trained to understand how the system works, even what technical terms to use. I am happy to send in my meter readings, pay bills, and buy a few things via Amazon, but the thought of trying to sort out a serious mistake online seems quite unrealistic to me.

And I really hate the recorded suggestions you get at the beginning of every phone call, suggesting that you should go online instead of waiting to speak to an operator. If I wanted to do that I wouldn’t be making a phone call.

There is no help available

Many companies don’t have engineers in remote areas like the Orkney Islands, or their engineers only come here intermittently. Often there is no local technical person you can pay to help. Finding out who is the right person to ask for accurate information is often very difficult. When I first heard about the Digital Voice changeover, nobody seemed to know what to do if you could not use a mobile phone for backup during a power cut. I had to write to my MP and he found out who I should be speaking to. I recently wanted to find out what sort of signal smart meters used, and whether it was available in my village. An internet search gave me a totally misleading impression of how smart meters work. Especially the AI generated answer. And I rang all sorts of local organisations and nobody had any idea, nor even any idea who to ask. I only found out when I changed electricity suppliers and they told me what signal their meters used.

Many organisations offering services, such as banks, are now legally barred from giving you any advice about what decision to make. You are supposed to get ‘independent’ advice. Where from? Not all charities have people available who are capable of giving it on particular services (one charity has recently told me, twice, that they didn’t know anything about my problem). How on earth is an old lady with no previous experience supposed to make an informed decision?

The most vulnerable are affected most

These problems impact unfairly on the most vulnerable in society, the elderly, the disabled and the poor. Can you imagine trying to fight your way through all this if you are severely dyslexic? Suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome? Being treated for depression or anxiety? On the sort of income which takes people to food banks? Let alone if you are elderly and have hearing or sight problems. And being poor means that every mistake which these companies make can be a catastrophe, since if they overcharge you, you can’t afford to wait for them to repay you.

As for the IT skills which the elderly famously lack, going on a six-week course on basic ‘how to use the internet’ for the elderly doesn’t give you the ability to solve specific problems as they come up. Being of working age means that your employer is likely to keep you up to speed with the latest major changes, and you can always lean across to the person in the next desk and say “How do you do this?” We used to do this when I was still working, and I really miss it.

It’s a mockery to suggest that people can be enabled to ‘live independently’ under these conditions. Since there are no longer enough carers and social workers to go round, due to public service funding cuts, it means that family members or friends have to fill the gap. Assuming they have the time and the skills themselves of course.  If you don’t have anyone capable nearby, you are in trouble. And not everyone is up to writing to their MP or ringing up Trading Standards.

What kind of society are we living in?

It is time-consuming, frustrating, highly stressful, exhausting, even frightening at times, trying to make sure that you are not cut off from essential services these days, or lose half your savings. What kind of society are we living in, when our most vulnerable members are being made to struggle so hard to do so?