CitroJim wrote: 13 Oct 2023, 05:06
Fact is, we live in the 21st century and it's great to embrace all the modern tech. that makes our lives so easy - I love it, all of it and I speak as someone not far off his old-age pension...
Just on this note, we do need to tread carefully around this a recent example has shown me where basically you can't have a bank account now without a mobile phone!
In my Mother's case, she has hearing loss and does use an iPad for emailing friends and family and for keeping the brain active with scrabble and other games. She doesn't like phones because of her hearing loss so despite having an amplified phone cannot have a conversation with anyone, so this of course puts her off using a phone. She has a PC and uses online banking, but of course this requires a mobile phone to receive OTPs (One Time Passcodes). So I had given her my older iPhone 6 which has a PAYG sim card in so she can use this to receive OTPs.
Problem arose because like most networks, if you don't make a call or use the phone every few months, they can terminate your number and you lose ALL credit without ANY notice. I find that a despicable practice to be honest and no justification for it whatsoever. This happened to her and she realised that she wasn't getting an OTP. When I looked into it I realised there was no service and that they had terminated the SIM.
So she now had no banking access at all. The bank do not and will not use a landline to send a code or code via SMS that some landlines can use. So she was totally stressed out over it all.
As you would expect, I had to jump through hoops to resolve this. Rang the bank explained it was the SIM expiry issue with the mobile phone contract provider and was advised to call back when we had a new phone SIM / number. I decided to use 1P mobile which for a £36 payment gives her free calls and texts for a whole year and 250 Mb of data a month and a reminder when the she needs to renew it in a years' time. She needs none of these, just the ability to receive OTPs.
SIM card arrived and then the fun began as I couldn't get the new phone number added onto her online banking for security reasons - which I fully accept, yet as I already have access to the same bank account in my own right, they still would not allow me to make the changes. That's where I start getting annoyed. Anyway we finally had to get the phones amplified up and using me as an intermediary to communicate with mum the questions, managed to satisfy them and pass security checks. But what a faff.
So to avoid all this I've now registered a Lasting Power of Attorney with the Bank, so anything like this in future will allow me to change things like the registered phone number on her account.
I suppose the point being is that until something stupid like a SIM card expiring on you happens, you don't realise that you are totally locked out of your bank!
The other thing related is that in many cases you are forced to use an app from a financial institution to verify larger payments. All good and great until suddenly one of the updates means it is unsupported on your phone because it requires the latest phone operating system software update! You can't then update your phone to the latest version as it is 'out of support' from Apple or Google or Whoever. So now you have to dump a perfectly good phone and spend £300 - £1000 plus on a later phone just to work with a banking / card app.
This to me is where forced obsolescence is becoming more prevalent and the knock-on effect this has on people's abilities to live their lives.
No Phone - No Banking
No Updated Phone - No Banking
No Banking - Can't Function in today's society
And God help you if you have some impairment as that just quadruples the hassle factor.
And for anyone that says just go to the bank - what bank? They've all closed down with the nearest one 20 to 30 miles away. And if you don't have a car, then plan on wasting a whole day that will require a taxi to the nearest bus stop, a bus if you're lucky and repeat on the way home and £60 for the 'phone' of it.
There has to be better solutions to this and I'm not buying / don't believe for one minute that a banking app that worked perfectly well on a phone one minute will not work because of a few updates. I also thing that they should not allow the automatic termination of a PAYG SIM Card without some other notification or warning via an email beforehand to allow you time to make a call or a text!
