The Internet Not for Old People 607
Alien54 writes to tell us the Daily Mail is reporting that if you want an internet connection and you are over 70 you may be in for a surprise. From the article: "After walking the Great Wall of China and making plans for a trip to Russia, Shirley Greening-Jackson thought signing up for a new internet service would be a doddle. But the young man behind the counter had other ideas. He said she was barred - because she was too old."
Email (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Email (Score:4, Funny)
Of course it's not for old people... (Score:3, Funny)
I've been here too long... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Somebody has decided when you turn 70 you lose a lot of your mind. I find this is ridiculous."
This lady is obviously intelligent, she spelt rediculous correctly...
People should have to pass a test to get on the internet, it should consist of lots of to/too there/their/they're type questions and only if passed you get access (I would have years of my life back because I would fail it)
I wonder if it can be retroactively applied though and if it was, would slashdot have managed 1 million user accounts?
Having said all that, the guy who rejected her should get reprimanded for his actions, if a person is competent enough to go into a store and is prepared to go through the motions of ordering they should be supplied the product. Its not like she was an anonymous web packet arriving with credit card information and an order.
why would HE be reprimanded? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats like getting mad at the cashier because your Big Mac went up 20 cents. I assure you he doesn;t set policy.
Re:why would HE be reprimanded? (Score:5, Insightful)
He's a representative of the company. Even if he doesn't personally set the policy, that doesn't make him any less legitimate a target of one's anger. I have friends who feel the incessant need to explain to cashiers are other service reps, "I understand you're just doing your job, but..." That's silly.
Companies hire these kinds of people specifically for the purpose of you getting mad at them so that, if they're lucky, you won't do something that might bother the higher-ups. So feel free to cuss and fuss to your heart's content, that's what they're there for. (And yes, I used to be one of them, and until very recently, part of my job involved appeasing angry people.)
Of course, by the same logic, one should also realize that other than as a cathartic release, fussing and cussing at these people doesn't do any good, because like I said, part of their job is to make sure your ranting ends with them and doesn't bother the people-in-charge. If you do want to make a difference, you'll have to figure out some way to go around these paid bullet-takers to get to the people who actually can make some sort of difference. If they get bothered enough, believe me, the policy will change.
At my job, when people did go over my head or otherwise around me and my boss got bothered, guess what. Whoever's problem that was suddenly became my top priority, whether it was legitimate or not. And if someone went over my boss's head or otherwise went around him, well, I'll leave it to you to imagine just how much attention the problem got.
In an ideal world, if you fuss and cuss at the lowly service rep, what he should do is report to his manager that this customer is very mad and feels like this is a very important problem. If his manager gets enough of these types of complaints, he'd report it to his boss, and it would eventually propagate to someone who sees a pattern of people getting very angry at the service reps, which impacts the company's bottom line, and would make a change. Unfortunately in today's corporate society, what happens more often than not is that the service rep's feedback isn't seen as the constructive feedback that it is, and the rep gets fired for making a stink instead of just keeping his damn mouth shut, so the service reps just sit on these types of problems instead.
A couple of years later, when the company's stock price has tanked because everyone has figured out what lousy customer service they have, the board of directors sits around in a meeting scratching their heads over why things are going so badly, and they end up laying a bunch of people off, thinking that somehow solves their problem.
*shrug* Welcome to the corporate world at work!
Re:why would HE be reprimanded? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotcha.
Re:why would HE be reprimanded? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Shout and swear as was implied. NO.
Re:why would HE be reprimanded? (Score:4, Informative)
The idea that the corporation is an entity unto itself controlled only by people in central offices where the front-line workers have no POWER is what's accurate. The front line workers might have some responsibility, but which is the larger? Their responsibility to try to change corporate policy or their responsibility to their families, who will go hungry if they get fired? Because I can promise you that in 99% of the cases, if a customer service rep tries to change corporate policy, they will be informed that they are not authorized to do so at BEST, and fired for ruffling the wrong feathers at worst.
Customer service reps are there to make the company look like it gives a flying shit about its customers. They're not there to improve the quality of the product or help the customer beyond a very rigidly proscribed set of circumstances. Management doesn't want to hear what customers want or need, they want to know about how much money they're making. The only time customer service enters into their consciousness is when someone's bitching about how much they're paying their reps or when they make such a massive cock-up that it starts actually biting into the profits. (Which then is typically handled by firing all the reps and hiring new ones... which is usually still cheaper than actually fixing the cock-up.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's accurate only as long as people like you keep justifying the behavior of people who support systems like that.
Back before spam became a fact of life, I spent a lot of time tracking down individual spammers and getting them banned. I ended up talking to a number of them, and you know what? It was never their fault, not really. It was just that
Re:why would HE be reprimanded? (Score:5, Insightful)
For that matter, all you get out of talking about policy with peon-level clerks is maybe some sympathetic "uh huhs" and "okays" but the policy won't change and the best they can do is fetch a manager to make an exception in your case--this probably won't happen if you're rude about it. Most of the time, regardless of how calm you remain, all you'll do is hold the clerk up while lines build, other work piles up, and he has to stand there, all smiles, pretending he really, really cares why you think you should be exempt from the policies that are set well over his head.
Seriously, if you're angry enough to make some high school girl behind the register cry over your abuse, take it to the manager. You can even ask to see the manager in your scariest, angriest voice if it makes you feel better about yourself. A store manager may have the power to help you, if they want to, and they're probably seasoned enough to take a little abuse--tell you to fuck off when you well deserve it.
This shit is why I miss washing dishes. The only customers I hated then were the ones with gum.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
A self-esteem problem is a suitable excuse for any behavior these days.
Other all-purpose excuses:
- I was abused as a child
- I was alienated by US foreign policy
- I'm a minority
- Gambling addiction
I'm sure there are more.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What the parent is talking about however, more or less, is that those in charge of these corporations are the ones being abusive - only in an inderect and backwards way, they know there customers are going to be pissed, and they place pawns between themselves and those very customers - consequently, abusing those pawns.
I would take it a step further and
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Precisely! If you are unwilling to be a representative of the company, find another job!
I was in Best Buy last week. It was my first time I've ever been in one. And because of my experience, will probably be the last as well. I was given very poor service by the "representative" in the computer section. No need to go into how bad his service was, because the kicker was the cashier at the front counter. I told her about the bad service, and she smiled and said, "here's a
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I would like to speak to your manager.
Don't take out your anger on the little guy, aim it at the right person. And besides, who says that you have to be angry about it. I think people are getting much to adversarial.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why would HE be reprimanded? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, I work in customer services/internet helpdesk, I'm college educated (I'm posting on /., guess my major, here's a hint: it wasn't creative writing..) and I deal with assholes like you all the time. Where I work I'd estimate that at least 70% of the bottom-rung underpaid drones are in the same situation as me, they didn't know the right people and there aren't enough IT/CE jobs for all of us so we got stuck enforcing corporate policies.
Here is my advice for those of you running into some customer services rep who is just enforcing corporate policy: Don't be an asshole! Chances are that this person is just working there because there weren't any real jobs and hates the absurd and crazy rules as much as you do. Most of the time we are genuinely trying to help but our hands are tied by the rules, and you getting pissed off is not a problem for us compared to losing our jobs for going against company policy.
/Mikael
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And I hope that other people will show you as much sympathy as you show them, when you are weak and need it. Maybe that will teach you a little lesson about the nature of evil and why embracing it is not such a good idea after all.
Re:why would HE be reprimanded? (Score:5, Informative)
It most certainly is his problem. From TFA:
So the entire thing was at the agent's discretion, and he decided to deny this woman service based on her age. My sentiments are the same as the GP's: I hope this guy was reprimanded.
I've got a Better Punishment (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Are you selectively reading the article? That's almost as bad as not reading it. The same article, a mere two sentences later, says it's up to the discretion of the agent.
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(although I can't imagine someone like her would have got it wrong)
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My grandma will be 89 on November 2.
When she's not understood something, she's asked questons, but she usually able to figure things out for herself.
Her time is spent dealng with email and message from various family members who are online (or acting as a go-between); surfing, and Word for Windows to develop a family journal whilst she can and there are enough other family members old enoug she can contact those who are online and know (or those family members onlne instead of LD phone calls. ("who was
Re:I've been here too long... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
if there's one thing we all know though, it's that the internet isn't a dumptruck.
Re:I've been here too long... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're just mad because you'd fail the test.
Done b/c of complaints (Score:2)
"Later a young lady said company policy is that anyone over 70 might not understand the contract. She said, 'If you would be prepared to go to the shop in town and take a younger member of your family we might give you a contract.'"
"She added that the discretionary rule had been introduced in response to complaints that staff had mis-sold products last year."
So apparently they want younger (and probably more technical) people to read the contract so the 70+ people know what they're getting. Stu
Re:Done b/c of complaints (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Done b/c of complaints (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if you need a "younger" person with you to read the fine print in the contract, maybe the problem isn't with being over 70, maybe the problem is too much fine print.
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As for technical ... the world moves on .. there are people in their 70s who were programmers in the 1960's. How old are Kernigan and Richie? (IBM's expert witnesses) they are older than me and Bill Gates anyway!
Damn right e-mail is for oldies. The youngsters can use skateboards to visit their friends :-)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
take a grandchild (Score:2)
A preschooler maybe?
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Except there are lots of brainless sub-septuagenarians.
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Wow... I just had a dark vision of the future. Everyone who can afford it retains a gimp lawyer who follows them everywhere they go on a leash. The gimp conducts all of your arguments, goes over all of your contracts, and generally intimidates anyone who does busines
This is absurd! (Score:5, Funny)
FREE THE GERIATRICS! Bottles of Ensure and Cable Modems for ALL!
Another idea (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not to mention 99.999999% of the myspace accounts.
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Yes.
The person-of-record on the Customer Agreement should pass a Computer+Internet Literacy Test, in order to demonstrate that the person knows how to secure the machines at the site against all the variations of types of viruses & worms that can infect the operating systems at the site.
and taxed?
No.
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Re:Another idea (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, so they'd shoot most people.
What's your point?
Re:Another idea (Score:5, Insightful)
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* this wasn't worth digging up a standard normal table; but the OP got all statistical on our asses, so let's at least remember some of
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Re:Another idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Another idea (Score:5, Insightful)
You haven't quite thought this through. As median cognitive ability goes up as a result of all this shooting, more and more people will drop under the 120 IQ line until we finally end up killing everybody.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That presumes that this would be an iterative process.
A one-time date-based test would do nicely.
Re:Another idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
And while we're at it, let's make sure that only mechanics are allowed to get a driving licence in order to make sure you won't leave your car on the road when it breaks down. Oh, and
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kettle meet pot (Score:2)
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But, we are all so open-minded freedom-loving democratic people in the western world, that we would never use government licencing or regulation to supress dissenting poli
A trip?! (Score:2, Funny)
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Oh, hell. You people don't even make it challenging anymore.
Re:A trip?! (Score:5, Informative)
This comment does seem a bit disrespectful.
The lady said she completed a VISA application to go to Russia, and went to China last year.
She was legitimately comparing the complexity of Passport/VISA requests to a common subscriptions service contract.
Now, I don't know if either country has particularly complex VISA application processes, but even if they are not the accumulation of absurdities, redundancies and mistranslations that government forms often are, they should be definitely comparable.
Perhaps it wasn't the most interesting quote ever, but there is no reason to be condescending.
I little shallow (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I little shallow (Score:5, Insightful)
This'll change in not too long... (Score:2)
Where will you be at 70? Still
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I think you'll find they can afford to retire.
It's the next generation that wont be able to. Shit, that's me!
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When the bulk of baby-boomers hit their 70's, I suspect we'll find that they tend not to retire, partly because they can't afford to, and partly because onone wants them to
Speak for yourself - If the boomers don't retire, that'll make it harder for us (now) 30 somethings to move into VP and director style positions.
Re: (Score:2)
Fixed that for you. I am not sure I agree though.
Seems fair. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sure it's an inconvenience to elderly people who do understand the Internet and computers, but then I'm sure speed limits are an inconvenience to people who can safely and skilfully drive at
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but then I'm sure speed limits are an inconvenience to people who can safely and skilfully drive at 100mph.
Damn straight.
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Believe me, i tried.
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Seems fair? NO it doesn't (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you saying that only elderly people can be technological lunkheads? I've run into plenty of people whose microwave oven clocks are still flashing 12:00. If you want to have a restriction aimed at keeping the ill-informed and "unsuited" away from the internet, then maybe the store should administer a technology test to every applicant. That would make way more sense than some arbitrary cutoff based on age. Which is still damning the idea with faint praise.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And the same just can't be true of some under 25-something. I wouldn't trust any of my (4) nephews to setup their own cable routers and home networks, even though they were all born with keyboards in their hands. Exposure to technology doesn't imply cluefulness. Your statement is ageist.
Makes Sense to Me (Score:5, Funny)
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The store is slightly better than Radio Shack (Score:3, Informative)
They most likely created the policy after too many complaints of pressuring older people into buying a fancy but complicated phone or expensive cell/mobile phone contract.
dont hire morons (Score:2)
I can see the point of being more careful with older customers - for a cell phone contract for instance you want to make sure they understand ALL the monthly billing costs (taxes, regulatory fees yada yada) and the contracts cancellation or change of plan terms, and then make sure they can actual
Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:5, Interesting)
The solution is to
1) make the fine print bigger, say, newsprint-size.
2) make the fine print easier to understand, say, newspaper-reading-level.
3) go over the fine print with every customer to make sure they understand it.
After all, if companies can find a way to sell a 70-year-old a reverse morgtage without getting complaints, surely they can figure out a way to sell internet services.
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This would require more paper, which would cost more money.
2) make the fine print easier to understand, say, newspaper-reading-level.
You'd run the risk of people actually understanding what they're agreeing to before they agree to it, which could be devastating to business.
3) go over the fine print with every customer to make sure they understand it.
This would take a lot of time, and time costs money (while one employee is busy explaining to one customer, t
Unfair contracts not for young people, either (Score:5, Interesting)
Young people are probably even more casual than old people about signing such agreements, because young people haven't been burned by them yet, but the ISP doesn't care whether the customer actually agrees to the terms. The ISP cares only about being able to enforce the terms. If a customer was able to read and understand the terms, the terms will probably be enforced against her. The ISP has more trouble proving agreement to the terms by a senior citizen.
Of course not... (Score:4, Funny)
It's for their own good.
Nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
My grandmother is 88 years old and is an active and intelligent Internet user. She bought her first computer at the age of 77 and has upgraded it twice since then. She walks into the computer store and the salespeople try to steer her toward little useless beginner machines, until she straigtens them out and tells them the specs she needs.
She uses scanners and digital cameras, and does almost everything a normal Internet user does. Email is still the best way to reach her.
For people who pride themselves for being on the cutting edge, a lot of your opinions on this issue are retrograde to say the least. Welcome to the 1960s, everyone.
Screwed either way... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't sell contracts to old people who may not understand - then people are going to complain you are discriminating against old people.
Sorry, you can't have it both ways. You can't give certain members of the public special protection, without taking away some of their rights. You must either treat old people as total equals to young people, or you must treat them like children. If you want to "protect" seniors as a group under the assumption that they are more easily taken advantage of, there is no way you can treat them as fully responsible adults. The two are mutually exclusive.
I think we have reached the point in society where no-matter what you do, how you act, or how honestly you are trying to do the right thing, people are going to be perpetually outraged and trying to destroy you.
Witness the misery caused by AOL dropping dialup (Score:5, Funny)
My cousins conspired against me and gave my mother a computer last winter. Now she is calling me with questions like "how do I get the email into the computer?" and "Do I have to plug the computer in for it to work?" I TOLD her not to sign up for broadband but she did anyway and has had it for six months and never AFAIK seen a single web page or sent a single email.
If I had the time I would develop a Linux liveCD "GrandpaOS". (Knoppix and the ilk come close but still have too many bells and whistles.) Instead, I will give all my cousins' small children drum sets next Christmas.
I can see where he's coming from (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what this is about, in a nutshell.
There is a load of clueless morons on the 'net, also causing support calls (and, trust me, the most inane you can imagine), but they at least swallow the whole online crap (because they're too ignorant and unwilling to figure out how to toy with it 'til you get it for free (and legally so)). They cost, but they also make you money. So that's "acceptable".
They are, though, the real problem of the 'net. Not old people. Old people don't download spyware loaded screensavers, they don't start any junk sent to them just 'cause it's labeled "free pr0n", they are usually very cautious and few of them actually cause a real problem to the 'net as a whole. Only to their provider with their calls.
Unfortunately, that's who they need to connect.
tubes (Score:3, Funny)
story is fishy (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course not, she wouldn't waste another second in that store full of idiots, she would find another ISP pronto.
Story smacks of BS to me.
It's an understandable policy. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's likely that the company in question is making some questionable upsells with their service, or doing something rather nasty in the terms and conditions. It's probably more along the lines of avoiding a lawsuit than being genuinely concerned about the elderly.
Re:In nearby Korea.... (Score:5, Funny)
(srsly.)
I am an idiot. (Score:2)
Regardless, the company policy is probably a good one, and she needs to stop making such ado about nothing and just give her money to a competitor.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a reason there are anti-discrimination laws in the US, and yes, age IS one of the protected factors. So we discriminate against people at the younger end of the spectrum... thousands of years of experience show that younger than a certain age, people tend not to behave responsibly. Are there exceptions? Of course!
This isn't a "minor issue", this is turning the most experienced, and often wisest segment of our population into second class citizens. Look at the average ages of our Supreme Court Justices. Now tell me that they can't handle signing up "all on their own" for a damn cell-phone because they might get "confused," because it's so darn "complicated."
Speaking for everyone over 30, BITE ME.
m-
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And this is new? In the western world, we take the most experienced, and often wisest segment of our population and throw them into rest homes because we're too damned lazy/selfish to take care of them ourselves. This is just the continuing of a trend... in our culture, the elderly are considered a useless, incompetant burden on the young. It should be amusing to see how
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That doesn't imply a lack of intelligence. A lot of the judiciary is pretty old and can handle legal issues that are far more complex than what it takes to operate a computer.
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Well maybe Mrs. 75 year old should 'blame the people in her age group for not understanding contracts so well', hmm? Wasn't the point that that was a stupid assumption because people are individuals and not necessarily all the same as their 'group'?
If you have a better way of judging relative risk, start your own insurance company, or just submit your proposal as an application for the Nobel prize for economics. It'll
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No, it's much more discriminatory because you get to choose whether you live in a flood plain, but not your age or gender.
Discriminatory would be barring them insurance just because they are young.
It would also be charging them, as an individual, more or less because of certain of their demographics.
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So that makes it all ok!
Maybe she should just sign up with another company that's happy to have her business, rather than waste time being an attention whore over a minor issue.
She did the right thing, IMO. This was such a pissing-off action by the ISP that quietly running off to another company would not have made Carphone Warehouse suffer some like they needed to.
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That's an important point: The right to refuse the exchange of goods is as fundamental as the right to exchange goods freely. If someone can't refuse the exchange, then it's not a free market anymore.
If someone discriminates against your height, your weight, your skin colour, your eyes, your gender, your language, or your opinion, then choose to do business with someone else. "But what if there is no on
Re:Discriminating against the wrong group (Score:5, Funny)
The System or the User, government style. (Score:2)
To bad there was not someone there to question why, with no top level priority or level of service indicators on the internet, it is possible for MORPG's to function across the world with instant reactions for millions of gamers. Yet the government is unable to provide timely emails.
This is not a priority service thing, or net neutrality thing. This about doing the basic infrastructure right.
Ok. The MORPG's are huge and probably pay for fixed bandwidth pipes to HQ from multiple interface
Re:Having RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
> difficult getting some (not ALL) of the elderly customers to understand
> what exactly they were wanting to sign up for.
How tedious of those old fogies to actually want to understand what they are contracting for! Much easier to deal with young suckers who will sign anything at all without reading it, isn't it?
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You've never been told that. What you've been told is that your rates are higher because people in your demographic have higher average claims per customer than do other groups.
You haven't, but other people your age have had disproportionally more. Insur