Dear LPG, 

We are faced with the expression,  every time you make an official phone call where listening to a recorded message which repeats and repeats is part of what happens  while you wait.  If not there, we are aware of them  on nearly all the advertising posters be they the massive ones in our streets or the smaller ones at our train stations and in the carriages, or at our bus stops or inside them.  I am talking about the advice to visit www… I cannot help but get really annoyed when I must hear the calm electronic voice saying that we don’t have to wait, all we must do is visit www.somewhere.org or other. 

I do know a little about how to use the internet, but it often takes so long to navigate the site that once you arrive all too often the actual bit of information you are looking for is not there.  So you still need to get back on the phone at the back of the queue.  I suppose I am old-school; I would still rather talk to a person when I have a concern.  

I looked at some statistics on the internet that say, in 2019 there were still nearly a quarter of UK adults who could not use the internet effectively, and I am betting that a lot of those people are older citizens.  We are the people most likely to benefit from being told by someone who is talking to you and answering your questions rather than a recorded or written paragraph which is trying to explain one detail in the hope that everyone who reads it, sees it or hears it will understand exactly what it is trying to communicate.

This is obviously the government and commercial world who, I think, want to train us all to do what is financially easier for their wage bills by giving us little choice but to get online which is so unfair for those who would rather talk to someone or who, when it comes to the internet, just don’t know how. 

The more worrying thing for me is that, in a few more years, no one will be able to talk to an advisor who can help a caller to get a straight answer to their question without having to trawl through loads of information which has no hint of the answer they are looking for.

I also think that the governments of the world and their commercial counterparts are secretly working on educating the people to get their answers online as opposed to waiting in a telephone queue.  If we all were qualified enough in this art, it would save  them the money which they have so far  had to pay out  to all those customer service employees, but they are also taking away one of the opportunities that so many of us older people have to talk to someone during the day.  This obviously works well for the youngsters who are always time-conscious and learning the lesson well, but another section of the population which is growing fast are those who are lonely as they get older.  

The youngsters of today are still set to become the lonely generation of tomorrow, in a world where so much personal contact is being taken away and the option to wait for that 40 minutes and at least be able to hear the advisors voice give a reassuring answer as a reward will not be there for the older versions of them, at the rate our world is evolving. 

SC, Catford.