Just one click?

WERE you one of the millions who made purchases online during this year’s lockdown?

If so, were you impressed by the technology involved? Or did you find it frustrating at times?

Perhaps, like me, you find that modern technology is invading more and more of our lives, even when it appears unnecessary.

And on occasions the term ‘artificial intelligence’ appears to be a contradiction in terms.

Take a simple attempt to make a purchase online.

If all goes well you will find the exact item that you want, on a website that you have used before, and you will actually remember the correct password to log in.

The technology will then automatically fill in your address, recognise that this is Guernsey and deduct VAT from the final price. All you need to do is confirm the card you would like to use to pay, and you are one click away from collecting a parcel from your doorstep the following morning.

Perfect. This is how it works in all the advertisements.

This scenario, however, depends on you behaving the way the technology has been programmed to expect from humans.

Any deviation and the technology starts to demonstrate not just a lack of intelligence, artificial or otherwise, but of common sense.

Rather like the times it claims that people who bought the same gym socks as you also bought a garden gnome, a Peppa Pig hairdryer and a Harrier jump jet ejector seat.

It is often claimed, for example, that buying online gives the customer great choice. A scroll down a page can reveal a huge selection of items in almost any category. But it is not uncommon to find a simple statement next to an item, ‘out of stock’ or ‘currently unavailable’. And an unwritten law of the internet states that this is usually next to the item you were interested in.

Sometimes there is the additional information, ‘we do not know when or if this item will be back in stock’.

Well why display it then?

Surely modern technology should be able to remove unavailable items from the list, or at least collect them together at the end of the page?

Am I being cynical wondering if discontinued items are deliberately left on websites to entice people to look at the alternatives? What in modern terminology is called clickbait?

After all, high street shops don’t usually advertise items that are unavailable. And even small shops without modern technology use a manual system to advise customers when they’ve run out of stock. In its simplest form it manifests itself as an empty shelf.

The high street shop has another advantage: it usually enables potential purchasers to examine the real article, to feel how solidly made it is, or what the fabric looks like in natural light.

All websites can do is offer a photograph, sometimes several, and it is another unwritten law of the internet that no matter how many pictures there are, none will show the angle or detail that you actually want to see.

Some try to help by offering a larger picture. However, instead of an enlarged view this sometimes just shows the item exactly the same size, with an enlarged white border around it.

What’s the point of technology that does that?

Reading the detailed description next to the picture is not always a help either, for instead of giving precise details, it might claim that the item will ‘enhance the aspects of natural living largely’, or ‘provide all your attributes with their desirability’ or similar.

Human intelligence usually interprets this as an attempt at translation from a foreign language, probably one which uses pictograms.

And a glance at the delivery time, approximately six to seven weeks, is roughly the time it might take a cargo from China to reach the UK by sea.

So all the technology encountered so far means that in order to find a UK supplier you have to return to the original page and scroll down the list again, this time ignoring manually unavailable and foreign-sourced items. Shouldn’t technology be able to perform this filter for you?

Even then, when a promising item is located, it sometimes has a small accompanying sentence to the effect that ‘this seller does not deliver to the Channel Islands’.

If you have already spent considerable time rejecting unavailable, unexaminable, and overseas goods, these words can cause the human brain to lose its rationality, leading it to shout at an inanimate computer screen, ‘Why not?!’ My brain sometimes adds helpfully, ‘It’s Guernsey! It’s just off the coast of France, for goodness sake!

‘Not in the middle of the Amazon!’

Which can, of course, be an ironic turn of phrase under the circumstances.

When the States of Guernsey agreed recently to a new law on discrimination, I did not consider that one category was being overlooked: discrimination by websites on the grounds of geographical location.

It means that more searching is necessary, this time to find sites which will deliver to the Channel Islands.

Some sites appear promising as they offer a list of possible destinations in a drop-down list.

This includes everything from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, but it comes as no surprise that it does not include Guernsey, or Jersey, or even the Channel Islands.

I have long suspected that when the programmers in Silicon Valley compiled the list of countries, they did so by spinning a desktop globe. And they failed to spot two little dots off the coast of France.

And of course newsagents in California are unlikely to stock a copy of Perry’s Guide maps.

I suppose it might be sarcastic to suggest they could try ordering one online from a website?

Having come this far through the technological maze, the best option is to select United Kingdom from the drop-down list. This usually means VAT is added to the price of the item, but this need not be a major problem, for many companies are happy to remove the VAT when they export goods outside the UK.

The problem is trying to find out which ones do this from the information on their websites.

A search often leads to a circular tour of the website, revisiting pages you have already viewed. The final destination on the tour is usually a section labelled FAQs.

This is a universally recognised acronym for ‘Frequently Asked Questions’.

But have you ever wondered about this? I mean, surely if the questions are frequently asked, doesn’t this indicate a failure of the technology to provide the information in the first place?

And a read through the list of FAQs reveals another unwritten law of the internet: no matter how many questions are answered, yours isn’t.

By now you may be tempted to hover over a question about carpal tunnel syndrome, for you are sure you will need to know more about it soon.

Having done enough clicking to converse with a pod of dolphins, there is nothing left but to resort to old-fashioned technology: to telephone the company for an answer.

This, however, means you are not conforming to the required behaviour, so modern technology does not readily offer telephone numbers on websites.

You may find a ‘contact us’ section hidden somewhere at the bottom of a page, which contains Facebook or social media links, perhaps a box for you to write a message, sometimes even an email address. But rarely a telephone number.

The box might contain its own drop-down list, headed, ‘What would you like to contact us about?’ but don’t expect this to help. Selecting a topic like delivery or destination is likely to lead to another circular tour which ends on a page somehow familiar. One headed ‘FAQs’.

I am sure Artificial Intelligence can be belligerent if it’s in the mood.

It can take a few more circular perambulations around various pages before you finally track down a number hidden in the bowels of the website.

But if at last you are expecting to phone and talk to someone – oh dear. I’m afraid modern technology has got there first…

u DON’T MISS: Neil Tucker talks telephones next Wednesday.