Our lives are becoming more complicated as the years pass. The infrastructure of daily life grows more trying. What was easy is now challenging. Here are examples:
- • Telephone service – we moved recently and it took three months to get two lines transferred to a new home four blocks from our old residence.
- Home insurance – we find ourselves paying as much for home insurance as property taxes because the insurance companies have stopped writing regular fire insurance in much of California.
- Health care – we are fortunate to be in Kaiser Permanente but even in it, diagnoses are missed and you encounter the occasional uncaring or unknowing physician.
- Watching TV requires three remotes. It was easier when we manually turned the TV off and on.
- Online services that bill you monthly if you use them once and inadvertently miss that you have signed up for indefinite billing. I did this with JustAnswer.com, got worthless information and a no-refund policy.
- Banks and other vendors that stuff your account with inflated services.
- Customer service representatives that transfer you endlessly or tell you to call another number.
- Websites that tell you have entered the wrong answer to a simple math quiz that you know is correct or that refuse the password you have used for years.
- Software, specifically Microsoft Word, that doesn’t function in critical ways.
We are at the disposal of uncaring institutions and merciless technology that compromises our financial security and privacy, reaping riches from the information they collect from us.