Do you find modern technology frustrating and exasperating? As a tech dinosaur I certainly do and it is impacting the retail industry in a (to my mind) negative way.
It is becoming more and more difficult to speak to a human being because it seems normal.
Everyday actions now have to be done online. Recently, I was looking to buy a pair of cargo trousers and visited Slater Menswear in York.
Not being able to see what I wanted, I asked a member of staff for help – but the help was only help to a point. I was informed that the item I was after is not part of the store’s stock range but cargo trousers are readily available to purchase online.
Needless to say, I took my custom to 
where I could see, touch and try on for size before swiping the credit card.
Self-service checkouts should be banned in my opinion.
They are the scourge of 21st-century shopping. Most retail outlets have them but still offer traditional tills staffed by a real person.
Boots in Coney Street, York, is the exception – they only have self-service tills.
Shameful!!
I vote with my feet and refuse to shop there.
The companies try to sell this concept to us as a customer benefit, being more convenient that queuing at a normal till. We know – and the companies know – that this is a load of old baloney. It has absolutely nothing to do with customer service but everything to do with boosting their bottom line by reducing the wages bill.
When concluding a transaction in Halfords a few weeks ago, I was asked for my email address in order that they could email me the receipt.
I politely refused and asked for a good, old-fashioned, hard copy till receipt.
The last thing I want is for Halfords to sell on my email address to all and sundry, resulting in my receiving an avalanche of unsolicited junk mail, to which I find it almost impossible to ‘unsubscribe’.
I can’t turn back the clock, so I suppose I will have to grin and bear a changing retail industry