Stupid Systems

Every so often you come across a system that is just ridiculously stupid. Telstra’s</a billing system is one of these. It means well, but just gets in the way. The particularly problematic feature is the fact that if checks to see if you’ve already paid the particular bill you’re trying to pay and warns you if you already have. That would be great, except for two major flaws: 1. It warns you even if you haven’t paid the bill already. 2. The “I know what I’m doing and you’re just a stupid computer” button, which suggests it will process your payment anyway, just loops you back round to the warning page that you may have already paid the bill before. This makes it impossible to pay your bill online. So I pick up the phone and fight my way through their phone payment system, and finally after narrowly avoiding being bored to death by the slow talking recorded voice, I successfully pay my bill. That slow talking recorded voice then tells me how much faster it would have been if I’d paid online. Sigh.