More privatisation

Following the recent report of privatisation at reference 5, not best pleased yesterday to find that the ticket machines in Sutton railway station car park have been removed in favour of one being invited to do something with one's mobile phone, preferably with an app. With apps not working on my particular mobile phone.

The good news was that I was allowed to pay late, online, which BH reminded me about this morning - and which I would likely otherwise have forgotten about, thus incurring some huge penalty or other. So I go through the registration rigmarole, give a company (Apcoa) which I have never previously heard of all my bank details and finish off with some more rigmarole to pay for this particular bit of car parking. To be fair, this did involve HSBC sending a one-time code to my mobile phone. 

Yet another case of suppliers dumping costs on customers, at least on older customers not particularly comfortable with all this app lark. Maybe not even enabled. 

Another case which comes to mind being the electrification of statements from banks and utilities: if you like paper you can jolly well do it yourself on your expensive home printer, in your own time, rather us doing it on our industrial scale printers. To be fair, the total cost of printing at home is probably less than the total cost of printing at the factory. Anyway, the investment in all the necessary home computers and fibre optic cable has been made and is a sunk cost. 

Yet another being the almost universal practise of having customers hang around on the end of their phones for hours while their suppliers' overworked and underpaid call centre operators get around to them. My motor insurer - CSIS - being an honourable exception. They seem to answer their phones.

PS 1: but I have learned a bit of Irish iconography. The green-white-orange of the Irish flag stands for the green nationalists being both separated and joined to the orange unionists. A tit-bit from reference 2. I shall check with a correspondent who might know. This prompted by the inclusion of the Irish flag in the snap above.

PS 2: the history of Apcoa seems to be fairly complicated, involving both the US and Germany. Troubles with money, with the company winding up owned by more people I have never heard of called Centerbridge. Apcoa being strong in continental Europe and making progress over here. Is nothing ever simple?

References

Reference 1: https://apcoaconnect.com/.

Reference 2: https://www.shared.com/.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APCOA_Parking.

Reference 4: https://www.centerbridge.com/.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-last-privatisation.html.