2 ms·

More importantly, they don't need to be nice and/or care to be successful. Businesses are nice because they have to compete for customers, and that is easier i

More importantly, they don't need to be nice and/or care to be successful. Businesses are nice because they have to compete for customers, and that is easier if you're viewed as nice. TV Licensing is a monopoly, they can have the worst customer service on earth, and that won't affect their revenue by much. There's just nowhere else to switch to. This is also the reason why many government / publicly-run systems are so unfriendly and have such terrible UX. It's not like you can apply for benefits somewhere else (and the government would actually be very happy if you could!) , so nobody cares if the application is fifty pages and requires you to put in the same personal details 5 times. To add insult to injury, there are no shareholders that demand the metrics to go up, so nobody has any incentive to optimize anything.

jimmaswell 2y ago
Something that goes to show how unnecessary much of it is is how I've found a staggering difference in paperwork between various US states. Registering a car in New York is equivalent to securing a mortgage with pages and pages of forms and a bill of sale and verification of insurance etc., while in New Hampshire you just show up with the title signed over to you and that's literally it, that's literally all you need to walk out with plates. It fits the states' identities, New York is (somewhat exaggerating) a kafkaesque dystopia that wants to be in all of your business and have absolute control over everything you do, while New Hampshire's state motto is "Live Free or Die".