When I wrote "Understanding suspicion in financial crime" in 2015 (second edition out now), I took parts of several conversations with call centres and produced a horror story of how companies waste the time of the very people they are supposed to be providing service to. The clue is, one might think, in the name. It matters because they break the potential relationship between customers by undermining, amongst other things, trust. They also make customers think "I might as well cheat this company because it is cheating me in, mainly but not exclusively, non-financial terms."

With the introduction of chatbots, masquerading as call centres, things have deteriorated to the point where companies clearly do not want customers to communicate with them. 

Unlike e.g. email, there is no correspondence file; unlike an office there is no one who has previously dealt with that customer; every contact is a new contact, even where, apparently, previous communications are stored in a "support record." 

And I can prove it. This is an actual chat with an alleged human (there are points where I seriously doubted that was the case). 

But first some background.

Several years ago, my company had an account (but not a shop) with Shopify. There was nothing to update because the products were hosted on our own website and static. We just needed to visit the site periodically to download records. What we did not know was that Shopify instigated a system that said that access to the account (but not the account itself) would be suspended if we did not log in at least every three months. Long after that, doing the collection of records from various sources, my email address was rejected for login. No, Shopify said, we can't simply reactivate that address. You need a new one. An argument ensued; in a huff I told them to stuff it and to close the account and remove all data. We moved the service to Stripe. 

Recently, we decided we needed more online presence for ProjectLXX . I decided that amongst the outlets would be a Shopify online shop so I went there to create an account using the same email as before. Shopify's system told me I already had one, and that if I'd forgotten my password one would be sent to the email that, years earlier, had been blocked and could not be reactivated. 

I should have been suspicious: look, I like Shopify, I liked Shopify before, it's just that its tech and policies were not aligned and I think that's mind-numbingly dumb for a tech company. 

So, this time, there's a common problem across all such platforms which, because they collect and remit moneys, are treated as if they are money services businesses for money laundering regulation purposes. Because around the world so many laws and regulations now treat those businesses in a vastly different way to e.g. banks, they have to require identification for even the smallest and newest of accounts. It's an insane requirement: why is it OK for one type of business to be exempt that requirement until transactions reach USD5,000 (for example) while others have a limit of USD250 or thereabouts? 

In the middle of all of this, who is taking care of the vast repositories of images of passports, addresses and other sensitive information? The very stuff we as individuals require for our personal protection is now routinely demanded to be handed over where it is accessible to some bloke being paid a pittance doing his second job working from a shed in India. Happy? I'm not. 

Of course, I don't know specifically whether that is the profile of the "advisor" I eventually connected with at Shopify. But I do know that he (I was given a male name which I have removed) has been trained in the utter-bollocks school of communication, given the tools of obfuscation and denied the knowledge and seniority to deal with my enquiry. Worse, I only got to him because

a) the bot failed

b) the bot had also failed several days earlier and the suggested remedy had failed with it

c) the bot suggested I contact "an advisor" but didn't transfer me, or the content of the chat I'd had with it. 

So, I had to start again - after the system told me it was going to waste another five minutes of my time until someone became available. That angers me: I have to hang around waiting for someone to solve a problem the company has created and if I go off and make a cup of tea, or work on something else, no one waits for me. 

Here's what happened. Actually happened. Unlike the example in my book, this is not a composite, it contains no fiction. This is the real conversation. I know, I'm nagging. But I have to because at points it becomes almost surreal. 

Live chat with Shopify after half an hour of fighting with their dumb systems, their stooopid bot and now an "advisor" ....

[name] (*)

Hi, this is [name], your Shopify Support Advisor!

me (**): Why do you need an exclamation mark?

* Greetings, and thank you for getting in touch with us today. I trust you are doing well.

* That is a wonderful question!

** No you don't. You don't care at all. It's not your job to care. It's your job to find out what's gone wrong and fix it.

* I use it because I am genuinely happy to connect with you and eager to help make your day a little easier. My goal is to bring a bright, positive energy to our conversation while we work together on your Shopify store.

* I appreciate your directness, Nigel!

**Then you have a serious personality defect. That objective is not achievable. Just read why I'm angry and solve the problem

* I completely understand. You are absolutely right getting your store back on track is the top priority. I am ready to dive straight in and resolve this for you immediately.

* Allow me to go through your previous conversation to understand your concern here, Nigel!

*Please allow me some time to check this for you.

** So, stop talking, stop trying to placate me with verbosity and fix it.

*Understood, Nigel. I am ready to act immediately. Please provide the details of the issue or the store URL, and I will start the fix right now.

*So, like all such moronic systems, yours is designed to make me go through all the same stuff again. For the THIRD time.

* As I can see there is no previous conversation on our end.

*I appreciate you bringing that to my attention, Nigel. I want to make sure your time is respected.

**Then your system has lost it: we did exactly this several days ago.

*And I told your bot before this contact

[URL of the problem excised]

*I completely understand your frustration, Nigel. It is genuinely important to me that we stop the cycle of repetition and get this sorted out once and for all.

**The submit information button isn't working.

*I am taking full ownership of this now to ensure we reach a resolution.

*Thank you for sharing the link and letting me know this.

*Allow me to check this for you here quickly.

*I see that you are not getting the option to submit the documents on the store.

*In this case, I would need to escalate to the dedicated team for you so they can send you the direct email and steps to attach the documents on the store.

**That is EXACTLY what I was told on the previous occasion. Instead, I got an automated message that took me back to the same form with the same fault. See: your system is moronic.

*I am now escalating this to the team for you on my end.

*I totally understand your request and concern here, Nigel. Since the option is not showing on the admin dashboard. Our team will send the secure way to update the documents by following the steps in the email.

**Then I can stop wasting time here and await an email?

*I appreciate your understanding and time while our team is going to send an email to you.

*Yes, they will be reaching out to you via the email.

**They won't "reach out" they will write.

*What is it with customer disservice people that obfuscation and endless empty words is seen as a strength?

*Rest assured, our specialized team will write to you directly at your registered email address with the specific, secure instructions you need to bypass that form and complete your document update.

**Thank you. Can I leave now?

*You are most welcome!

*I have finalized the internal notes for the specialist team so they are fully aware of the history and the fault in the form. They will write to you shortly to finalize this.

*I have finalized the internal notes for the specialist team so they are fully aware of the history and the fault in the form. They will write to you shortly to finalize this.

*Thank you for contacting the Shopify. Have a Beautiful day! :)

*Bye and take care for now!

I did not reply. Perhaps something will happen this time so this problem is resolved. Perhaps another one will arise.

The entire process of opening the online shop has been frustrating. Mismatched APIs - which also happened with our earlier attempt - hence hosting our own products and using Shopify only as a payment processor - is still a problem, even though we don't have any direct contact with the API. Shopify does not simply "lift" the shipping information from the manufacturer where it is set up. Also, Shopify doesn't have a "global" setting: it's a pain in the bum to have to set up multiple regions. 

And while I'm using Shopify as an example, pretty much all online platforms, which send data to that guy in a shed, seem unable to understand that their customers can operate globally from their back bedrooms or, for that matter, from a laptop under an umbrella on a beach. 

Tech has been developed so as to reduce the effectiveness of what the tech is supposed to do. 

And call centres, previously useless, are now even worse because a bot makes a mess of it before the largely redundant human. 

Here's an idea: just put a form on your websites, let the customer ask a question, send it to someone who has the knowledge and authority to deal with it and email a reply. And don't produce screeds of worthless verbiage. 

Stop telling staff to pretend to care and to use stock expressions and excitable punctuation. 

It's really, really, really annoying.