One thing that came to the fore whilst we were away in Oxfordshire for the weekend was the nearly blanket use of apps for you to have to use to get food and drink. I’m not necessarily against this as a principle, however, the heavy-handed way they are implemented is a disgrace.
There are a number of issues I have with this.
There is no allowance for people who don’t have phones, or don’t have smart phones. Places make it impossible to order if you don’t have an app. This is short sighted in the extreme.
They only have a QR code to tell you how to get to the app. Absolutely no fucking use if your phone refuses to scan QR codes. Tell us the name of the app you useless tossers.
You have to register for the app. They want your phone number, address, e-mail address, eye colour, inside leg measurement and a note from your mum in most cases. Then once you’ve entered all this, they send you an e-mail with a confirmation code that needs entering before you can actually use the app to order any food or drink. There is a lot of data harvesting here, and they all default to signing you up to a mailing list (ultra-small print to turn them off). In fact, the Young’s one would not let you continue until you agreed to let them e-mail you, which is illegal, and being an arse like that I’ve reported them to the ICO for it.
It shouldn’t have to take ten minutes to get to the point where you are ready to look at the menu. Only one place had an app where you downloaded it and it let you order straight away without having to know your life history. This is the way it should be.
For all their talk of the apps being there to help with Covid-19 contactless and keep your distance, the majority of companies don’t give a shit about any of that, all they see is an underhanded way of getting contact details so they can bombard you with promotional bollocks.
At the Greene King Inn, we were staying at, there was a sign on every table telling you to get the app to order through, but then the menus for that inn aren’t on the app and you have to order with paper menus anyway. So, give them your data and you can’t even order using the fucking app.
And, of course, no one needs that many fucking apps on their phone. The sooner this lockdown bollocks is over the better for everyone.