AI

February 2025

 The latest puzzling spot of AI comes from Octopus, our electricity supplier (or more accurately our electricity billing agent).

I received two emails a few days apart in February 2025. The first detailed our energy usage giving our credit figure (how much money of mine that they're looking after for me) and our monthly payments. No problem.. I'm paying loads more than the price of electricity that I'm using. There are some puzzling statements (ie. technical grammatical errors I suppose) to do with minus signs but I think that's because whoever prepares the billing pro-forma passed an exam in Social Science but failed to pass "O Level" Maths.

Any I didn't worry until I received a second email from Greg James whose title is my "Account Health Manager". Reading his message I think his title should be different but anyway he said that because of my electricity usage he was increasing my monthly payment by 41.47%. This is very strange for a couple of reasons.. the first being that I haven't given him a meter reading for ages so how can he say I've increased my usage? The second strange thing is the quoted numbers which are extremey accurate (the new monthly figure is £123.01.... to the nearest penny).

I decided to ring Octopus.. but where is their phone number? I logged onto my account and eventually found a phone number hidden away. I rang and a disembodied voice told me my number wasn't linked to any Octopus account and gave me various options. I took the most sensible series of button presses and was connected to a nice lady in Cape Town. I explained that I already had a bank and didn't wish to open another savings account with Octopus. She thoughtfully restored my monthly payment to £86.95. I asked her why my monthly payments were being increased when I had pots of credit in my account and she said it was a new Ofgem "Adequacy Rule". When I checked later it seems that Ofgem has worked out a new subterfuge. Crank up customers monthly payments so that their increased credit can be used as a buffer to prevent the billing agent from going bust if the cost of electricity goes too high for them to cope. Please note Qfgem.. this is not "looking after customer's interests" as you quote.

It looks like Greg James is using AI to raid coustomer's bank accounts to fill Octopuses coffers.

 
 

 The email referred to above was received today at 8:35am but only a couple of hours or so later at 11:02am I got a similar email from our gas billing agent British Gas. Exactly the same message about wishing to keep my monthly payments in line with our usage. Something which is a bit tricky as they don't know what our usage is. They know what they estimate our usage to be but not our actual usage. Again there's a program running in the background working out quite complicated sums and this is entirely dependent on programmers skills with inputs decided by a British Gas employee. Octopus is hanging their reputation on Greg James but British Gas is hiding their guy behind the term "Your British Gas Team". I like that phrase.. especially the "Your" when, in fact the reality is a computer program (AI again).

They recommend that my monthly payment should go up to £77.60. A nice roundish number rising from £15. I had no idea it was as low as that. It sounded low so I looked in my bank account to see what was going on. It seems in July 2023 I paid £199.60 per month and by July 2024 my monthly payment had dropped to £120.54 but by August it was a mere £15.

Thinking back.. we had a problem with British Gas before. It was bad A.I. back then as well when we were switched over to them after our billing agent went bust. To cut a long story short the A.I. programmer had slipped up slightly and we got a gas bill for over £46,800... ooops!

The latest email tells me to consider paying an increase of 412% but unlike Octopus isn't modifying our monthly payment.. instead leaving it to me. Why did our payment drop from £120.54 to £15? I'd need to look in my emails to see what was going on then but I did look in my account. There are two gas meter readings that might help.. one on 1st April 2024 which was an "estimate" of 17,316.3KWh followed by a reading on 2nd April by "Other" of 17,322KWh Very odd.. who is "Other".. not me because there's a reading in 2022 stating "You gave".

I looked again at my account and it's utter nonsense. Clearly A.I. is at work.

Yearly usage=17,757KWh=£1,253.66 therefore 12 monthly payments of £15=£180

I give up!

 

 JANUARY 2025

 Here's the latest spot of AI mischief. This example belongs to National Savings (otherwise NS&I) who use a smooth talking, but half-witted, BOT to answer their 08085 007 007 number. At first you'd think it was a real person but it's actually a string of recorded phrases linked to one's requests or responses. Strictly speaking it's a program written by someone who's been supplied with a list of answers to potential questions. If you don't have a query that fits in with the list it might transfer you to a real person or if you just keep quite it'll probably do the same.

 The main reason for penning this is to record my problem in attempting to buy some premium bonds. I already have three of these which I bought back in 1963. Of course the rules since 1963 have changed somewhat so when it came to checking to see if I'd won anything I needed to write them a letter and supply a really expensive stamp to ensure it arrived. It did arrive and after supplying a copy of my signature (had it changed after 61 years??.. presumably not because I was supplied with a number... actually two numbers) and correctly informed that I possessed three £1 premium bonds. I looked to see if I'd won anything, but alas.. no.

As usual doing almost anything these days requires a mobile phone, but in fact NS&I also recognises the landline variety and in order for me to buy more bonds I needed to open an account and in the process supply a phone number. Here was the problem. You must recognise that we may be dealing with large sums of money.. how miffed would you be if your account was hijacked and your one million pound win was syphoned off to a Nigerian or an Indian bank? This means levels of security must be involved. I'm still a bit unsure of the complete story but layers of security checks are required.

I may be in the minority but Tesco Mobiles use EE masts and in order to see their nearest mast and register a single bar I need to go up to the top floor and lean over the bannister. This is awkward because my PC is then two floors below and mouse clicking and responding is well nigh impossible so this particular security check fails.

Maybe I can use my landline phone? Initially I thought not, believing a text message was involved, but no, the check is carried out by a speaking BOT.. this time a rather terse-sounding lady. One types three lines of information, clicks on the PC screen and within a few seconds the phone rings. Then this BOT phone lady asks you to "press the hash key". Doing this results in a beep and after about 10 seconds a one-sided dialogue suggests you haven't followed instructions. "Press the Hash key" again, and again there's a repeat to follow instructions. Then the BOT hangs up. Clearly something's going wrong.
 

 I tried ringing the help number but to no avail. "The fault is your phone.. it's an iPhone and "some iPhones don't work". No, my phone is a landline phone made by Siemens.. not an iPhone. in fact no matter how many times you get past the nice BOT with the fake friendly voice you'll fail to get anywhere. The solution turned out to be simple. My daughter, who happened to be visiting, used her iPhone (ha) via a Vodaphone mast to sort out my account and indeed allow me to buy some more premium bonds. Her Hash key sailed through the security gate and logging on took seconds., but after she went home my account was completely inaccessible.
 

 I looked on the Net and was surprised to find hundreds of complaints. "My Hash key isn't recognised by NS&I". At least as far back as March 2024 it seems NS&I have known about the issue so I decided to contact the Ombudsman. First though I'd have to open a dialogue with NS&I so I looked and looked and looked and eventually found a complaints phone number.
 

 The nice young lady who answered attempted to deal with my problem, but blaming my ISP and kicking it into the long grass didn't work. I insisted in getting the problem properly defined. My phone was not faulty and my procedure was not incorrect.. the fault was in the NS&I system. Not especially the website.. certainly not my browser but between their their BT landline and their program.

I was given a huge complaint serial number well into the billions (they must have an awful lot of complaints!!) and told to wait for a call back.

 A call did arrive back and I patiently described my problem to a Geordie. I even poked the Hash key to check he'd heard it... and he had.

Almost the first thing he said was I'd been awarded £75 for my trouble but I now need to wait until the problem is fixed.

I pointed out that the Net had lots of complaints about the Hash key problem going back at lest to March 2024 and to please add this to his message to the technical people.

What's actually involved?

When a keypad button is pressed a pair of tones is generated by the phone. Press the Hash key and two tones are generated 941Hz plus 1477Hz. I installed a decoder on my mobile phone, held my landline phone to the mobile and pressed the Hash key... on the screen a hash symbol appeared.. so my phone is working fine. My landline is fibre optic cable and connected via BT Openworld's system to the NS&I site up in Sunderland so the fault must be at their interface between the BT line and their program (=AI in modern parlance).

I'll give them a week then email my MP...

Not necessary because when I tried again on 4th February the hash key was recognised so the technical bods must have been told to fix the problem but I bet it cost more than £75

 As of April 2024

 Most have heard of "AI" by now. It's nothing new of course, just a convenient hook, for people like politicians, on which to hang their latest rescue attempt for nose-diving Britain.

What is it exactly? Well, it's merely software written by (mostly) inept programmers. Of course, if it's produced by inept people, the results will be pretty poor. I clearly remember our "enlightened" managing director telling his workforce that the future is software not hardware (that was back in the 1980s). His first action was trashing our long-standing military product range of detection equipment (I was the department's manager at the time). Our very promising bid for the supply of mine detectors to the Swedish Army was binned.

His second action was to retrain "suitable" workers as programmers. As we were governed by a combination of managers and union reps at our Liverpool Plessey site the definition of "suitable" was discussed at length and no-one was barred from taking the "suitable" aptitude test. I've no idea who formulated the test but loads of workers were suddenly re-branded as programmers. Good on them, and moving from the heavy gang for example, to a government software contract meant lots more dosh.

I'll not go into the quality of software they produced but HDRS was a good example of error stewn AI.

 Artificial Intelligence is actually just what it sounds like. The "artificial" bit is basically hardware memory instead of a human brain and the "intelligence" bit the output of a programmer. Or more precisely a systems analyst followed perhaps by a programmer and lastly a coder. Mostly it's firmware held in read-only memory, or programs held in computers written by one or more programmers. Surely then, the cleverness of the end product must reflect the cleverness of the people responsible for its production? Or, put another way, the stupidity of the end result will reflect the stupidity of the writers.

In the past 12 months I've noticed loads of stupid things happening. Of course, not all firmware and software is bad. Some, written by expert programmers, is very good. However, lately I've been aware of really bad stuff. Sometimes the programmers are doing their best but constrained by customers' time constraints... "we want it tomorrow not next year". Also, in a very competitive world, a marketing department might cut things to the bone and quote a price to land a job, so giving the workers no chance to do their job properly. I remember working out a realistic cost for a project, only to be told to divide this by two and you can half the timescale... to which the response was.. "which half of the job do you want?"

 Back to AI examples... My first example is my car insurance. It was due to be paid on the 26th March 2024, but as our credit cards had been renewed recently it was no surprise to hear our payment had bounced. I rang as soon as I heard (within a few hours) and corrected this. I immediately received confirmation of my payment.

But, on the 6th April I received a formal letter telling me my payment had bounced but I had seven days from the date of the letter to pay them.

I looked at the letter (=AI generated) and it had no date. The only mention of a date was the 26th March 2024 (the start of my policy). I started to worry as my car might now be uninsured as it was now eleven days since the renewal date, four days beyond their seven days grace. I checked and the email of the 26th March did indeed confirm payment. I looked at the letter again but it didn't say to ignore it if I'd already paid. I checked the envelope and this wasn't dated either. Is this a Royal Mail AI failing or perhaps one of their agents (in this case Whistl .. who can't even spell properly)?

I rang the insurer and waited for ages because they, like most other companies, hadn't bothered to hire enough call centre staff. After half an hour I explained my predicament and after more waiting I was informed that I'd indeed paid on the 26th March.

I said I'd like to raise a formal complaint because their letter was undated but relied on a date in the wording. The excuse had been to blame their "system". In this case the "system" was their computer. To reduce staffing the company was relying on AI to run their business. At least two major shortcomings... it wasn't monitoring payments and it wasn't dating letters. Maybe the people writing the program hadn't been clever enough to think about dating their letters and doing a quick check to see if a payment had been made?

POST SCRIPT. My complaint was received and shortcomings accepted together with a £50 payment to cover my stress or whatever.

 

My second example is BT or possibly EE. To be honest I'm not sure which!

Our full-fibre broadband link to the local telephone exchange is now ready for connecting via our service provider Sky.

I tried on-line, swapping from our poor broadband to the promised phenomenal new service but got nowhere. Doing this on-line would have bumped up our monthly payment to £204.

At this point I decided that switching our broadband and phone provider might be a better option so called BT as their website included a really good offer. After a long wait I was speaking to a chap in Dundee over a rather good phone line. He explained their best option would be to completely switch our Sky account to them. To do this would entail a firm quotation which would be valid, only if I signed up there and then, explaining that I could cancel any time before the man arrived to connect us to full-fibre (that being about a fortnight hence). OK, I said let's go for it and I signed up after receiving a fixed price quote (but I noticed that "fixed price" included a firm increase in the small print).

Armed with a yardstick I rang Sky and, with the usual 30 minute wait, an Indian chap on a poor phone line quoted over £200 per month. He explained that it was a fair price and added I was a VIP customer. I said I'm not interested in paying over £200 and I'd had a quote from BT of £128.99. I'm going to save £75 a month by moving to BT! Hold on he said, I'll transfer you to another number, the "Retention Deprtment". OK, I said and after a further long wait I was speaking to a nice chap in Edinburgh.

We went through the options and finally got down to £155 a month, saving £49. I'll sign up for £150 I said, but that added more waiting time, and a refusal so I wished him a good day and hung up to reconsider BT's offer.

I looked carefully at the quotation on behalf of BT. It covered most of Sky's offerings except their reduced price bradband was 300Mbps with a 150Mbps guarantee. Sky, on the other hand offered 500Mbps with a 400Mbps guarantee.

Something else though.. it seemed that BT were confused. Alternate messages were from BT and EE so, with whom am I dealing?? It seems BT are moving their customers to EE.. somewhat off-putting and, with their frequent references to cost increases in their 24 month contract quotation, I was prepared to call Sky again.

I rang and got through to a second nice Scots chap, but this time in Glasgow. I explained I'd got a quote from them for £155 and I really would like to proceed if he knocked off a fiver. No problem, I can do that he said, so I said to I'm still with Sky. Not only am I paying less than my previous £164 rubbish broadband, but I'm avoiding their imminent price increase.

I got a new router yesterday and an engineer is coming in a couple of days to fit our new termination box.

The main improvement will be my upload speed which oddly has recently gone from less than 1Mbps to nearly double.

Now, where did AI let things down?

Firstly, Sky's on-line update or upgrade feature didn't provide any way of making things attractive in terms of price, just a take it or leave it quotation.

What else? Well, BT (or EE) seemed OK because I'd been speaking to a nice Scotsman and their figures were pretty reasonable, but their AI let them down. Firstly, their formal quotation was incredibly awkward to decipher because it seemed to be arranged for reading on a smart phone. It was strangely repetitive and relied on multiple embedded hyperlinks and must have totalled several hundred short lines of text, and their three emails were all from EE.

Once I'd confirmed our new Sky contract I immediately rang BT to cancel our agreement and promptly got a confirmation of cancellation.

During discussions with BT we'd arranged their engineer would turn up on Monday fortnight. He'd climb up our local pole, string up a new fibre connection and fit a new termination box.

It was a bit off-putting to receive confirmation of the engineers visit ten days after cancelling. It seems the BT system hadn't communicated with the EE system or vice versa and ploughed on with the full-fibre switchover. Or was this the case? Maybe Sky had arranged the engineer's visit. Maybe the messages I received (three of them) were actually telling me a BT (or Openreach?) engineer was acting for Sky? I wasn't entirely sure so I rang BT and found it was indeed a "system" error... that's another name for an "AI" error. Oddly, I received confirmation that the engineer's visit was now called off, not from EE, but from BT. I'd traded off 30 minutes of listening to atrocious recorded "music" and explaining the situation, for saving a waste of an engineers time! After all the guy might have been up the pole for an hour before announcing himself and being turned away.

Everything went really well except for the bit about getting the new cable through the branches of our huge fir tree and connecting the new hub to the line because BT had forgotten to do something technical.

As you can see the speeds are now a trifle quicker!

The only AI bit that didn't seem right was one of three phone calls from Sky or Openreach (I'm not sure which). Two had three options with the third to acknowledge you accepted their booking date, but the middle one had only two options leaving one to either select a change or just hang up. I tried pressing "3" but it just repeated options 1 and 2, so I just hung up.

Loads more emails arrived threatening to abandon me until they just dried up. Presumably the infinite? software loop had reached a pre-defined limit?
 
 
 

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