The Greatest Threat to Civilization

I'm talking, of course, about computers. I'm creating this topic while waiting on hold for a Liberty Mutual representative to answer the phone. This is the umpety-umph time I have called Liberty Mutual trying to understand and correct the information for an insurance policy on a rental property my mother owns. I don't want to bore people with needless details, so hopefully this list is undetailed enough to be endured but long enough to give the correct impression of how difficult it can be to deal with business or government in today's computer driven labyrinth. Remember, this is all just trying to update the insurance with Liberty Mutual for a single property. It doesn't need to actually be read, just seen in its whole to grasp the massive awfulness.

1. Check online at Liberty Mutual to see the insurance policies and note what changes have to be made.
2. Call Liberty Mutual to find out what documents they need to make the changes.
3. Email PDF's of documents to Liberty Mutual.
4. Check online to see if the updates have been made, but discover that now no policies are listed online.
5. Call Liberty Mutual, they restore the policies to being viewable online.
6. Although the policies are now listed, I cannot see any information about them.
7. Call Liberty Mutual, they inform me that there's a known bug that if flood policies are made viewable that then the website is no longer able to provide detailed information about any of the policies, or even to let you update your profile. They suggest removing the flood policy from the viewable list to fix the problem.
8. This *does* fix the problem, but now I discover that while they have updated most of the information correctly, they changed the insured property address to be the post office box for Bank of America in Fort Worth, Texas. This needs to be emphasized: According to the online information, I am now insuring a post office box in Fort Worth, Texas.
   
9. Attempt to correct the information online, but this isn't permitted.
10. Call Liberty Mutual to correct the error, am informed that they do have the correct address at their end, it must just be the online database that is incorrect. They suggest I check the website in a couple days and see if the information corrects itself.
11. Check back in a couple days, the information is still incorrect, so I call Liberty Mutual again. They say they'll notify the IT group.
12. But even though it is no longer in the list of policies presented online, I now know that there's a flood insurance policy, something I didn't know before. I ask about the flood insurance policy and am informed that they're only a processor for flood policies granted by FEMA. They tell me to call FEMA.
13. I check the FEMA website, eventually learn that what I really want is the FEMA administered National Flood Insurance Program (NPID), but I have no login for that website. I call the number for NPID.
14. I'm told that Liberty Mutual gave me incorrect information and that I should not call NPID but a different number at Liberty Mutual. They give me the number.
15. I call that number at Liberty Mutual and am told that this is an underwriting department, and that what I really need is a different number at Liberty Mutual.
16. I call that number and actually talk to someone who knows about flood insurance. He says I will have to send him all the same documents that I already sent to a different department at Liberty Mutual last week. The different departments don't really talk to each other.

Why do we have this mess? It's certainly not Liberty Mutual's fault. I'm encountering essentially the same issues at Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Merrill Edge, United Healthcare, Dartmouth-Hitchcock and AARP. I think the problem is endemic and affects all businesses and all departments of government, and I blame computers. If people had to manage this interconnected mess of data we would never have created these complex data dependencies and relationships, but computers *can* manage them, so we create them. The only problem is, people still have to interact with this data, and people still have to explain to other people what is going on.Maybe this is what T. S. Eliot meant when he wrote, "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper."--Percy

Sorry for taking so long to respond to this thread. Thanks, everyone, for the thoughtful responses. I expected there would be more concurrence with my views. As the old saying goes, "To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer." To me it appears that the human tendency toward complexity has only been amplified by computers, with the result that we're building increasingly complex kluge towers climbing toward eventual collapse. I see no sign of restraint. I only hear complaints from all sides, from doctors, receptionists, store clerks, help line personnel, and even programmers, that the computer programs and processes we're putting in place to supposedly help us are actually making our jobs more difficult.--Percy