Clever Idiots

Having a brain doesn’t really help if you don’t know how to use it. With technological breakthroughs and leading-edge IT staff, that seems like a great combination to getting a job done effectively, but is it?

Contemplating a family trip to London, England, one Sunday morning I started to check for cheap flights; thinking that I could discover the best prices between Latam and British Airways. However, both of their websites left me speechless i.e., unable to book flights because of incompetence with the automation process.  

I’m sick and tired of all the experts who swear blind that artificial intelligence is God’s gift to mankind; as though it is enabling job cuts by providing better intelligence with automated processes to resurrect some sort of almighty force that will get the job done quicker and more efficiently than human beings.  

One of the biggest problems we are all encountering in the world is that there are too many people, so the competition gets harder, and everyone is rushing around, cutting corners, and trying to outwit the other. In other words, so their competitiveness outshines others.

Wrong! If there is no intelligent human being overseeing each stage of the process then the inevitable will occur, and the service will not provide what it is meant to, and clients will get offended and turn elsewhere to buy services.

I was intending to go to London for two weeks. Then my daughter who has a two-year-old daughter wanted to come with me for a week. My ten-year-old granddaughter from my other daughter also wanted to join us, but then she would return with my daughter. That in total is two adults and two children.

When you take a child between two-years-old and under twelve you think you are going to pay less, but my experience has shown me the opposite. In fact, the price was even more expensive than an individual person flight.

The outward journey on a specific date for me via Latam was around US$300 (-+R$2.000,00) which seemed pretty competitive. When I put one adult and two children on the same date for an outward journey, the price was over US$450 (-+R$3.500,00) per person.

I tried several different ideas, even bringing my trip down to ten days and trying to book a trip together for four. It didn’t help; the per person fee was higher than for an individual. An adult is required to travel with a child under twelve, so I tried that, but the price remained higher.

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I needed to look elsewhere. British airways was my next option. A cheapish flight was found for me alone, but the new design platform left a lot to be desired because once the option for outward journey was chosen there was no way to continue to choose my return flight.

Now you might agree with me that this is absurd. You’d be right; “you couldn’t make it up if you wanted!” Quite a lot of time was spent trying to fathom out how to move on through the process. Unfortunately, in the end I got so frustrated it put me off travelling.

You think a massive firm like British Airways or Latam would deliver a robust proposal, and instead as a client over many years I feel sad that they don’t have the basic know how to deliver, but more importantly that my family trip might have to take a raincheck.

Take care!

Prof. Carl Boniface

Vocabulary builder:

Outwit (v) = outsmart, outfox, outmaneuver, best, beat, get the better of

Leave much to be desired (idiom) = be highly unsatisfactory. "Their education leaves much to be desired"

Fathom out (v) = understand, comprehend, comprehend, grasp

Raincheck (n) = postponement, rescheduling, adjournment, suspension, delay, putting off