I PHONED a financial institution the other day as part of an ongoing quest to make my limited resources stretch a little further.

I awaited the usual automated instructions and, sure enough, a female voice started giving me some information, and my attention started to wander.

Then another female voice came on and, instead of asking me to press a number to choose a service, as I expected, it asked for my account number, in a tone reminiscent of a primary school teacher speaking with slightly forced patience to a slow pupil.

I muttered something to myself about not having the account number handy and the voice said, in a marginally less patient tone: “You can also say you don’t have it.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said embarrassedly. “I thought I was talking to an automated…”

“You can also say you don’t have it.”

“Oh – so I am talking to a machine.”

“You can also say you don’t have it.”

I found the account number and keyed it in, gave a verbal yes/no response to another question, and finally got through a harassed-sounding lad in a call centre who answered my (very brief) questions.

Isn’t this new technology great, when it can produce a machine that can interact with callers – even one who, like me, isn’t entirely paying attention? Trouble is, we haven’t yet quite pushed the technology to the point where it can deal with anything other than the most basic or “frequently asked” queries – which is why I needed the guy in the call centre.

But of course that hasn’t stopped those in charge jumping the technological gun and replacing lots of human beings with machines in the name of “efficiency”, leaving the remaining representatives of homo sapiens up to their necks in trying to deal with all the calls the machines can’t handle.

That, I strongly suspect, is why my call-centre man sounded so harassed. He’s not alone; the tick-box culture we complain of these days is largely a result of having to fit in with what computers can understand and respond to, and the fact the few surviving humans are so busy they don’t have time to step outside the (tick) box.

Want other examples? As part of the same quest I checked out a “product” from another financial institution, using its website like a good modern consumer. Wishing to clarify certain points, I stepped into one its branches, to find a great queue of customers at the counters for everyday transactions, no other human in sight, but a computer terminal available to check the website for further information – not much help to me. I also tried to open a new online savings account with another, very large institution. For some reason it decided my web identity was potentially suspect, and asked me to dispatch various documents proving who I was to an office somewhere in the Midlands, apparently in case I was a criminal trying to launder money.

Now, the simplest thing here would surely be to present the required documents to a human being at one of this organisation’s many branches, solely for the purpose of opening the account, then handling all other transactions on the web.

But no; that wouldn’t tick the cost-cutting box on this particular product, which must be untouched by human hand. The verification process descended into farce, and the account remains unopened.

I could have persisted, of course, but I hesitate to entrust my meagre savings to institutions which fail to provide human contact points for when the computer can’t come up with an answer; how helpful are they going to be if something goes wrong?

Online transactions are very convenient, but when there’s small print to be sifted through I confess I rather hanker for the days when you could actually go and talk to a real human being, no matter how patient the automated primary school teacher is.