Andrew Paul Landells🔶🇬🇧

The Biggest Scam in Britain Isn’t Technically a Scam. The biggest scam in Britain today is not cryptocurrency, identity theft or a man from “Microsoft” calling to explain that your computer has developed a virus. It is being made to do someone else’s job and then paying extra for the privilege. We scan our own shopping. We bag it. We weigh the vegetables. We locate the barcode on a packet of ham apparently designed by MI5. Then the machine accuses us of placing an “unexpected item in the bagging area” when the unexpected item is the shopping we have just scanned. A member of staff eventually arrives, looks at the machine with the exhausted expression of someone mediating a divorce, taps a code and walks away. You have now worked an unpaid shift at Tesco. Would you like to donate £2 to charity? We book our own flights, print our own boarding passes, tag our own luggage and carry it to a conveyor belt ourselves. The airline has removed almost every human interaction from the process, yet somehow there is still a £14.99 administration fee. Administration by whom? Me? I administered the entire journey from my kitchen. At this rate, passengers will soon be expected to refuel the aircraft before boarding. Naturally, there will be a convenience fee for holding the hose. Convenience fees are particularly impressive because they are rarely attached to anything convenient. Buy a ticket online: booking fee. Receive it by email: delivery fee. Choose the seat you will physically sit in: selection fee. Pay using money: payment fee. The only stage without a fee is the moment you stare at the total and quietly whisper, “You absolute bastards.” That remains complimentary. Then there is the subscription economy. Nothing belongs to us anymore. Your music is rented. Your films are rented. Your software is rented. Your photographs are stored in a cloud that starts sending threatening emails the moment you have taken too many pictures of the dog. Even doorbells now want monthly payments. You buy the doorbell. You install the doorbell. You connect the doorbell to your own internet. Then the doorbell announces that seeing who is standing outside your own house is a premium feature. Soon the kettle will refuse to boil unless you subscribe to Hot Water Plus. The free version will produce lukewarm water twice a day, accompanied by adverts. Cars are joining in too. Some manufacturers have discovered that features already installed inside the vehicle can be locked behind subscriptions. The heated seat is physically beneath you. The heating element exists. The car is capable of warming your backside. But first, your backside must enter into a recurring financial agreement. We have reached a stage of capitalism where your own buttocks can be placed behind a paywall. Streaming was supposed to save us from expensive television packages. For a while, it did. Then every company created its own streaming service. Now, to watch one programme, you need Netflix, Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, Paramount+, ITVX Premium and an archaeological qualification to establish which one currently owns it. We killed cable television and then rebuilt it with twelve separate passwords. Every month, another £6.99 leaves your bank account for a service you last used in February to watch half a documentary about a fraudulent wellness retreat. You keep it because cancelling requires finding the account settings, which have been hidden somewhere between “privacy choices” and “why not upgrade?” The cancellation button is pale grey, written in six-point font and located behind a digital escape room. Companies can accept your money with one click. To stop them taking it, you must speak to an adviser named Connor, answer three security questions and explain why you have lost faith in the relationship. Loyalty cards are another masterpiece. Supermarkets tell us they are rewarding loyal customers. They are not. They are charging everyone else £4.50 for toothpaste unless they surrender enough personal information to reconstruct their entire domestic routine. With the loyalty card, the toothpaste is £2. Without it, you are treated like an international fugitive attempting to purchase restricted dental supplies. The card does not create the discount. It creates the threat. “Lovely little pasta sauce you have there. Shame if something happened to the price.” Delivery apps have perfected the same principle. You order a £12 burger. Then comes the delivery fee. The service fee. The platform fee. The small-order fee. The busy-area fee. The fee for the emotional strain placed upon the app by your desire to eat. By checkout, the burger costs £28 and arrives forty minutes later, upside down, beside a single loose chip belonging to someone called Nathan. You complain through the app. It offers you £1.73 in credit and asks whether the experience has been resolved. Broadband providers deserve special recognition. They offer internet for £24.99 a month. Six months later, it becomes £68.42 because the “introductory period” has ended. You call to cancel. Suddenly, after years of unavoidable market pressures, they discover a secret tariff costing £23. This tariff was apparently hidden beneath the floorboards and could only be released when you threatened to leave. Estate agents operate in a similar reality. The photographs show a vast, sunlit apartment with sweeping dimensions and enough room to host the Eurovision Song Contest. You arrive and discover the photographer was standing inside the wardrobe using a lens developed to photograph distant galaxies. The “second bedroom” is a cupboard containing a boiler. The “private outdoor space” is a window that opens. The “vibrant neighbourhood” means someone is screaming outside the off-licence at 3 a.m. Perhaps the cleverest part of all this is the language. Companies never admit that they have removed a service. They have “streamlined the customer journey”. They have not reduced staff. They have “empowered users”. They have not increased the price. They have “updated the offering”. Your chocolate bar has not become smaller. It now comes in “new, improved, portion-conscious packaging”. The product contains less chocolate, but apparently more personal growth. We are told all of this is progress. Perhaps some of it is. Self-service can be faster. Apps can be useful. Subscriptions can offer value. But somewhere along the way, companies stopped selling convenience and began charging us for the inconvenience they created. We became the cashier, travel agent, bank clerk, technical-support department and parcel-return assistant. We scan. We print. We assemble. We troubleshoot. We update. We reset the password. Then we receive an email asking us to rate the service. What service? I did everything. At least old-fashioned scams had the decency to sound suspicious. A stranger offered you £4 million from an overseas bank account and asked for your sort code. You knew where you stood. Modern exploitation arrives with pastel branding, a cheerful notification and a button marked “Continue”. It is perfectly legal. It is carefully designed. And it renews automatically next Tuesday. The modern customer is no longer always right. The modern customer is unpaid staff.