Better for who...?

We use Royal Mail to ship most of our orders, and they do an awesome job, but very occasionally an order gets delayed.

It used to be that you phoned a number, navigated through the menus and then spoke to a nice person who looked things up, apologised and sent a refund cheque in the post.

The other day it happened again. I phoned the number and navigated the menus but this time the nice person told me that I now have to go to a website (which she read out three times for me to write down) to make my complaint. I did just that - it required four pages of information and also required me to submit a photo of my certificate of posting (even though their own system showed the item was delayed), and then, a couple of days later, after a nice person had looked things up, a refund cheque arrived in the post.

Someone probably thought they were making things ‘better’ by moving the process online, but maybe the first question they (and we) should always ask when trying to make something ‘better’ is, ’better for who…?’