If your IT department or company policy is stopping you from conducting business, change it, don't try to change me !

It is 2016 and after living in the same house for 15 years, I am moving.  I am using a recommended solicitor and they have asked for a bunch of information in order to proceed with the house sale, viz. high-resolution scans of my wife and my passports (ID check), scans of recent utility bills and bank statements, signed copies of the T&C’s, and a fixtures and fittings list. The key points here are high-resolution and there’s a lot of information, not just one or two small jpegs.

To accurately complete all the forms and gather and scan this information took the best part of 5 hours. I uploaded a .zip file, around 45MB, containing all this information to a dropbox, sending the password by other means.

To my surprise, I received a template email message from them in reply stating that their internal IT systems prohibited them from downloading this information, so would I print and send it all through ‘recorded delivery’. I paraphrase this response: Our internal policy prohibits us from conducting business with you electronically so, at your expense and delay, please appease us by sending everything through snail mail.

I have experienced this type of argument many times before. It is just not valid.  My view is that if your IT department or company policy is stopping you conducting valid business using 21st century technologies, change it!

Alas this type of obstruction is everywhere. At least working-from-home I can circumvent these obstructions (my end), by using my own broadband internet access. Perhaps this is just another reason why others prefer to work-from-home often too.

— Published by Mike, 14:05 06 December 2016