A short summary of Noel Whittaker's latest column — this week, the real cost of dealing with a business that has swapped its people for a bot.
Most of us have been here. Something you paid good money for stops working, you go looking for help, and you end up in a loop with a chatbot that can't understand a plain sentence. Noel Whittaker's latest column opens with exactly that: a label printer that failed after a software update, a replacement that did much the same thing within months, and a manufacturer's bot that couldn't make sense of the words "My printer won't print."
His point isn't that the technology is poor. He is clear the tools themselves work well. An AI assistant found the serial number hidden inside the machine when the back panel didn't show it, compared the models for him, and pointed him to a cheaper one at around $130 — less than half what he had paid before. He ordered it in the afternoon and it arrived the next morning.
The problem is how businesses choose to use it. A bot saves the wage of someone answering the phone. That saving rarely comes back to you as a lower price or faster help. It comes back as your time.
There's a practical lesson for anyone in their 40s or 50s watching where the household money goes: service is part of the price, even though it never appears on the tag. Before you commit to something you may need help with later — an appliance, an insurance policy, a super fund — spend five minutes finding out how hard it is to reach a person who can fix a problem. And when you do get stuck, the same AI tools businesses use to trim costs are there for you: to compare options, translate jargon and find the answer the bot wouldn't give.
“Yet businesses increasingly make talking to a real person who can solve your problem the hardest option of all.”
Read the full article: Businesses are embracing AI. But are customers getting a better deal? — Noel Whittaker, YourLifeChoices, 14 October 2026.
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