Gaslighting myself?? (London)

There’s a film called Gaslight. 

Google says:

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Gaslight is a 1944 American psychological thriller film directed by George Cukor, and starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten and Angela Lansbury in her film debut. Adapted by John Van Druten, Walter Reisch, and John L. Balderston from Patrick Hamilton's play Gas Light (1938), it follows a young woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing that she is descending into insanity. 

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The word has now become a gerund (verb functioning as noun).

Google says:  

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Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which the abuser attempts to sow self-doubt and confusion in their victim's mind. Typically, gaslighters are seeking to gain power and control over the other person, by distorting reality and forcing them to question their own judgment and intuition. 

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In this blog, I’m using the term loosely, hence adding “myself” to the title.  I’m not suggesting that the bank described below is actually deliberately trying to do any of the things listed in the definition given above.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to set up a digital token for my account in Singapore (opened on my last visit there because I was thinking of moving back), in order to make a payment to the Singapore government, no less.

Didn’t have the digibank app.  My iPhone 6 is too old to support it, so I had to go out and buy a new (to me, but second hand) phone just to activate the digibank app in order to set up the digital token in order to make a transaction.

The bank’s blurb said it can be done in a few simple and easy steps.  Not so in my experience.  None of the steps or options given on that bank’s website worked.  

They tell you to tap Preferences at the top right hand corner.  Preferences not there.

They say you can change your personal details easily, just scroll down to My Profile.  My Profile not there.

After many attempts, and increasingly thinking I must be blind (for not finding the options they said were there), or stupid (for not getting to the right places, for not making anything work), or really that computer-illiterate, or all of those things, I email them. 

They come back with an attachment — a form for filing in and snail mailing or couriering back to them.  The attachment needs a password to get in.  Two options are given for this password:  my IC number and mobile phone number, or my IC number and my date of birth.  Thinking I can’t use the first option because my mobile phone number has died (which is the reason I’m going through all these hoops in the first place), I use my date of birth.  Not accepted.  

I email the bank again.  They simply repeat the instructions, like as if the first lot hadn’t been followed. (Reminds me of the well-known anecdote about English-speaking tourists repeating loudly what they’ve just said to the non-English-speaking locals when they didn’t get understood the first time, as if the loudness will somehow open up an English window in the other party’s head when they didn't know any English at all.)  No joy.  Have I got even my own date of birth wrong?!?! 

I ask them to re-send the form, in case there was something wrong with the first one.  Still couldn’t get in.  

I email them again, setting out all the failed steps.  The tone of voice is now getting desperate as my payment deadline approaches, with penalties and interest to pay if I don’t meet it.  At this rate, it’d be cheaper and less fraught for me to buy a ticket to Singapore and walk into the bank.  I was beginning to think: not just to get that payment made, but close the account as well.

A Customer Service Team member rings (to the bank’s credit, this is 10pm Singapore time).  Tells me to try again: the date of birth one I’d chosen to use.  No luck.  Tells me to use the mobile phone number one.  I get in.  (Not the end of the story yet, for this saga anyway:  if my signature varies from the old one, I’ll have to go to a notary public and get it and my IC notarised.)

My question is:  why give the option of using the date of birth and then not accept it?  No explanation.  I know they’re trying to protect my money from fraudsters, but the design is so bad, so user-unfriendly that I’m retracting all the publicity I’ve been giving the nation state, telling people how efficient and far-sighted it is in all its planning and so on.

This experience has also made me start to question my own intelligence (my computer literacy at any rate), my own ability to follow instructions (did I execute the right steps — it must be me if I can’t find those things), and — after numerous attempts to find things that are said to be there but not there — my own sanity as well.  Hence the appropriation of the term “gaslighting”.

(London, 2023)