How did people spend their time pre-internet?

[eyoungren]

I was always confused by TV Guide. I’d walk into a store and pick one out but it wouldn’t have the best schedule in it. A little confusing to read and inconsistent because it would be laid out around images or articles. There was a different sort of magazine that actually did list all of the programs. TV Week I think. It had wonderfully formatted charts. I’d try to find the shows I wanted while waiting in line and hope I got what I needed before I was up 😅

IIRC, there were three versions of TV Guide. One for the west coast, one for the east coast and one for the midwest. Depending on where you live it might have been confusing if there was crossover.

At some point they also started including cable channels, or at least the major cable channels. This was back when when there was no OSD for channels (that happened much later) so you still got your schedule from print media.

But TV Guide had photos and columns because there's only so much people will pay for what was essentially a printed spreadsheet.

 

[MrCheeto]

there's only so much people will pay for what was essentially a printed spreadsheet.

That’s priceless when you don’t have an alternative. Remember how much a Mapsco cost?! I’d rather not. Yeesh. You’d try to make last-year’s book stretch as long as you could but if somebody was developing an area or redeveloping, getting twisted and reaching a dead end when you’re in a hurry was enough to make you want the new book ASAP and pray that the changes are somehow included or at least noted.

It was a big selling point to feature the new community development or stretch of toll road etc.

Lot of money for what is essentially a printed cartographical diagram.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

No matter where one could venture in history, you could probably never find a time when people had nothing to do. In fact, the real challenge would be trying to find any such time.

The same question could be framed as before cell phones, before computers, before television, before movies, before radio, before magazines, before automobiles... and 'roll' all the way back to before the wheel or before fire. If you could look in on any time in all of human history, you'd likely find busy people with hectic days filled with activities befitting the time. There was likely never a time where days were spent doing nothing... because there was nothing to do.

And for the VAST amount of that history, you would probably find FEW dreaming of an internet as some kind of ultimate destination of human (time) fulfillment.

Step forward in time and look back to now: will this be seen as some kind of pinnacle? I doubt it. If you could hop even 100 years into the future, "the internet" may be recalled like some of us recall "radio" or "early computing" today.

All throughout history, some people in the present imagine their present is the peak of everything... when in reality "now" is likely to be ridiculed as arcane "how did you ever get by with only..." views from even a generation or two from now.

Take a fresh look at the original post of this thread. OPs grandchildren will probably be talking up their "pinnacle"- whatever it will be- and seeing "now" like we see our own grandparents "activity limitations" of their day (of course, the grandparents don't recall it that way. What do they call their time??? The good old days).

It is how it works. It is probably how it will always work. It's fine to appreciate all we can do in the present... all we HAVE in the present... but we should never feel any type of conceit like we have reached some ultimate destination. My guess- as probably my great, great, great, great, great... great Grandfather may have thought too: this is barely the beginning.

 

[eyoungren]

That’s priceless when you don’t have an alternative. Remember how much a Mapsco cost?! I’d rather not. Yeesh. You’d try to make last-year’s book stretch as long as you could but if somebody was developing an area or redeveloping, getting twisted and reaching a dead end when you’re in a hurry was enough to make you want the new book ASAP and pray that the changes are somehow included or at least noted.

It was a big selling point to feature the new community development or stretch of toll road etc.

Lot of money for what is essentially a printed cartographical diagram.

In my mid to late 20s I was big on Thomas maps. Those map books were the authority!

Now, it's just Google Maps if I've never been anywhere. And Streetview is invaluable to me as I can virtually view my destination and how to enter/exit. As great as the Thomas map books were, that was something they could not do.

 

[eyoungren]

No matter where one could venture in history, you could probably never find a time when people had nothing to do. In fact, the real challenge would be trying to find any such time.

The same question could be framed as before cell phones, before computers, before television, before movies, before radio, before magazines, before automobiles... and 'roll' all the way back to before the wheel or before fire. If you could look in on any time in all of human history, you'd likely find busy people with hectic days filled with activities befitting the time. There was likely never a time where days were spent doing nothing... because there was nothing to do.

And for the VAST amount of that history, you would probably find FEW dreaming of an internet as some kind of ultimate destination of human (time) fulfillment.

Step forward in time and look back to now: will this be seen as some kind of pinnacle? I doubt it. If you could hop even 100 years into the future, "the internet" may be recalled like some of us recall "radio" or "early computing" today.

All throughout history, some people in the present imagine their present is the peak of everything... when in reality "now" is likely to be ridiculed as arcane "how did you ever get by with only..." views from even a generation or two from now.

Take a fresh look at the original post of this thread. OPs grandchildren will probably be talking up their "pinnacle"- whatever it will be- and seeing "now" like we see our own grandparents "activity limitations" of their day (of course, the grandparents don't recall it that way. What do they call their time??? The good old days).

It is how it works. It is probably how it will always work. It's fine to appreciate all we can do in the present... all we HAVE in the present... but we should never feel any type of conceit like we have reached some ultimate destination. My guess- as probably my great, great, great, great, great... great Grandfather may have thought too: this is barely the beginning.

You can put me down in any time period you want - past, present or future. The one thing you will find occupying the majority of my time is avoiding work.

I put a lot of energy into avoiding work, always have and always will. If there is time to do nothing I will find it. If not, I will MAKE the time to do nothing.

 

[compwiz1202]

@Clix Pix I was always confused by TV Guide. I’d walk into a store and pick one out but it wouldn’t have the best schedule in it. A little confusing to read and inconsistent because it would be laid out around images or articles. There was a different sort of magazine that actually did list all of the programs. TV Week I think. It had wonderfully formatted charts. I’d try to find the shows I wanted while waiting in line and hope I got what I needed before I was up 😅

@compwiz1202 how and when did you use COD? Everything I remember in magazines and TV specifically said “NO COD! DON’T EVEN ASK!” Never got the chance or really had the need to use it.

This was like 80s I think. I don't remember what the catalog was, but I could get computer games and pay COD.

 

[Apple fanboy]

You can put me down in any time period you want - past, present or future. The one thing you will find occupying the majority of my time is avoiding work.

I put a lot of energy into avoiding work, always have and always will. If there is time to do nothing I will find it. If not, I will MAKE the time to do nothing.

Lol. Just as well you don’t post under your real name. You might find getting employed in the future a little difficult. 😜

 

[eyoungren]

Lol. Just as well you don’t post under your real name. You might find getting employed in the future a little difficult. 😜

It's fairly easy to find my real name if you wanted.

There is a duality here though. Yes, I do everything I can to avoid working, but I also need to eat and pay my bills. Which means I need to stay employed. Staying employed means showing up and doing your job. And in this regard I believe you'd find my bosses fairly happy.

Happy enough to give me an 18%+ raise last month anyway.

My job history also reflects this.

Nine years at United Parcel Service (1992 to 1999)

14.5 years at a small newspaper (I was the one responsible for building all the components and delivering it to the printer (2004 to 2018)). I didn't leave this job, the business was sold.

The last four years designing golf scorecards and yardage books (2019 to present)

The difference here is that I am being paid. For personal work that needs to be done, I have to be getting something out of it.

My warped view of work is largely due to it being used as a punishment or a form of control by my passive aggressive dad. I wasn't given work because there was value in doing it, it was because he was upset at me over something and wanted to make me miserable. Especially so, when friends were over. He had no problem in putting my friends to work. No one came over after that.

 

[Apple fanboy]

It's fairly easy to find my real name if you wanted.

There is a duality here though. Yes, I do everything I can to avoid working, but I also need to eat and pay my bills. Which means I need to stay employed. Staying employed means showing up and doing your job. And in this regard I believe you'd find my bosses fairly happy.

Happy enough to give me an 18%+ raise last month anyway.

My job history also reflects this.

Nine years at United Parcel Service (1992 to 1999)

14.5 years at a small newspaper (I was the one responsible for building all the components and delivering it to the printer (2004 to 2018)). I didn't leave this job, the business was sold.

The last four years designing golf scorecards and yardage books (2019 to present)

The difference here is that I am being paid. For personal work that needs to be done, I have to be getting something out of it.

My warped view of work is largely due to it being used as a punishment or a form of control by my passive aggressive dad. I wasn't given work because there was value in doing it, it was because he was upset at me over something and wanted to make me miserable. Especially so, when friends were over. He had no problem in putting my friends to work. No one came over after that.

18% pay increase? Nice. Almost keeping up with inflation!

 

[MacBH928]

Oh that reminds me of something that we may not ever have again.

Urban Rumors.

I can remember kids that spent hours upon days looking for Luigi in Mario 64. I remember trying to "decipher" missing no. in Pokemon Red.

These seem so benign but hearing such rumors can really make somebody that is typically curious quite crazy. All it took was to make a claim and if you found the person trustful enough you'd try to see for yourself.

You might think you'd be smart enough to call BS but at the risk of missing out. We didn't have media-overload at the time. I remember getting quarterly issues of insider magazines and scanning every printed dot on every page because I was hungry for the information. Even the dull stories were eventually worth reading on the fifth or sixth flip through. So if somebody said that Samus was a woman and she even appears in a bikini at the end of the game, you'd just have to see for yourself.

Today, if you try to spread such a rumor, the first reflexive action is to pull out your phone on the spot and search. If no results are found, it's dismissed whether it may be true or not.

So much mystery, innocence and charm has left the world.

Honestly, I do not miss that part. It might be fun and had mystery, but always made me feel like a fool. Like someone who keeps digging somewhere in the mountain because here "heard" there was gold there. 5 years later, no gold found.

Ignorance is one thing. Intentional ignorance is stupidity.

You fail to prove your point. Your provided the links to help me understand how a BBS is different from the internet, and I already explained I already know this.

If I provided you a link explaining what a computer keyboard is would you feel the need to read it? Or maybe you already know what a computer keyboard is.

https://oldweb.today

thanks for sharing!

 

[millerj123]

Honestly, I do not miss that part. It might be fun and had mystery, but always made me feel like a fool. Like someone who keeps digging somewhere in the mountain because here "heard" there was gold there. 5 years later, no gold found.



You fail to prove your point. Your provided the links to help me understand how a BBS is different from the internet, and I already explained I already know this.

If I provided you a link explaining what a computer keyboard is would you feel the need to read it? Or maybe you already know what a computer keyboard is.



thanks for sharing!

No. Your claim that a BBS is just a web page cannot be true because the web was invented after BBSs. You clam to be knowledgeable, but consistently prove otherwise.

 

[MrCheeto]

Is IRC the internet? 🤔

 

[MacBH928]

My memory of AOL is that it was both an app-suite and a paid service.

Back then, you had to have certain numbers to call that would connect you to a net. So I suppose a phone number was like a DNS or something. I have a memory of one person more savvy than me having a list of numbers they could try that might offer better connection or such. Something about local vs. long distance even. If a number was down (not connecting) I seem to recall AOL would try to call a different number from its list.

Here’s how it works.

First, you get a CD-ROM in the mail. You didn’t request it. You may not even own a computer. AOL CD’s were a meme because they became so damn prolific. It was like every time you opened your mailbox, you got ANOTHER AOL CD! Sometimes two or more at a time! I recall a commercial around 2001 that made a joke about turning them into coasters and a fish-sculpture. (The shiny-side made the scales.)

Edit: found it. Excuse my memory after twenty-years. YouTube

AOL was always on TV promoting their new versions. “New AOL version 5.0!” So every version showed up in your mailbox. 5.0. 5.1. 5.1.1. I’m not joking.

So why are they sending you CD’s? Because they hope you’re stupid and won’t have any better way of getting online. Each CD came with something like 48-hours of FREE service!

What a deal! I’m very stupid, so if a CD shows up in my mailbox that can connect me to the net, you bet I’m going to use it.

My PC has internet explorer but I don’t know how to connect to any Internet Service Provider. I just bought the thing to do word processing and MS Paint.

So I put the free CD-ROM into the drive. Now it says I can install a suite of apps. So I proceed.

Now I click the AOL app on the desktop. All of a sudden my computer is making all of the famous hissing, booping and modulating to shake hands with a phone number that will provide internet.

Everything goes quiet. Then… “Welcome! You’ve got mail!”

View attachment 2187284

I can select from a few AOL apps. One is an instant messenger that anybody using AOL has access to. One is my Email app. And if I can recall correctly, there is an AOL browser. I seem to remember an AOL logo as the loading icon. (See pic below, top right logo) Click a link anywhere on the net and the little logo in the corner spins and fades in and out so you have some entertainment while it loads. And load it will.
View attachment 2187283

At that time, clicking a link meant grabbing a snack, then clicking another link and running to the toilet. Then you’d realize you clicked a completely wrong link. You’d click Back and then resume Mario Kart until you saw the page fully load.

Yes, I did have the pleasure of using 56.6kbps modem!

I even recall that MySpace was so controversial as it came around. Kids were putting their faces online and any stranger could see. Your boss could look you up and read the public messages you’d post about them. It was wild times.

I remember clearly, that prior to 2005/2006 no one shared their photos online and it was weird for me to see someone on FB putting his personal picture there. Now its second nature.

I’m sure some YouTube video of somebody using the AOL suite of apps is out there. When you paid for AOL you were essentially paying for online-access time and access to their suite.

The confusing part of me about AOL was, did it have access to the whole internet or was it a "walled garden" websites that other ISP users couldn't access, or was it a mix of both?!

I think somewhere mid 2000's I decided to check what AOL was and all I found was email app, IM app, and a modified netscape navigator I think. I didn't see what was the big deal or why would I want this if I already subscribed to an ISP.
----

Hey I see you have that AOL keyword button in that screenshot you provided. What did that do?

---

Thanks for putting the effort and sharing with all the media and links. Appreciate your participation in this thread.

 

[MrCheeto]

I didn't see what was the big deal or why would I want this if I already subscribed to an ISP.

You wouldn’t.

AOL was kind of the Getting Online for Dummies. Install the applications and pay the monthly fee and you’re on.

If you knew how to get an ISP and configure it and use your own browser, there was no real appeal to AOL other than AIM and your own email address.

The browser worked like any other and indeed connected to the WWW.

That search keywords deal, IDK. I imagine that the browser used some sort of caching of sites that you could search or even a registry. It was like a phone book for web pages. No I’m not saying I know for certain but in the absence of Dogpile or Jeeves or another site-caching web-crawling search engine, your company could provide a directory to websites. So when you search, you aren’t searching necessarily individual pages on websites but categories of websites. Search “Apple computers” and it will display a list of Apple.com, 9to5mac.com, Macworld.com etc. as compiled for AOL. Different ISP’s or even browsers could have their own “directories” but I don’t know what they’re called.

Been so long since I’ve seen such a thing but normally by now the links are broken.

Now that I think of it, if you open your old antique browser, I would bet that somewhere built-in is a searchable directory of sites from the era. You wouldn’t need an internet connection to load the list if it’s in the browser itself.

 

[mortlocli]

Ha - remember the noise of going online with a modem ?
..was such a racket.

 

[KaliYoni]

Fun fact: Apple ran its own version of AOL (when a collaboration between the two companies didn’t work out, Apple licensed AOL’s backend and client code) called eWorld for a few years.

Fun fact 2: at AOL‘s headquarters in Northern Virginia, tables in the conference rooms were slabs of concrete with shards of shredded AOL CD-ROMs mixed into the concrete before it dried. It made the tabletops look like a mosaic.

Fun fact 3: just like on MacRumors, chat room moderators were volunteers.

Some misconceptions dispelled

• AOL was not just an ISP or a “curated” bundle of software. Imagine if Google and all of its services, including GMail, Google News, Google Finance, Google Chat and Android text messaging, were only available by installing a giant Google application on your computer. Further, imagine that the mega Google application could only be used by becoming a Google subscriber and dialing into a proprietary Google online network. This setup was popular during AOL’s heyday, the early to mid 1990s, because the World Wide Web was in its infancy, there was very little consumer-focused content anywhere online, and, most importantly, AOL offered a simple way to get online with a graphical interface (even though it did not provide subscribers a way to access the Internet until the late 90s), look at content, such as news articles and sports scores, and participate in online communities, including chat rooms, a pre-cell phone version of texts called Instant Messages, and message boards.
• AOL was organized (and operated) like a newspaper. There were main channels, like sections of a newspaper, such as Sports and News, that contained sub-categories, such as Baseball or International News. AOL had (a lot of) writers, artists, and tech people whose job it was to generate content for the Channels.
• AOL was a “walled garden” for most of its life but the content was not taken from the Web or the Internet.
• Keywords were one or two word shortcuts to specific screens on the AOL service. There was a keyboard combination, like Alt-K or Command-K, that popped up a text input box. Typing, say, “News” or “Sports” would take you directly to the relevant place on AOL.
• AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) was similar to Apple Messages. In fact, Apple Messages could be used in place of the AIM client in some versions of macOS. At first, though, AIM was only accessible by using the main AOL application.

----------
ETA: AOL owned ICQ for more than a decade, beginning in 1998. AIM as a standalone, Internet-based service launched in 1997 but "Instant Messages" and "Buddy List" were offered on AOL's subscriber-only service before then.

ETA 2: A present-day way to think of AOL is as an "everything app", similar to WeChat in China and Elon Musk's claimed aspiration for Twitter.

 

[Nermal]

Wow, seeing the AOL info sure brings back memories! AOL was both loved and hated -- most people had mixed feelings about it. Many referred to it as AOHell. Everybody joked about the ubiquitous CDs in our mailboxes, too.

As far as I'm aware AOL was never available here in NZ, but that didn't stop the occasional CD from making its way over here. We had eWorld at school:

The big influx of CDs here was for the locally-developed "Xtra", and notably its "XVille" which was effectively an eWorld clone.

Unlike eWorld, XVille was accessed via a browser (the CD included Netscape) and therefore you had to wait an age for the graphic to download whenever it dropped out of the cache!

 

[millerj123]

Is IRC the internet? 🤔

Yeah, I was in a toss up between "Hey guys, I found this thing Netscape Navigator, but it looks like they stole everything from Microsoft's Edge" or "Hey guys, I found this thing irc, but they clearly copied everything from Discord"

 

[MacBH928]

No. Your claim that a BBS is just a web page cannot be true because the web was invented after BBSs. You clam to be knowledgeable, but consistently prove otherwise.

I said BBS acted like a webpage. You go there, there is news, info, files, and posts and replied by other users. You could upload and download files.

you can see clearly how it has sections like board posts, chat, files, and others just like today. You just navigated with a keyboard not a mouse

 

[MacBH928]

I remember playing more board and card games, especially at cousins' houses. And darts. And video games you actually had to go buy or order from catalogs, and you could actually do COD. And I liked RPGs and interactive fiction. Had to get actual hint books. I liked the ones with the invisible ink where you started with vague clues up to telling you straight out. Or the big colorful guides eventually. Wish they still made those. Sometimes online is hard to find good hints.

Whats COD? and what is interactive fiction? Do you mean those books that you choose the ending or storyline?

This reminds me of those Scholastic books. They really did put extra effort in there to make them attractive. Some wild stuff like glow in the dark , cards, pop ups, embossed type... you name it. They were real marketing devils. Even as an adult if I saw those books I would want to buy them.

No matter where one could venture in history, you could probably never find a time when people had nothing to do. In fact, the real challenge would be trying to find any such time.

The same question could be framed as before cell phones, before computers, before television, before movies, before radio, before magazines, before automobiles... and 'roll' all the way back to before the wheel or before fire. If you could look in on any time in all of human history, you'd likely find busy people with hectic days filled with activities befitting the time. There was likely never a time where days were spent doing nothing... because there was nothing to do.

And for the VAST amount of that history, you would probably find FEW dreaming of an internet as some kind of ultimate destination of human (time) fulfillment.

Step forward in time and look back to now: will this be seen as some kind of pinnacle? I doubt it. If you could hop even 100 years into the future, "the internet" may be recalled like some of us recall "radio" or "early computing" today.

All throughout history, some people in the present imagine their present is the peak of everything... when in reality "now" is likely to be ridiculed as arcane "how did you ever get by with only..." views from even a generation or two from now.

Take a fresh look at the original post of this thread. OPs grandchildren will probably be talking up their "pinnacle"- whatever it will be- and seeing "now" like we see our own grandparents "activity limitations" of their day (of course, the grandparents don't recall it that way. What do they call their time??? The good old days).

It is how it works. It is probably how it will always work. It's fine to appreciate all we can do in the present... all we HAVE in the present... but we should never feel any type of conceit like we have reached some ultimate destination. My guess- as probably my great, great, great, great, great... great Grandfather may have thought too: this is barely the beginning.

I disagree. While different things that occurred pre-and-post things, the internet must be one of the things that have majorly changed the way people live in every manner. I was there I know. It wasn't as much at first when it was slow and you had to have a dedicate internet service and a dedicate expensive computer and you were online for about 1 hr a day but now that even your fridge is connected to Wifi and its manufacturer probably has a data sheet on when you open the door and when you close it is something completely different.

No we have no reached the pinnacle. There is still cancer to cure, clean energy, world hunger, poverty, space travel, Air conditioners can get smaller, air planes can get a lot more pleasant, and much more...but the internet must be one of the biggest things that affected human lives.

 

[MacBH928]

Is IRC the internet? 🤔

Anything that connects you to the public web I consider the internet. I think what you want to say is, "is IRC the WWW?" . Because WWW I believe is the websites and domains part. I am not sure where it exactly splits between WWW and Internet but there are other examples:-

Here is another list that I am not sure if its part of the internet or the WWW specifically:
-Apple Messages
-Netflix TV app
-App Store
-Whatsapp
-Online videogames
-Spotfiy app

Fun fact: Apple ran its own version of AOL (when a collaboration between the two companies didn’t work out, Apple licensed AOL’s backend and client code) called eWorld for a few years.

Fun fact 2: at AOL‘s headquarters in Northern Virginia, tables in the conference rooms were slabs of concrete with shards of shredded AOL CD-ROMs mixed into the concrete before it dried. It made the tabletops look like a mosaic.

Fun fact 3: just like on MacRumors, chat room moderators were volunteers.

Some misconceptions dispelled

• AOL was not just an ISP or a “curated” bundle of software. Imagine if Google and all of its services, including GMail, Google News, Google Finance, Google Chat and Android text messaging, were only available by installing a giant Google application on your computer. Further, imagine that the mega Google application could only be used by becoming a Google subscriber and dialing into a proprietary Google online network. This setup was popular during AOL’s heyday, the early to mid 1990s, because the World Wide Web was in its infancy, there was very little consumer-focused content anywhere online, and, most importantly, AOL offered a simple way to get online with a graphical interface (even though it did not provide subscribers a way to access the Internet until the late 90s), look at content, such as news articles and sports scores, and participate in online communities, including chat rooms, a pre-cell phone version of texts called Instant Messages, and message boards.
• AOL was organized (and operated) like a newspaper. There were main channels, like sections of a newspaper, such as Sports and News, that contained sub-categories, such as Baseball or International News. AOL had (a lot of) writers, artists, and tech people whose job it was to generate content for the Channels.
• AOL was a “walled garden” for most of its life but the content was not taken from the Web or the Internet.
• Keywords were one or two word shortcuts to specific screens on the AOL service. There was a keyboard combination, like Alt-K or Command-K, that popped up a text input box. Typing, say, “News” or “Sports” would take you directly to the relevant place on AOL.
• AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) was similar to Apple Messages. In fact, Apple Messages could be used in place of the AIM client in some versions of macOS. At first, though, AIM was only accessible by using the main AOL application.

thanks for clearing that up! Any one did any preservation of AOL to experience today like Internet Archive or similar? would be interesting.

AIM came a bit later on. I am not sure what was the first IM but the first one I used was ICQ and I thought it was a revolutionary software in the online world. You can see other people online when they are connected to the internet! WOW!

Surprisingly, ICQ is still around!

 

[mortlocli]

As far as I'm aware AOL was never available here in NZ, but that didn't stop the occasional CD from making its way over here. We had eWorld at school:

View attachment 2187593

The big influx of CDs here was for the locally-developed "Xtra", and notably its "XVille" which was effectively an eWorld clone.

View attachment 2187594

Unlike eWorld, XVille was accessed via a browser (the CD included Netscape) and therefore you had to wait an age for the graphic to download whenever it dropped out of the cache!

I do recall having a look at AOL (from NZ) at some stage...not sure if I was blocked..or just didn't find the content of interest.

 

[eyoungren]

Whats COD?

COD, in this context, is in reference to shipping. It stands for Cash On Delivery. If something was sent via COD, the receiver was responsible to pay for the item and the shipping on delivery. That meant you had to be home and the delivery person would not give you the package until you paid them.

Depending on the service there was a form that you had to sign. It spelled out exactly what the charges were and the delivery person had all that info.

At the time I worked for United Parcel Service (1992-1999), their COD service was being phased out. Maybe somebody out there still does it, but I'm not sure the US Postal Service still does.

 

[MrCheeto]

I think problems with COD may have arisen from the number of bust delivery attempts adding cost to the parcel service. Add to that another point of interaction with customers, which is such a burden to business that you literally can NOT contact a human at some companies.

On a similar topic, I remember the first time a delivery guy handed me a writing pad that was like a huge clipboard-sized Newton to sign for a package. I had a moment of hesitation figuring out WTF am I doing with this thing. Long story short: I got through the ordeal with little incident and by around 2012 I had this digital writing pad business down.

 

[eyoungren]

I think problems with COD may have arisen from the number of bust delivery attempts adding cost to the parcel service. Add to that another point of interaction with customers, which is such a burden to business that you literally can NOT contact a human at some companies.

On a similar topic, I remember the first time a delivery guy handed me a writing pad that was like a huge clipboard-sized Newton to sign for a package. I had a moment of hesitation figuring out WTF am I doing with this thing. Long story short: I got through the ordeal with little incident and by around 2012 I had this digital writing pad business down.

I think the death of COD was down to people not understanding. People would order things then discover that they had to pay 'extra'. Or there would be an argument about how much. The delivery driver was just the middleman, but they got a lot of verbal abuse I imagine.