PUSHING THE WRONG BUTTONS

As far as Alan Cochrane is concerned, the hoops we now have to jump through to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation have gone a step too far

The General Data Protection Regulation is driving Alan Cochrane up the wall

The man in the computer department couldn’t have been more helpful: ‘No sir, I wouldn’t buy that laptop.’ He smiled knowingly, pointing at the machine I’d set my heart on. ‘Why not?’ I asked, whereupon there followed a fairly lengthy stream of words with which I had only the slightest acquaintance – such unknown jargon as ‘hard drives’, ‘gigabytes’, ‘Pentium’, and ‘memory’.

But so obviously honest and straightforward was he that it eventually got through to me that he wasn’t just trying to get me away from one of the cheapest machines in his department but he really and truly didn’t think that the one I wanted to buy would have been any good to me. Even for my extremely modest ‘write and send’ usage, it would have been hopeless.

And so I agreed to buy the only slightly dearer version that he recommended. It seemed to have all the bits and bobs that he approved of. However, that was not the end but merely the beginning of my confusion.

As most of you will be aware the price these things say on the box is never the price you end up paying for them. As my helpful computer salesman quickly pointed out I’d need a ‘this’ and a ‘that’ bit of kit and yes, of course, his colleagues would help me assemble all the gizmos, but for a price. There was nothing I could do but agree if I wanted to continue with a laptop that worked.

But when it got to the important – to me at least – bit about transferring all my written files to a new computer, my new-found friend was a bit flaky. ‘Er no,’ he confessed, ‘GDPR means that it’s no longer a simple job.’

His colleagues could no longer simply connect up my old machine to the new one and, voila, in no time all of the documents I wanted to keep would be moved over. Those days were gone and all because of the General Data Protection Regulation.

Strange as it seems, although both of the computers belonged to me and contained nothing but data that I had generated myself, the new rules meant that a simple transfer was out of the question.

It could be done but only via a third bit of equipment. Now, don’t ask me to explain or translate everything my friend was telling me but it seemed another hard drive would have to be acquired into which my ‘stuff’ would be transferred and only thence into my new toy.

Now apart from adding not-insignificantly to the cost, don’t you think that this is all a bit ridiculous and unnecessary?

But that isn’t a patch on what happens with wallpaper. Yes, wallpaper. My wife ordered several rolls from John Lewis with a supposedly guaranteed seven-day delivery time.

When they hadn’t turned up after ten days I eventually got through by phone – after a ten-minute wait – to the company’s customer services department. There I gave a very nice lady the order reference number and everything seemed to be going swimmingly until she asked to speak to my wife.

When I told her she wasn’t available I was told that because of ‘data protection’ she wasn’t allowed to talk to anybody except my wife. If she did she’d be breaking the law, I was told.

My plaintive cry that we were talking here about wallpaper, not issues of personal privacy, far less national security – as the lady could tell from the order form in front of her – made not a shred of difference.

Just as with my computer incident, coming face to face with the GDPR on the wallpaper front left me with a feeling of total impotence and frustration that legislation designed to tackle weightier issues was now denying common sense.

And while major retail concerns are duty bound to comply with the law of the land they might at least train their staff to apply a little judgement.

“Coming face to face with the GDPR on the wallpaper front left me with a feeling of frustration