Online services are meant to simplify our lives. They are meant to make mundane chores such as paying bills and booking train tickets convenient and hassle-free.

Government departments, banks, shops and businesses across the land are all encouraging us to move online on the basis that it makes our lives easier and theirs cheaper.

I like being able to transfer money from my bank account in a matter of moments at home in the evening.

I like that I can pay the congestion charge with the click of a button after I have driven into central London.

I am happy to book and check in for flights online.

And need I say more about the queue-less 24-hour purchasing opportunities that internet shopping presents.

When online services work, they are brilliant. Life is simple. But when they go wrong, they go really wrong.

Take, for example, the online postage service Royal Mail has recently started offering.

We have been contacted by numerous readers complaining about faulty software (Letters, 2 November). When things go wrong with the printing, people are having to go to post offices to send letters, which completely defeats the object of the online service element.

London Transport’s Oyster Card is another prime example. Charging it online is all well and good in practice, but when it does not work properly and you have forked out £120 on a ticket that gets you as far as the ticket office barrier, it is not so good. Particularly when you are then told the computer system cannot be overridden to give the refund, and you have to spend three weeks in call centre queues trying to get your cash back.

And have you ever tried phoning Amazon if there is something wrong with an order? Good luck with locating the number.

If I buy something in the physical world and something goes wrong, it is irritating but usually fairly straightforward to solve. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that this approach is not mirrored in the virtual world.

I am sick of hearing that ‘the computer won’t let me do this’. Any online service must be backed up with a solid real world support network. If I transact online, I still want and need to be able to speak to a human being that can make decisions that are not governed by rules stipulated by ‘the computer’.

Businesses with an online presence need to take notice and make themselves more easily contactable and amenable, or they will lose out to competitors.

What do you think? Email us at: feedback@computing.co.uk