Just organising Powers of Attorney for my ageing parents. On the whole the 'simplified' version from the Office of The Public Guardian was well thought-out but there's a glaring error in both the LP1F and LP1H forms in which reference is constantly made to subsections A7 and A3 etc in 'the guide' which are needed for users to make their choice. Why their web-people couldn't put a URL link into these forms to take the reader to 'the guide' is beyond me. Or at the least actually specify the title of 'the guide' so one could look it up separately. I tried to alert them to this problem by the succinct message below, BUT THE SAME SLOPPY WEB WRITERS WHO OMITTED THE LINK ALSO TRUNCATED FEEDBACK RESPONSE WHICH MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO TELL THEM! When I attempted to present my helpful feedback to them by using several feedback panels the very same web-designers who couldn't be bothered linking to 'the guide' had gone to great lengths TO STOP ANYONE WHO HAD ONCE SENT FEEDBACK FROM SENDING ANY MORE and instead kept trying to force me to fill out a 'How was your visit' questionnaire. (sigh). That's probably why this error has continued since 2017 and caused an unnecessary ambiguity for users in an already complex form, necessitating thousands of extra calls to the OPG helplines and a lot of head-scratching. Not a good use of taxpayers' money for the OPG to isolate themselves from user experience and feedback I would have thought. My Message to the Office of The Public Guardian ran:"Your forms LP1F and LP1H (pdf) keep referring to extra information in 'the guide' , giving 'A7' 'A3' and other references - presumably appendixes of some sort) in relation to detailed options BUT THERE IS NO LINK to 'the guide' and both the HTML on-line version AND the downloadable pdf version of the only Guides I can find on your website on Powers of Attorney have no appendices or sub-headings referring to A3, A7 etc! This is a crucial error working against what is an other-wise very well sorted presentation. Presumably people will pester your helpline for this information instead? Why not make it easy on everyone and include a url link for 'the guide'? It will only take 15 minutes. I'll do it for you if you would care to send me the URL to the document that LP1F and LP1H refers to? As I say, this was 'too long' for their feedback panel and so we are now in a perpetual cycle where the OPG keeps on using 'the guide' which nobody can see and everyone who wastes their time looking for it cannot tell the OPG that they can't find it because the OPGs feedback comment section will not take a message and there is no other contact method offered by them. Catch 22. I wonder if this Trustpilot review will alert them? Let's hope so.
