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A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
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Previous: Balcony on house | Main | Next: Police car
May 6, 2006 12:03 AM
Broken: Signing up for Zip.ca
Joe Clark writes in:
I tried to sign up for the Netflix-like online DVD rental service zip.ca. I gave up after their JavaScript-heavy form demanded that I retype all my credit-card information three more times. Why? Because apparently I had made a single mistake in one of the fields, which caused the entire page to reload and all of my correct fields to be erased. I make one mistake and it forces me to re-enter everything.
I must fill out all mandatory fields over and over again, even the fields I got right the first three times.
How’s that for E-commerce?
It gets better: The Live Help chat-mode option requires Java, which their system thinks Firefox doesn’t have. (Did they build this thing just for IE6?) You could also find a lot of things wrong with their forms, semantics, overuse of pictures of text, and difficult accessibility.
I phoned their “customer service” line and insisted that the “customer service representative” send an E-mail to the developers to get their forms fixed. (They had no method at all to assign a ticket to a tech-support complaint. She was initially just going to make a “note” in my “account” that would sit there unread until Armageddon.)
She offered to sign me up over the phone twice. Sorry, but no go: This is an online DVD rental service, and if an expert can’t sign up for your service, he won’t be signing up at all.
They're weeding out the weak of will, like Microsoft is doing with its operating systems. If you're unwilling to enter and reenter your data multiple times, then you're not yet docile enough to serve in their secret future army.
Hmph maybe it's because the site has broken/not working links. Also, it might have a BAD connection because it's in California. Of course, the connection depends on where YOU are compared to where THEY are!
_@_v - you could just pre-enter all the data onto a notepad then cut n paste to the entry boxes if you feel like having another go at them
this is not broken just because you are lazy. they just dont want hackers. if the identy is yours then you would not have trubble rembereing unless your stupid. i repeat this is NOT BROKEN!!!!
i'd have to say that it is quite a set back though, hwo long was the form?
I just want to relish this for a second:
"if the identy is yours then you would not have trubble rembereing unless your stupid."
identy
trubble
rembereing
your
Ahhhhh, that's good. That's reeeal good.
Thanks RevalutionNow.
revalution
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Good, good stuff.
Gadjo- you forgot "hwo," though that's more of a typo...I hope...
RevalutionNow has got to be someone else's sock puppet...But just in case, he didn't say he had any trouble remembering (trubble rembering, if that makes you feel better), he said it was inconvenient. Remember folks, avoidable inconvenience = bad customer experience = BROKEN.
RevalutionNow, it's really simple to type your response into a Word document before you submit it...that'll fix most of your spelling errors, and make you sound more like an intelligent person and less like a ten-year-old.
But David, that'd take all the fun out of it!
As for that... experience, it could be better. I can see, for security reasons, having to refill all the fields, but still... ALL of them is a *tad excessive...
JC,
Don't waste your time manually filling out web forms. Get RoboForm, quite possibly THE form filler program around. Log onto web sites or fill out huge forms with a few mouse clicks. Been using it for years. They actually answer tech question E's quickly! Check it out I think you'll be hooked. There's a free version but I don't know if it is time or function limited.
P.S. Almost forgot, there's a great FireFox toolbar for RoboForm too.
Regards
Hmmm....their landing page also looks strangely similar to Netflix's. Unless they're owned by the same company, I'd say go with Netflix if it's available in Canada. I currently use it and it's great.
No, you can't sign up for Netflix. Zip IS the Netflix of Canada. Netflix owns Zip, I believe. That's why you can't have Netflix when you're in Canada.
Zip is the best service in Canada, so far. I had a bit of trouble signing up, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. The signup is a bit confusing. But after a few tears, I managed to figure it out, and I haven't had a lick of trouble since.
I think YOU'RE broken if you went to all that trouble to give them your hard-earned money. Plenty of other e-merchants offer that service. Guess you're just a persistent cuss, huh?
Please use http://www.greencine.com since they suck less. I am merely a relatively satisfied customer.
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Previous: Balcony on house | Main | Next: Police car
maybe you should look into becoming an errorless robot to accomodate them.
Posted by: gmangw at May 6, 2006 12:12 AM