I tried to sign up for the Netflix-like online DVD rental service, Zip.CA, and 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<bang> Over and over again<bang> Even the fields I got right the first three times<bang>
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, accessibility, and general cluefulness.
I rang their “customer service” line (costing them actual money) and insisted that the Valley Girl–accented “customer service representative” send E-mail to the developers to get this 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 twice to sign me up over the phone. Sorry, honey, but no go: This is an online DVD rental service, I do everything on the computer now, and if an expert can’t sign up for your service, he won’t be signing up at all.