With apologies to the real This is Broken... I have had several unpleasant web-related experiences lately:
Item 1. We have the technology if you're using Windows (but we forgot to tell you it broke.) I tried uploading photos to RitzPix. Since I have a Mac, this is a somewhat annoying process. I have to select the pictures one at a time with a form. Why is this necessary, when PhotoAccess/PhotoWorks have an uploader system that works with Mac, Windows and Linux? Anyway, I suffered through it, gamely uploaded my pictures and got a confirmation message... only to be told when I went to pick them up that "the machine is broken." What, they have this wonderful automated system... and they couldn't email me to offer to have the pictures developed at another of their locations? Asinine.
Item 2. All
Flash, no substance. I tried getting a poster printed from a desktop
publishing program. ZooPrinting
came up during my search. They have a nice-looking site, a cool
Flash-based interface... and a totally broken site with zero customer
service support. After giving them my credit card info and placing my
order (what a mistake!) I tried uploading my file. The uploader applet
wouldn't work. I tried using their FTP server. It rejected me. I
emailed them. They ignored my email but charged my card. How charming.
Avoid, avoid, avoid!
Item 3. You call that a "feature"? I tried to pay my PG&E bill online. I didn't want to stop getting the paper bill though. But when I clicked the "Decline e-bills" button I kept getting kicked back to the previous screen with no explanation. If you look more closely, just before the "accept" and "decline" buttons, it says "We’ll stop sending you paper bills when you enroll to view or pay bills online." So declining e-bills means you can't pay your bills online at all. What the hell?!?
Anyway, I know it's very, very hard to get e-commerce right, and to design online applications that work... but in these cases, it's difficult to imagine that they even tried very hard. Feh.
