Stickmaker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stickmaker) wrote2007-12-09 12:39 pm
stickmaker) wrote2007-12-09 12:39 pm
Entry tags:
Aggravation
I keep running into this. An online business will ask for information and provide a wide field, then reject the entry with no explanation. Eventually I learn that while the field is X characters wide, the software only accepts X minus Y characters.
I see this most often with ZIP codes. There will be a field wide enough for ZIP+4 and often more. Only, if I enter all ten characters I get an error message. Sometimes the site explains that only the original 5-character ZIP is allowed. Sometimes it just tells me that what I entered in the field is wrong. (Leaving me ranting "It's my ZIP Code! How can it be wrong?!")
If you want the original, five-character ZIP SAY SO!!! Likewise, don't provide a field larger than what your software will accept! And if you want a phone number in a non-standard format (the US standard being (Area Code) XXX-YYYY) STATE THIS!!
I see this most often with ZIP codes. There will be a field wide enough for ZIP+4 and often more. Only, if I enter all ten characters I get an error message. Sometimes the site explains that only the original 5-character ZIP is allowed. Sometimes it just tells me that what I entered in the field is wrong. (Leaving me ranting "It's my ZIP Code! How can it be wrong?!")
If you want the original, five-character ZIP SAY SO!!! Likewise, don't provide a field larger than what your software will accept! And if you want a phone number in a non-standard format (the US standard being (Area Code) XXX-YYYY) STATE THIS!!
no subject
My favorites are userids & passwords - if you've got a minimum required length for a userid, say so up front! It took me about a half-hour to find out that GMail had a six character minimum for userids the one time I tried to get an account. And don't get me started on password requirements - fortunately, I use PasswordSafe and it's auto-generate function, so each web site gets it's own unique password, but sometimes it's a pain finding out what they consider 'sufficient'.
Some day I'm going to figure out how much of the search space is eliminated by 'minimum eight characters, must have three out of four of uppercase, lowercase, numeric and special characters, no double characters'. Which means, for example, M1llen1a is not acceptable, but Mil1enia is.