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Feb. 17th, 2008
Ordering Norton's
Feb. 17th, 2008 08:52 pmNeeded to use my Del tower earlier (my main machine is currently an iMac) and was notified that my Norton's subscription was about to expire. I finished what I wanted to do, then renewed. But not without difficulties which almost made me just skip the renewal and let the thing expire. Whoever designed their ordering pages needs to be fired and then prosecuted, for costing them business.
Everything actually went pretty well until I entered my phone number. When I tried to proceed that was flagged. I tried multiple times, being told that I could only enter numbers and that I could only enter a proper phone number. Turns out the format they wanted was A) not a proper phone number and B) they didn't give any info on what they actually wanted.
I finally figured out to delete the dash and it accepted that, taking me to the payment page. Only when I tried to to continue from there, I was taken to a page with a notice that the order couldn't be processed due to an improper phone number.
Huh? Hadn't the page for that already let what I entered through?
Following their instructions I hit the back button to go back and tried again. Some data was omitted, such as my password, which was understandable. What was not was that my state had been changed from KY to AK, even though the rest of my address had been retained. As had the phone number I entered, with no error message.
I tried again, re-entering the phone number from scratch, and went through the same process with the phone number, credit card info, and error page.
Okay, back *again*. This time I noticed that though the phone number field was about twenty characters wide, it only accepted seven. So when I included the dash, the last digit was left off, but I didn't notice. When I removed the dash, that page let the erroneous six-number entry through, but it was caught when trying to continue after the next page.
Okay, they want a non-standard phone number format while only saying they want a "proper" one. The filter apparently only looks for non-number characters and passes anything else, even something which isn't a full phone number. And though the phone number field appears to be plenty wide to accept the standard three-four format, it doesn't.
Finally, when the error is caught later in the process, the exact nature isn't specified, and you have to manually go back to the entry page and figure out a non-obvious error.
Everything actually went pretty well until I entered my phone number. When I tried to proceed that was flagged. I tried multiple times, being told that I could only enter numbers and that I could only enter a proper phone number. Turns out the format they wanted was A) not a proper phone number and B) they didn't give any info on what they actually wanted.
I finally figured out to delete the dash and it accepted that, taking me to the payment page. Only when I tried to to continue from there, I was taken to a page with a notice that the order couldn't be processed due to an improper phone number.
Huh? Hadn't the page for that already let what I entered through?
Following their instructions I hit the back button to go back and tried again. Some data was omitted, such as my password, which was understandable. What was not was that my state had been changed from KY to AK, even though the rest of my address had been retained. As had the phone number I entered, with no error message.
I tried again, re-entering the phone number from scratch, and went through the same process with the phone number, credit card info, and error page.
Okay, back *again*. This time I noticed that though the phone number field was about twenty characters wide, it only accepted seven. So when I included the dash, the last digit was left off, but I didn't notice. When I removed the dash, that page let the erroneous six-number entry through, but it was caught when trying to continue after the next page.
Okay, they want a non-standard phone number format while only saying they want a "proper" one. The filter apparently only looks for non-number characters and passes anything else, even something which isn't a full phone number. And though the phone number field appears to be plenty wide to accept the standard three-four format, it doesn't.
Finally, when the error is caught later in the process, the exact nature isn't specified, and you have to manually go back to the entry page and figure out a non-obvious error.
