Bad Usability Still Abounds on the Web

Trying to log into T-Mobile, it refuses to take 555-555-1234 as my phone number. At first it says nothing at all, just silently fails, but then after I angrily click on the page several times, it finally coughs up “Enter a valid email or phone number.”

T-Mobile Face-plants the usability

For whatever reason, possibly due to stressing about whether my phone has been hacked, it takes me a while to realize how boring the error is. It’s the “our programmers are so lazy, they want only numbers” error!

I finally twig and type in 5555555555 and it “helpfully” makes that look like (555) 555-1234. How hard is it to just take out the non-numerical input? It’s literally one line of code in most programming languages! Even in Java it’s only 2 lines!

Finally, I get the happy pink color, but only after typing “5555555555”. Also, I don’t want to shock you but that’s not my actual phone number. I get enough random robo callers already.

My other “favorite” issue is when I go to pay the Target card. After earning a brownie point for pre-selecting my one and only payment method, it then blows it by defaulting to a date which has passed. “We’re story, you attempted to schedule a payment in the past.” This has happened multiple times now.

No Target, I’m sorry, I am not a demented time-traveller trying to pay my bills, you set me up for failure, if it’s after midnight where you are (Minnesota, is that where Target headquarters are?) then don’t offer me an impossible option! What a concept. At least they finally stopped using blurry images for all their text.