[thelist] Does this webmaster hate their boss?

[Palyne Gaenir]

http://www.netmarket.com/

You guys'll love this.  The story just gets better as it goes on.

I go to the above website, as someone sent me a link to buy a lexmark 
color printer which after rebate is about $30-odd.  And after looking 
around, I decided to buy a few items.

The process is a little annoying loading every bleepin' graphic every 
page but that's fairly normal; every time I say "continue shopping" 
after adding an item though it takes me back to the front page, 
instead of to the page I was on, and it takes me forever to get back 
to the product page so I could maybe buy the accessory they have 
listed there next to it.

A couple of the items, I had direct links to.  (But I have cookies 
fully enabled in IE5 btw, so tracking me in sites is no problem.)  
And I finally get all my stuff in the shopping cart.  I do notice 
that it's only showing me the current products but I figure maybe 
they don't want to scare people with the big total. :-)  

After too long spent, I go to checkout, only to realize that it has 
no idea who I am.  Every single product it thinks is an individual 
purchase. It just doesn't WORK to buy more than one product.

I'm ticked I spent so much time on this.  But I want a couple of 
things.  So I call their customer service and tell them about this.

Their rep says, "Oh!  Yeah, you must be using Internet Explorer.  Our 
website isn't compatible with Internet Explorer."

"It's an ASP site," I say.  "Why would you design an ASP site to not 
be compatible with a MS browser, when ASP is an MS product?"

"I don't know," she says, "I just know that our website only works 
with Netscape browsers.  Don't you have Netscape?"

"Of course I have Netscape" I say.  "I shouldn't HAVE to use it.  IE 
is the vast majority of the public browser market now so why would 
you make a big expensive web site without making it to at least 
FUNCTION in IE??  I don't believe it."

"I know," she sighs.  "I think they've been working on that."

So we go through the process of me ordering the items over the phone 
(the shipping'll kill you, like most places, even if the product 
price is ok).  She asks for a username.  I give her [firstname].  
Later she tells me my username is [lastname]2.  But I want 
[firstname], I say.  Well the system always defaults to your last 
name and a number, she says.  Well why did you ask me then? I say.  I 
make her change it.

I'm trying to use the "back" button in my browser so I can find all 
these product numbers for her.  Every time I hit "back" it redirects 
me to the home page!  So the back key doesn't work.  I finally 
discover I have to press BACK twice really fast.  That works.

We get to about item 6 of the phone order and she goes,

"Oh! You didn't try to order more than 15 items, did you?"

"Well, no," I say.  "Why do you ask?"

"Well our system doesn't allow you to order more than 15 items."

"It what?  You're kidding.  You mean your website has a problem of 
some kind related to that?  Even when some of these items are like, 
just a few bucks for a little thing so I can see someone maybe buying 
a bunch?"

"Only 15," she says.  "Of course, you can call us if you have more."

"I'm looking at your front website page now, and I've seen all your 
cart pages," I say.  "NOWHERE does it say there is a 15 item limit.  
What will happen if I'm shopping and I happen to enter a 16th 
product, or enter 3-qty when I have 13 items already?  Does it not 
tell me until then?"

"Oh, that happens," she says sadly.  "It'll just lock you out of the 
system and won't even let you in anymore.  People call me who've had 
that happen.  One poor man tried to enter 17 items and it just kept 
doing it to him."

(As added humor, this is a registration site that after 3 months will 
bill you for $19.95 membership unless you remember to contact them 
and cancel if you don't want it.  The 'valued member discounts' on 
the various products (I did the $1-for-3mo-registration) ranges from 
.95 to 3.00 on the products I bought).)

So before we hang up I say, "Are you SURE your webmaster actually 
LIKES you?"  She sounds a little put out.  "I know they're trying," 
she says.  "Ah," I console her, "I'm sure they are."

I can't believe anybody would put up a pretty major e-commerce site 
(they're not just one biz selling their products, they sell from lots 
of different mfrs, and they claim to be a "six website" group) that 
(a) doesn't function right with IE and (b) doesn't allow you to order 
more than 15 items without LOCKING YOU OUT and more importantly, (c) 
does not say ANYTHING ANYWHERE about these very important facts.  
Holy cow!

I don't even want to know how much money they spent on that website.  
Talk about web firms who deserve to be sued for lousy product...

Palyne