Dear programmers of web applications, please get a clue

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve posted before how I hate that when a website asks me to create a password, they never give me the information I need:

  1. What is the minimum length
    and
  2. What is the maximum length
    and
  3. What is the full list of characters allowed in the password (can I use a ~? a `? an ø ?)

But enough of that. I have a new complaint. My latest pet peeve is with e-mail signups. I have an e-mail address that I use for signing up at websites, let’s say the N.Y. Times, or istockphoto.com, or any time I register an application for tech support.

Except that I decided to change that e-mail address recently to make it shorter, because sometimes I have to write that e-mail address by hand and when you have to do it multiple times it becomes a chore. (Like last summer I took a plane trip with the family, two adults/two children, and I fill out those luggage tags that the airlines provide. The luggage tags have a spot for an e-mail address. I filled out about 13 or 14 of those and I realized that if my e-mail address was shorter it would have gone faster. Also lots of forms only give you a tiny box for entering an e-mail address.) So anyway I ditched my old e-mail address xxxxxxxxx_xxxxx@yy.zzz and switched to xxxx@yy.zzz ; just think of all the ink I’ll save!

Here is the problem: I faithfully went to every site and changed my address from xxxxxxxxx_xxxxx@yy.zzz to xxxx@yy.zzz . This happened months ago.
Except some of those sites keep on sending their e-mails to xxxxxxxxx_xxxxx@yy.zzz !
Typically these are general announcements, or upgrade announcements, or special deals / discounts. I don’t mind getting those, in fact, in many cases, I want to get those! More often than not, those e-mails have, at the bottom, a “unsubscribe from these e-mails” link. But in 99% of the cases, there is no “change my e-mail address” option: only a way to stop receiving the mailings. If there was at least a “subscribe” option, I could unsubscribe and then subscribe again. But no, all they have is “unsubscribe”.

I want to delete the xxxxxxxxx_xxxxx@yy.zzz e-mail account, but I’m waiting until the account doesn’t get any e-mail for a period of two to three monhs. Except that several times a week I get e-mails from sites that I have accounts with! In the case of one site, I’ve e-mailed them five times asking “how can you switch these e-mails over to the new account” and each time they tell me “I’ll make the change in the database, in two weeks at most it will be fixed.” It’s five months later and you’re still sending stuff to the old address and nothing to the new addresss! :mad:

If you’re in charge of developing a subscription system, give me a way to CHANGE my e-mail address!

2

Or if you had a label maker. Man, if I sold label makers for a living this would be the perfect opportunity to go into a pitch.

3

Yeah, except I would have had to buy a new label maker after I changed my e-mail! :stuck_out_tongue:

4

Nah, they aren’t rubber stamps. You can set them to print a label for anything you want. My parents have one and they go nuts with it; they even label things that don’t really need to be labeled (like the garbage bin has a label that says “Rubbish” even though there is only one and they are not British. I guess they just thought that was funny).

5

I agree with the OP (and the password info request too), I just went through something similar with email addresses.

My current complaint: on the iPhone and other devices with a virtual keyboard, when you have a text entry field that requires numbers (ZIP code, phone number) default to the number keyboard. It can be easily done. It’s minor but I am lazy.

6

I’ve got a couple:

Don’t make me create an account in your online store before you’ve told me how much it will cost to ship my order.

Don’t make me sign in to your website to unsubscribe from your mailing list (if my interest in your emais has waned, it may be that I also no longer remember my login credentials)