If you’ve ever found yourself on a website that was designed for maximum user-unfriendliness, that made you want to smash your computer (in addition to never using the site’s product again)…
I give you: StubHub.
Having sold my tickets, I needed to give StubHub a bank account where they deposit my funds. Reasonable.
When I entered all the bank routing and account information, I got this message:
Oh no! Something went wrong. Give it another shot.
Seriously? Could you give me a hint??
I gave it 8 more shots. And tried 2 different banks. Same freakin’ stupid message every time.
So I looked for customer service. I found a button that said “Chat” and thought aha, here we go, problem will soon be solved. Except…“Chat” brought me to their FAQ page. Note: that is not the definition of “chat” in any known language.
So I hunted high and low on their “Contact us” page for a phone number. Apparently they don’t own a phone, or they’re going to great lengths to make sure nobody can actually, you know, contact them.
From your description, having never used them myself, this is a function that they don’t want to work. The reasons seem fairly obvious. I wonder how many customers they lose because of it. I wonder if it pays as a long-term strategy.
The controversial Sinclair network’s website is set up in such a way that the “Find A Station” function is worse than useless. Wikipedia gives better information.
I heard about a local business that interested me, and their website, which I could tell had been up for some time, did not have the business’ hours on it. I messaged them and told them this, and the owner replied within an hour or so to tell me that I was right, and if anyone had previously noticed this, they hadn’t told her. :smack:
I absolutely hate websites that think gray text on a white background is cool or trendy. It is merely hard-to-read. Knock it off!
How many freakin’ overlays of crap do we need? I went to one news site from Baltimore and when the page loaded, there were 3 different overlay widgets. Close. Close. Close. Went back later in the day and had to close two of them again. Knock it off!
Another thing that irks the crap out of me? Sites that have a video story in the top paragraph and then, when you scroll to, you know, actually read the article, the video insists on popping up anchored to the bottom of the page. I doubly hate the wasted bits of humanity that insist on making the video pop back up, even after it has been closed. Knock it off!
Am I the only person that hates following a link to an article on a news site only to not have a clue what city they are talking about? You know the ones: the headline screams, “Possibly Armed Lunatic Escapes Asylum, Last Seen on Main Street”, so you go to the article, which is hosted on the Podunk News and Courier, and then you try to figure out exactly where Podunk is, because you might have a friend near there who doesn’t have access to the internet and needs to be warned. Is it really that hard to put something like, “Serving the greater Miami, Florida, metropolitan area” somewhere on the page? Seriously, knock it off!
I just went through the OP’s frustration trying to contact my ISP. Their bill pops up on the first and I pay it then or on the second because there’s plenty of money in checking. Then on the 3rd I get a text message, “It’s so easy to pay your bill via phone; just follow this link” like I’m sending payment info to someone who might or might not be my ISP.
Then three days later, another text, “You really ought to pay your bill.” Three days after that, “Your bill’s due date is approaching,” and so on until the due date passes and Miracle of Miracles! they discover the bill’s been paid. I get about a week’s respite until the cycle begins anew.
I am no coder but I was looking for a way to suggest they add just one line like IsAccountPaidUp? IF Yes: DoNotSendMessage. No email address to be found, Their Chat Feature did not seem to launch clean, an needless to say, no phone numbers were in sight. Finally, frustrated, I gave up and started closing the various windows, sub-windows, and pop-ups that had accumulated. To my surprise, there’s a survey to take about your experience.
Bwaha-ha! I give 1s across the board and gave them an earful in the 300 char comment box. No feedback yet so who knows where it went. It was mildly cathartic in any event.
A follow-up on my StubHub story: they keep sending me email telling me that I need to establish the bank account link (which I’ve tried, so many times…) Today’s email included a line “Please contact us – we’re here for you 24/7” which is bullshit. But the mail had a “Chat” button, which took me to their FAQ – but this time, that page did have a real working Chat link.
So after a reasonable wait I got through to a support person, who made no attempt to fix the bank account problem, but she noticed that I also had a PayPal link in my profile, and made a note to send me my money that way. Which you would think would have been automatic.
I was hoping that the chat would end with an offer to take a “brief survey” oh please oh please … but no, they were not interested in my opinion.
See, I’m not even sure I’d call that “bad.” I think it’s a pretty good design in terms of conveying that crazy car salesman (or in this case, leasing) aesthetic. There’s something about car sales that seems to attract this anarchic, loud, cheesy, Demolition Derby/Monster Truck Rally/“THIS SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!” sort of aesthetic, from the TV ads to the radio spots to the look of the lots with zany signage.
The old Space Jam website is still up in its full glory, with spots of red text on a busy black tiled background. This was 1996, so I’m not sure it was intentionally bad. That’s just what a lot of websites looked like back then. Perhaps it was going for that “home-made” look, but that was, from my recollection, before designers really started figuring out what works and what doesn’t. On the plus side, it doesn’t have an auto-playing .midi file when you open it. And I don’t see a webcounter.
Except for my one recent complaint (which might not have been Gmail’s error), I’ve had no problem with Gmail. It’s the only Google service that hasn’t become annoying. BUT, I keep my Gmail in Basic View.
My top three nominations for worst website design are Facebook, Facebook, and Facebook. Every menu and window wants to make me puke. I have to wade through pictures of strangers before I get to my Newsfeed … which might be suppressed anyway these days. There’s no obvious way to Find my Friends. (‘Find Friends’ looks for non-Friends you might want to Befriend.) The chat windows are itsy-bitsy windows that are used to compose essays. $80 billion Fuckerburger has, but that’s not enough for whom to support italics or boldface? The undocumented gyrations you must undergo to preview a profile (since they get cropped) without all your Friends being notified "“Septi changed his profile … and again … and again”) seem inane and insane … until you realize you’re not using Facebook: it’s using you. … Et cetera.
Facebook’s Newsfeed scrolls forever. Or rather it did before Facebook decided to stop showing me my Newsfeed at all.
Verizon.com, trying to pay a landline bill. They redesign the site every 3 days and I can never find how to log in. I resort to Googling “verizon pay bill”
Just curious, do you remember what time you tried the chat the first time? I’m guessing it was late/after hours & they only have that enabled during (extended) business hours. Yeah, not good for you late at night, & the message should be better but I’m guessing they turned it off for the night/weekend.
They can also do multiple chat windows at one time but only one phone call at a time so they need less reps on chat only.