Nothing gets me off of my computer faster than blatant errors in content that could easily have been caught in edit. As the ratio of utter crap to nuggets of gold goes up, my willingness to wade in at all goes down. Very beneficial for getting actual work done.
Just as bad with TV captioning/subtitles. I occasionally need it when characters are mumbling or gabbling, but quite often I can make out what’s actually said, as opposed to what the auto- captioning’s picked up. Often it doesn’t much matter, but when they decide to refer to a character with a completely different name from what they said barely half a minute before, or confuse I/we/you…. well, it doesn’t help you spot the murderer, let’s put it that way.
I’m looking at a product on a website. I’ve purchased a lot from this company over the years. I’m seeing if they have what I want in my size and color when a big popup tells me to enter my email to receive 15% off. I don’t see any way to close the popup so I enter my email and get a message saying “sorry, discount is for new customers only.”
The company interrupted me when I was actively looking at one of their products. It’s the digital equivalent of a salesperson hovering over you when you tell them that you’re just looking.
Yes. It seems like most retail sites I visit refuse to let me even determine if they have products I’m interested in before throwing multiple pop-ups in front of me. I guess most people these days don’t mind giving their contact information to random businesses and clicking closed chat-bot “customer service” windows at random moments as a prerequisite to browsing inventory/prices.
What I hate is restaurants that won’t even let you look at their menu, and other companies that won’t let you look at their site, until you give them your address and phone number. You’re not going to come visit me or waste time trying to call me, so why do you think you need that information?
Yeah. I’ve run into websites that won’t let you see anything they’re selling unless you first open an account with them.
I had no idea whether I wanted an account with you when I didn’t know what you’re selling or for how much. I do, however, know for damn sure that I don’t want an account with you if you’re trying to pull that one on me.
I’ve been getting annoyed about menus without prices on them. I got a menu for a new pizza place in the mail but there’s no prices. So I go to the website and there’s no prices there either. I have to open the ordering process to proceed from there. I guess they’re attitude is, “Just tell us what you want and we’ll tell you how much it is.” Clearly, they’re trying to get me invested in my order there so i’m less likely to go to another pizza place if I don’t like the price.
The end result: they will never get my business.
I’m tempted to call them, ask for the price of each item, and write it down on the menu I got in the mail. And be sure to mention about 1/3 of the way through the process that I wouldn’t have to do it if the menu had the prices already on it. Then get 12 of my friends to do the same.
It wasn’t even that. More like you’re headed to the cash register to pay for your purchase and get stopped by someone asking if you want to apply for the store credit card.
Tech companies in my experience are the worst when it comes to this. Want to look at the user’s manual for an oscilloscope that your employer already owns? First you you must register for an account, which requires you to provide your name, job title, mailing address, work email address, work phone number…
eBay has a new annoying thing. When you go there, your progress is blocked by a popup with a QR code.
I like it.
There is a local pizza place, family owned. Many people in town rave over it. But they REFUSE to put a sign on the door saying what their hours are, or a “Open/Closed sign. One time we had some of their pizza- someone else bought- and it was okay. I also noticed that when i paid with cash the clerk didnt ring it up.
They must lose sales because people just bail.
Oh, that reminds of the management of the first apartment I lived in after I moved to California. The rental office did have hours posted on the door, but in reality those hours didn’t matter; they just closed whenever they felt like it. On multiple occasions when I needed something from management I purposely left work early to get there before they closed, got there like 15-20 minutes before their posted closing time, only to find that the office was already closed. The UPS drivers routinely left packages at the rental office if I wasn’t home when they delivered it, so whenever that happened ended up locked in the closed office until I could get there when they were actually open.
Take your pick:
1) Priced as marked (“It’s free!”)
2) If you have to ask you can’t afford it.
- “To each according to his need”
This is how I interpret menus without prices, and I usually go on to conclude that I can’t afford it, or at least don’t want to.
Not a good viewpoint for the place in my post: a takeout pizza joint in a strip mall. One of the main reasons that takeout/delivery pizza became big was that it was convenient. If they make it inconvenient, I’ll just go with one of the chains already listed in my phone contacts.
This undoubtedly stems from my upbringing as the offspring of two elementary schoolteachers, both of whom emphasized proper grammar and spelling in their classrooms (and home).
I know it shouldn’t bother me, but I almost cringe when I see a misspelled word. It can be in a post on this board, or FB (very common), or an email, or an online article, but it bothers me whenever I see a misspelling. And news sites are the worst, as those entities should have rigorous spellcheckers, not to mention editors, that should catch these errors. I sometimes strain to refrain from replying with a correction, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.
I just saw the ultimate clickbait headline and it made mw see red. It was, basically, “[News Anchor] Delivers Tragic News on [News Show].” Yes, the headline was that news had been announced. No hint of what the news actually was. What’s next? the print version of the NYT saying, “NEWSPAPER PRINTS HEADLINE?”
Congratulations! I think you managed to avoid errors in your post complaining about errors! I feel exactly the same, except that whenever I write a post stating my complaint, I manage to include a mispelling.
I sometimes monitor recent changes on Wikipedia to look for egregious spelling or grammar mistakes. When I see an edit tagged with the edit summary “fixed grammer”, I cringe at what I will see when I open it.