Web page says phone format is wrong!?!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I just booked a hotel in Ireland. The booking process was easy, until I got to the phone number field.

I entered my cell number (American) as XXX-XXX-XXXX.

No go. Page says to enter the number in the appropriate format.

Hmmm… maybe I need to add the 1-.

Nope. Same message.

Well, maybe I should add country code (duh!)?

Nope. Same message.

At this point I nearly gave up trying to book with this hotel and switch to a more mainstream chain. The excellent reviews and excellent price kept me from doing so.

Instead I entered the first again but without the hyphens as XXXXXXXXXX.

Bingo!

All along, there was no description of what constitutes a correct phone format. Who the hell enters a phone number without hyphens these days? (Thank God the period format from the beginning of the last decade is dying off).

It reminded me of a joke website I saw years and years ago describing how to create the perfect website if you wish to infuriate your visitors. There was something about requiring a field that can not ever be possible to enter correctly. I wish I knew what site I read that at.

2

Alternatively, you probably could have used spaces instead of hyphens to separate the groups. I’ve looked into this some time ago while working on some piece of software , and IIRC, there’s an international standard that describes the standard phone number format, and space is the only approved group separator.

Now don’t get me started on idiot programmers who write applications that only accept American address and phone number.

3

Actually, it’s not. The format xxx.xxx.xxxx works better with assistive technology than xxx-xxx-xxxx.

4

Who the hell enters a phone number with hyphens these days?

5

This happens sometimes on the website for the company I work with , in our case it means turn off your popup blocker.

6

I’d think the first thing to try is entering it just the way you would on a phone… unless you actually enter hyphens when you call someone? Might be just me tho, I don’t actually know if other people enter 01-234-5678 (or 3581-234-5678 when calling from abroad) or not… but I somehow doubt it.