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Companies Still Aren’t Catching The Clue Train

Just spent a bit of time helping my wife buy some tickets online through Ticketmaster.ca. Let me just say that this is one of the worst companies I have ever had to deal with in my entire life. If you want to partake in any event in or around Vancouver, you pretty much have to use them, unless it is an extremely small event, because they have a monopoly on ticket sales.

Now not only are their charges highway robbery especially now that it’s almost impossible to talk to a real person on their phone system but their phone system itself, like most, is an utterly frustrating experience. So you’re probably thinking, no problem I’ll just go online to avoid the frustration right? Wrong! It even gets worse! When choosing your seats you only get two minutes to read everything before it times out and you have to start over again. But wait the madness doesn’t end there! When it comes to actually purchasing the tickets you only have three minutes to enter in and verify all your address and credit card information. My wife is not a great typist but she also isn’t that bad either. She actually started cursing because she couldn’t enter it in time and had to restart the ENTIRE process over again from the very start! Are these companies utterly brain dead and disconnected from their customers? Hello?!

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Usability, aka common sense, is one of the most important things that websites require today, yet it is the last thing that companies seem to think about, if they even think about it at all!  All I can say is that I’m extremely happy that I’m not developing sites for brain dead companies like this who haven’t been able to catch the clue train for years. Ok, disabling rant mode now.