Worst Websites
12/31/08 — Sears.com sucks like no web site should ever suck.
December 30th, 2008 9:09 pm by Vincent Flanders
If I remember correctly, the glory days of Sears are long past. Their web site isn’t helping. In fact it’s hurting them. It’s one thing if your web site looks like a car wreck on the information highway, but when you keep people from spending large sums of money on your web site you need to be slapped silly.
Like John Mellencamp, I live in a small town. When we have a power outage, it lasts for days so I need a portable generator. Sunday night (12-28) I go to Sears.com, find what I’m looking for, and try to order the generator. Since it’s a big item, they need to deliver it directly to my residence. No problem — I give them my home address. Since I live in a small town, mail — including credit card bills — gets delivered to a post office box. Since I don’t click the checkbox that says “Billing address is same as shipping address,” Sears lets me key in my billing address. I type “PO Box 123456″ and hit submit, but the form doesn’t accept it — but there’s no error message. I try to go to the next step, but Sears gives me an error message that it needs a billing address and kindly provides me a link to create one.
You guessed it — I’m in loop hell. I think, “Maybe it’s my browser. Maybe there’s some stupid pop-up blocker running.” I use another browser that doesn’t have any add-ins. I try to order again. Same problem. I try a third browser. Nothing. As a normal, red-blooded American male, I’m massively pissed.
Monday morning (12-29) I call up Sears.com’s web support and mention my problem. The woman on the other end automatically knows what’s wrong as soon as I say, “It won’t accept my PO Box.” She says, “You have to spell PO Box out — ‘Post Office Box.’” You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.
Yes, they’re aware of the problem, but I suspect the problem has been around a long, long time. If they haven’t fixed such an obvious mistake by now, it must mean the site has other problems that are far, far worse. If this happened to Jakob Nielsen, he’d politely tear them a new one.
Sears should die. Wait. I think it is.
Posted in Bad Business Practices, Usability, Web Design |