What A Bad User Experience
I spend better than 60 percent of my day online. I shop, I do research, I work, and I play. Bad user experiences are not all that uncommon for users. We encounter them almost daily with the various websites we use. But this one site has really pissed me off today. So bad that I could not let it slide off my back like the others. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood, but really, I think it was just a bad experience that left a significant impression on me.
It all started when I got an email from SmithMicro, makers of TuneRanger. It's an application that syncs itunes libraries. Anyway, I got this email first thing in the morning announcing a 30% off sale. Being half asleep and recognizing it as a software that I once wanted to purchase I decided to jump on it. This is where it all started to go wrong…
First sign of failure, and a clue that I should have jumped ship before I got to involved was the ordering process. Upon submitting my order—paying with PayPal— I got an error message saying that my order had failed and that I needed to contact my credit card company. ?!? errr, mum, I payed with Paypal? Not a credit card. After checking my PayPal account, I was able to see that my account had been charged for the software after all. Odd?
I waited for a confirmation email and when nothing came right away, I went back to the SmithMicro site to look for a contact email for support. After reading through their complicated support pages, I was able to find a link to the store order manager where I could approve my order manually. Not sure why I had to do this but I did. Now… How many people are going to wade through all the support pages before getting mad? How many people will have the patience to do that? How many people would get lucky enough to stumble onto the store page link that allowed them to manually approve their order? My guess is, not many. Why? because it's not normal user behavior! As a user we are being asked to go above and beyond just to buy your products. Why does it need to be this complicated?
A short while later, I did receive an email from Digital River with a slightly cryptic message about my order. See if you can make heads or tails of it.
Thank you for placing an order on Smith Micro Software. If you completed payment, but did not return to the site and see confirmation, click on the following link and look up your order. This process attempts to reconcile your payment with your order and may take up to 24 hours to complete.
I did not really understand what this message was about, but clearly they have some issues with orders not being processed properly. What urks me is, rather than correcting the problem, some person thought it was "good enough" to send a message explaining that there is a problem with the ordering process and here is the link to fix it yourself.
First rule of an e-commerce site: make sure you do not give your customers any reason at all, not complete their purchase easily. Especially impulse buyers! A user should not get an error message stating that their order was not successful, only to find later, that they were in fact charged for the product or service. Users should not have to dig up links on your site, or email, just to approve the transaction that your shopping cart should handle automatically.
By this time, I wasted my entire morning chasing down my order and I was forced to set it to the side and head off to work. When I returned from the office, I sat back down to get this software installed and get my itunes synced. Most software is easy to figure out, and rarely require much documentation. But after reading some bad reviews while at the office, I decided that I wasn't going to "wing it" with my precious iTunes library. Good thing I did read up on the software, as I discovered that the software did not function exactly as I thought it did anyway. Without a trial version available to demo, I bought this software entirely on impulse. It was only after discovering that the software was not what I needed, I wanted to get my money back. So back to their website I go to request my refund. After all I never used the software. It was not Compatible with my version of iTunes, and did not do what I was looking for. This should be easy right? Wrong!
Drudging back though the support pages, I had to follow 4 links that said "To request a refund click here". Why can't they just link you directly to the page that you need, rather than make you follow links to 4 separate pages that offered very little information on the actual refund process? This is very frustrating as a user! Why do they subject us to this type of experience?
After reading every single support page, I was left feeling unsure about this refund policy. The text on the homepage read "There are no worries with our 30-day 'no questions asked' return policy!". The gold seal makes it look official, but I think it's really just lip service. Once they lure you in with a promise of getting your money back if you are not satisfied, they got you. But I digress.
On one page, the return policy states that you must return the product with 24 hours. On another page it is stated that you have to wait 48 hours to request a refund. So should I wait? or do I have to act now? I am not sure. I decided to act on it now, rather than later thinking that it would be better and probably would not hurt anything. So I proceeded to the refund request page to submit my query.
Once I got to the request page, I typed out a long message explaining why I was requesting a refund. Wait… I though this was a "NO QUESTIONS ASKED" policy? I guess not? Anyway, I typed my long explanation and was going to submit the form and thats when I discovered that there was no submit button to even send my query! WTF?! What kind of crack pot group is managing this website anyway! To overlook a submit button on a form?! I scoured the support pages again looking for other links, I started the process over again, several times. I tried different browsers, thinking it was a browser issue. All attempts failed to get me any further than before.
So here I am stuck at page 2 of 3 in my refund request process. Depressing… What should I do now? Wait 48 hours and try again? Does this 48 hours include weekends? I placed my order on a Friday, do I have to wait until Wednesday before I can attempt my request again? Will the button magically appear at the end of 48 hours? These are all questions I should not have to be asking myself after purchasing a product. I think days of buying software from developers that use third party credit card services like Digital River are over. Also over is my willingness to buy software without a proper demo.
The real losers here are (besides me and my pocket book) the developers. I spend on average $200 a year on small apps and utilities that make my computer experience more pleasurable. Unfortunately, todays events have left sizable negative impression on my experience with sites that operate like this. One that I wont soon forget.
Tags: General · Opinions & Rants
1 comments so far ↓
I had a similar experience with Smith Micro where out of nowhere I had a charge to my credit card via my paypal account. I never once made a purchase, nor did I have any receipt of purchase.
It took almost a week and a half to get the refund to my paypal account, not to mention back to my credit card.
I can't say I've had a good experience with Smith Micro....
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