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This story begins simply enough. One morning I check my email and find a message from Mum with the subject “so frustrating!”
She’s planning us a family trip to Spain for new years and is trying to book train tickets from Madrid to Barcelona. You’d expect this would be easy enough: go to the website, enter your origin and destination stations, choose your time and pay with a credit card.
However mum said the site keeps spitting back an error after taking credit card details.
She sent me the details: www.renfe.es (don’t miss the www or it doesn’t work).
So I thought I’d give it a go. The website purports to be multilingual, but only navigating the Spanish version gives you all the special prices. A few Google translate steps later I’ve chosen my tickets.
When I get to the payment step I get forwarded to my bank’s Verified By Visa page as expected, key in my password and get directed back to the renfe site. And sure enough I get a message
@
The process cannot continue right now. We apologise for any inconvenience (G001-R190)
@
At this point I have no idea if they’ve taken my money or not, whether I should try again, wait a minute, an hour, a day?
A check of my online banking doesn’t show any money having been taken. So I try again.
Nope, second time and the same error. So I leave it a day.
The next day I repeat the same steps but this time I only get as far as the train schedule page before getting another error:
We really need to book these tickets before the prices go up, so I search the site for something resembling a contact form. All I can find is this ridiculous, condescending “virtual assistant” who is totally unhelpful.
Finally I find a contact form and submit a request:
Hello
I am trying to book the train from Madrid to Barcelona and every time I
enter my credit card number I get an error from your site.
My friend has also tried to book and every time she gets an error too.
We need 4 Preferente tickets from Madrid to Barcelona on January 2nd, 2011
at 10:30am on AVE 03103.
and in return get back one of the most appalling responses to a support request I’ve seen:
Dear Jonathon:
Regarding your email we inform that Windows 2000 o XP is recommended as well as Internet Explorer in order to purchase successfully through our web site. Any other browser or operative system may cause problems in data downloading properly.
Java has to be active, unblocked cookies, old temporary files must be removed.
You have to enter directly to www.renfe.com , no through Google or another search page. Please note Google must be avoid as it also may cause security problems. So in general, we suggest to avoid anything that could interfere in our system security protocol.
We are having some troubles with some foreign credit and debit cards payments on www.renfe.com where normally you can make purchases.
We apologize, but there is an error produced when Renfe´s server try to connect with some of the overseas Bank´s servers.
If you have a Spanish credit card or an American express you can buy tickets calling to +34 902 320 320 telephone number.
We are so sorry for the inconveniences, and we are working to solve it.
Wow! I have to be using a 9 year old operating system to access your website?!? If I access your website via Google it causes security problems?!?
A quick look at the headers shows that the site is running IBM Websphere, which is an “enterprise grade” web server, meaning it probably took several years to develop and cost hundreds of thousands of euros.
It’s a site I would be ashamed to deliver to any client of mine; it’s ugly, buggy, unintuitive and doesn’t serve the simple purpose of selling train tickets.
Why do software buyers tolerate such poor quality? And why do they pay so much for it?
Here’s a simple test to test whether your web developers are delivering: what’s the one thing people are coming to your site for and does your site fulfill that?
Because everything else is secondary, all the pretty virtual assistants in the world are not going to help.
Epic fail…
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john May 03
Dealing with this right now. Exact same issue, but I even get an error when trying to load the asistente virtual. Miserable. Not sure whether I've bought zero tickets or six.
Jeff Dickey Jun 29
The whole point of open standards is that they're supposed to be OPEN. It shouldn't matter whether I'm accessing the site using Internet Exploder on Windows, Opera Mini on a Mac, or JoeBob's Browser on DoofusOS; if the site is coded according to the standards and the customer's browser conforms to the same standards, things will Just Work.
Unfortunately for the Web, Microsoft brought out a series of click-and-drool tools that let anybody with a mimeographed cert and the language skills of an American third-grader style himself a "Web developer". Too many companies, using only outdated versions of Microsoft's browser, failed to call them on that. Now, as much as *1/3* of business Web sites fail to work properly, or work properly only in broken versions of IE (before IE9).
Lack of professionalism in development, brought on by the incessant race to the bottom, is the other part of the problem. If you want quality, it's going to cost more than $10 to develop your Web site. (And yes, I have seen people seriously promising to work for that.) Here in South Asia, it's funny; an "experienced" developer, according to the ads, is someone with a year's experience, and "architects" have 2 or 3. In the real world, it takes 5-10 years before an honest developer has as many answers as questions.
Until clients stop demanding cheap-cheap-cheap Web "development," and hold developers to higher standards, things won't change. You wouldn't trust your business to a lawyer or accountant with 1 or 2 years' experience who charged 1/3 what reputable competitors charge. Why do that to your Web site?
Bob Aug 02
Since it is running IBM Websphere and the fact that it isn't running very well suggests that it actually would have been even more expensive to develop than you could ever imagine. And if IBM indeed did develop it it will probably never work ...
Alexander Sep 17
Exactly this is my experience with big, expensive web sites: the bigger the company and the more expensive the site, the more it sucks. Why this is the case is beyond my understanding.
I still remember the day when I wanted to buy ink cartridges from HP, and after not finding anything via the various menus, I tried the "Search" box: it responded with a bunch of random HTML tags and an error message :) (how much did HP possibly pay for hp.com?)
In such cases, I used to email the corresponding companies offering them a new, superior web site at a fraction of the price, but never got any response...
Since working more in the industry, I've since understood why all this stuff is happening: web site makers aren't chosen by their skills, but because either the one CEO drinks beers with the other, or because the web design company spends 90% on marketing, and 10% on actually delivering quality work.