Another Cingular Rant
I haven’t talked about Cingular in a long time. But I’m going to do it today.
This time, I would like to concentrate on their website. IT SUCKS! And here are the reasons why:
1. The UI (user interface) and navigation are really confusing.
As you can see, by viewing this website, I am no stranger to the web, however, I find their website to be the most confusing piece of crap there has ever been. I always end up going in circles looking for what I need. Instead of all roads leading to Rome, all links lead to the main page.
2. The design is just… bad.
Not so much from a standpoint of whether or not I like the design, but that it’s not necessarily compatible with all machines. For instance, here’s what it looks like on my laptop:
What is with that? Shouldn’t the design be fluid? Now granted, that’s a 1288px width, but they should at least center it if they’re going to make it fixed for 800×600. Even in 1024×768 it looks like crap.
Also, there are many bugs in the design such as the drop down menus going behind whatever graphic happens to be right below them so that you can’t get to the bottom menu items, things not fitting in the defined space and overflowing in strange patterns, common occurrances of errors (something about a directive not found), and many links opening in new windows for no reason whatsoever, etc.
3. I am routinely logged out.
The very first thing I do is log into the site. Then I may browse a few pages looking for what I need and before long, it’s logged me out, and I have to start all over again. This has made it extremely hard to ever email support. I’ll log in and get to the support page and then it wants me to log in again, doing that returns me to the main page. Go back, and try to email support, and have to go through the whole thing all over again.
4. Adding anything to my plan is near impossible.
I had to add Steve a text messaging plan for his phone. (First of all, it’s completely stupid that I have to do this per phoneline and not the whole package like the minutes are.) So I finally find what I need and start filling out the form. They want to know what package I want, my first name, my last name, what phone number it should be applied to, last four digits of my social security number, my zip code, and email address. That’s all basic, easy information - for me, right? It keeps some idiot who hacked my account from adding stuff to my plan. Great. Only the stupid thing kept telling me that the first name does not match that on the account. Um, hello!? I know my first name. It was the first thing I learned to write. I know how to spell my first name. After several tries, I figured it out. It went through when I put in my first name, a space, and my middle initial. Sheesh.
Finally, though it’s not website-related, so much, here’s another Cingular rant. Apparently if you are shopping for ringtones on your phone and you preview it, you are automatically charged for the whole thing. Sheila has been doing shopping on her phone the whole time she’s had it. And while she knew she was going to get charged for the internet usage, she didn’t know it was going to charge her for previewing it either because this is a new thing or because they didn’t charge her for that the first several months. From May, I told her she’d had six ringtones on her number and she freaked saying she hadn’t downloaded any. When I called, they told me you get charged for previewing and that there were nine coming up on the next bill. You figure the cost, that’s $2.49 each plus any internet usage. They were supposed to credit us half of the nine, but so far I have yet to see that. I think that is completely rediculous, because, in her words, she previewed to find out she didn’t like the tone. Why should we be billed for that?
Again, if Cingular wasn’t the only company that could guarantee us service in our area…
