A few weeks ago, I wrote about Washington Mutual’s misleading error message on their online banking site. They later admitted that their Bill Payer upgrade did not go as planned, and plastered apologetic notices all over their site.

The mishap has been widely reported by the media. A later WaMu press release, quoted here, stated: “We began communicating to our customers as soon as the problem was discovered.” I can say that the statement is utter bullshit. Reports say the site was down as of July 22nd; my calls took place on the 26th. The “communications” on that day == four days later — took the form of an irrelevant error message on their site. WaMu claims they provided “telephone bankers with updates and options to share with customers” yet the two reps I spoke to seemed clueless about the nature of the outage and only offered assistance after I begged for it.

When the upgrade was finally completed (so they said), I tried to use it but was greeted with an obtrusive Javascript error message whenever I tried to change the date of a scheduled bill payment. I use Mozilla Firefox as my browser, so I am used to sites skirting the web standards and presenting tools that only work in Internet Explorer. So, I dug around my file system until I located IE, fired it up, and experienced the same issue.

I then tried to send a “secure” message to Washington Mutual. The link I clicked prompted me to log on again, so I did, and I was promptly dumped back to account listing. I clicked the email link again only to redirected to the logon page. Ad infinitum.

I resorted to sending a regular email to them, first complaining about their messaging system and then about the real issue: the bill payer. A few days later I got a response that the message problem was due to my browser settings (bullshit) and that completely ignored the issue about the bill payer. I have a number of other complaints related to their web site, so I figured: What the hell, let’s send some snail mail around. I targeted the President and a couple of relevant-sounding EVP’s with a letter [PDF].

A few days later, I got a fairly generic reply that referred to the problems with the upgrade but that basically side-stepped any of the issues I raised, especially the one about site security.

Today, a woman who knows a former lead worker on WaMu’s online security team told me some interesting information. It seems that he once wrote a white paper detailing the security flaws of a certain vendor’s product and posted it on a web site. WaMu turned around and purchased that product from the vendor to use for a component of its web site (I don’t know if it was related to the bill payer). The vendor complained about the white paper, and WaMu fired the security guy. Out of loyalty, his entire team resigned. This, she remembers, was about two months ago, meaning that it probably happened right in the midst of the roll out of their disastrous “upgrade” to their bill payer system.

Doesn’t that make me feel safe?

A few weeks ago, I ranted about the shabby design and programming that is apparent behind MySpace (“I Have 1 Friends”).

Now, MySpace and its cabal of monkey-brained coders has found a new way to torment me:

You can see for yourself (unless I get more friends by the time you read this).

MySpace is the most popular social networking web site in the universe. It may even be the most popular web site, period. And yet it seems to have been built by someone’s friend’s 12-year-old cousin who “knows a lot of HTML and stuff.”

Whilst driving from Madison to Seattle a couple years ago, I passed through South Dakota during a rain storm. Being the cautious driver that I am, I was interested in learning if the storm would get worse as I proceeded through the state or if it would let up.

Now, South Dakota has a special way of making “foreigners” feel at home. At the eastern border of the state, for example, drivers are greeted by a sign reading: “Animal Rights Activists Aren’t Welcome!” Even their radio stations are designed to obfuscate. The only one I could pick up that had driving conditions (as opposed to preaching) reported that it served “the entire Kelo-land region.”

WTF!? There was nothing on the map indicating a “Kelo” county or city. Even a hundred miles into the state, all the reports I could hear were for this mysterious “Kelo-land.” It was clearly some reference that only South Dakotans could get. Finally, I figured out that the station’s call letters were KELO and “KELO-Land” was their ridiculous “branded” term for the eastern part of the state. But that did absolutely nothing to help me figure out for what areas the road conditions applied to. Am I driving into a storm or out of it? The information was without context and, hence, completely useless for out-of-state motorists.

But South Dakota can’t be exclusively blamed for this type of myopia. Today, I was searching for some information and one high-ranking Google hit took me to an article on the Star-Telegram’s web site. The article seemed relevant to what I was looking for, but I was curious about where it was from.

There was nothing on the masthead that indicated the paper’s hometown. Nothing in the by-line. Nothing in a sidebar. Nothing in the footer. Only by inferring some local geographic information from the fourth paragraph of the article did I figure it out.

Here’s a challenge: Take a look at just this article (which was randomly selected and is not the one I was searching for) and tell me how long it takes you to figure out the hometown for the Star-Telegram.

Top officials draw top dollar

My take on this phenomenon is two-fold. Either the marketing folks believe that their brand is so well-known they don’t need to include the city of origin (which ignores the fact that people from outside the region lack that brand knowledge). Or, in an attempt to break free of regionalism and appeal to the broader worldwide audience that 21st-centry media enjoys, they avoid labelling their product with anything limiting it to a particular area. This, however, ignores the fact that most of their news only applies to that limited region, so the context of locale is even more crucial.

Either way it’s a bad marketing move.

On the heels of my earlier post about inaccurate computer error messages, here’s a rant about deliberately misleading ones.

Upon trying to pay bills via Washington Mutual’s web site today:

Portions of our Web site are temporarily unavailable due to regularly scheduled maintenance.

Either the people in the IT shop are idiots for scheduling maintenance in the middle of a business day, or the site is down not for “regularly scheduled maintenance” but because of problems. Either way, the company looks bad.

Continue reading "Irregularly Unscheduled Maintenance" »

I’m not sure when I became the World’s Best Driver. There wasn’t a ceremony; I received no certificate or badge. But in the opinion of everyone who matters on this issue (i.e. me), there is no one on the planet who drives better than I do.

So, imagine my chagrin when a driving-related annoyance that I’ve been cursing others for doing for years now turns out to be perfectly permissible. And I didn’t know it.

Continue reading "The Left Turn Lane" »

Against my better judgment and sense of antiestablishmentarianism, I signed up for a MySpace account a few months ago. Some competetitor on some reality TV show that shall remain nameless was rumored to have a MySpace “space,” and I thought one needed an account to view it. What do I know about the kids these days and their rock-n-roll music, hula hoops, and social networking sites?

My forgotten account lay dormant until the other day when my Bus Friend, Molly, mentioned she had one and was keeping a blog on the site (which is highly amusing, but is for “Friends Only”).

As I was poking around MySpace and trying to figure out what all the hype was about, the whole thing really began to annoy the hell out me.

Continue reading "I Have One Friends" »

The Seattle Times and Microsoft on the software giant’s plans to plaster advertising all over its future products:

Video games are unique in that players aren’t subject to the disruptions or distractions that TV viewers or people browsing the Internet have become accustomed to.

With its new [advertising company] Massive acquisition, Microsoft will be developing ways to insert advertisements into the games themselves.

“You can take your message and imbed it in that immersive environment,” Bach said, “and they get it and they may not even know they got it.”

Here’s a hint: if your business plan requires you to have a captive audience and then inject them with your “message” without them realizing it, then you’re a scumbag.

Updated 4/11/2006: Seems I’m not only one with this problem.

First, we were snubbed (then mollified) by the Mariners’ Moose, and now this. Short version: I decided not to subscribe to MLB’s “GameDay Audio” program this year. GameDay allows you to listen to all games via the Internet, which I never actually ended up doing much. My subscription, however, was “automatically renewed” for my “convenience,” and all my efforts to contact them via email or telephone have been futile (bounced replies and busy signals). My full complaint letter follows the “Continue Reading…” link.

I’m getting the sense that Major League Baseball doesn’t care about its fans.

I also sent a version of this tale to The Consumerist, a web site dedicated to consumer complaints that I urge you all to check out. We’ll see if they believe it merits a mention.

Continue reading "Updated: MLB Just Doesn’t Care" »