Broken: Crossword error
Alexander Kafka writes: "A few days I went onto a site to get a crossword made, and I got this error."
 |
A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
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December 2004
Broken: (Just for fun) Ze Frank's New Year's video
Just in time for the New Year, Ze Frank has a few words for us in a brief video.
Broken: (Funny) Video store rental agreement
Here's a link that made the rounds recently. Watch what you sign at the video store.
You're agreeing to a whole different kind of "customer service"!
Broken: Body Shop confirmation
Alex Pavloff points out an error from the Body Shop online store:
"To track package delivery, go to [page URL]... contact us at [contact number or email]..."
Broken: Tsunami-ravaged areas
I've made a donation to Oxfam America's Asian Earthquake and Tsunami Fund, to help get some food and supplies to the victims of the recent disaster there.
Other resources: Apple's home page, ratings of charities you can give to, and videos taken of the tsunami as it struck. The picture at left is taken from the first video in that list, from Phuket.
If you make a donation, please post in the comments section here, to inspire other TIB readers to help, too!
Broken: Wording of note from PayPal
Paul Schreiber forwards us this note from PayPal (emphasis added at bottom is mine):
> PayPal
> ______________________________________________________________________
>
> Less Confusion, More Convenience in One Email
>
> ======================================================
>
> Dear Paul Schreiber,
>
> We're writing to let you know that after January 19, 2005, PayPal
> will no longer send a Winning Buyer Notification email to your
> eBay buyers. Instead, eBay's End of Auction email will be enhanced
> to include all the information buyers require.
>
> Today, many buyers receive two emails at the end of an auction or
> transaction - eBay's End of Auction and PayPal's Winning Buyer
> Notification. PayPal and eBay are eliminating the duplicity.
>
> Now your buyers will receive just one email with all the
> information they need including transaction details, payment
> information, custom messaging, and more.
Paul writes, "I think they mean they are eliminating the *duplication*... hahaha!"
Broken: Life Savers store listing
A TIB reader points out that the LifeSavers website, candystand.com, allowed (children) users to search for stores in their area that participated in a recent sweepstakes.
After entering his zip code, this reader saw the first result: Absolute Smoke Shop.
He writes, "Seems kind of weird to be sending little kids into a cigarette store."
Broken: Airline travel
The New York Times reports that Triple Woes Hold Up Holiday Air Travelers.
Yesterday, the travel plans of 30,000 passengers in 119 cities were disrupted when Comair, a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines, canceled all of its 1,100 flights after its computer system crashed. ... [US Airways] canceled 65 flights on Thursday, 176 on Friday and 143 yesterday.
And my own experience with AirTran: a four-hour delay on Dec. 23, and a six-hour delay on Dec. 26. Most other airlines were running on time both days, or with delays of an hour or at most two hours. AirTran never took responsibility for its gross delays, and what's worse, announced the delays bit by bit, so that we were guaranteed to be stuck at the airport, instead of waiting out the delay at home.
Broken: Advertisers' search-result ads
Some advertisers are buying strange keywords in the search engines, and then basing their ads on those search queries.
From Boing Boing:
These are all actual AdWords results [i.e. ads shown in Google searches]:Famine
Find Everything You Want at Ebay
It's Fun, Quick & Easy to Buy! -aff
www.eBay.comFind Drought
We have what you're looking for.
Drought & much more! www.eWoss.comVomit
600+ Popular Stores - One Website &
One Simple Checkout - Shop Now! SHOP.COMLint
Lint for sale. aff
Check out the deals now!
www.eBay.com
Broken: (Just for fun) Store sign with time
Scott Knox sends us this sign from Market Place Foods in Minot, ND. It's either 1:10pm, or Santa Claus was laughing while he hacked the sign.
Happy Holidays from This Is Broken!
Broken: Explanations of Santa's appearances
An anonymous reader writes from Utah:
When I looked on a milk carton at school (Currently in High School) It said "Meet the Real Santa at Provo Towne Centre!" (Not a typo - that's what it's called.) It gave the dates November 30th through December 24, all day.
Then I look at my little brothers' flyer that he got from school, stating that you could meet the "real Santa" at University Mall during the same dates.
And then on the city's website it states that Santa will be at the Senior Citizens Center on the 10th. They could at least have a better explanation than "He is everywhere at once." Or "He is super fast." Oh well.
- - -
But we all know where the real Santa is... in Tokyo! Re-posting from my Dec. 2003 entry,...
I spotted this outside a restaurant in Tokyo earlier this week. A Christmas sign whose English translation went horribly wrong...
Broken: Fig Newtons label
Jeremy Knizley points out the problem on a box of Fig Newtons.
(See "before" and "after" shots in the picture at left.) It's impossible to tell that you are opening the wrong end until after it's too late.
Broken: (Fixed) Dictionary.com
Thanks to the Dictionary.com team for fixing the error pointed out in This Is Broken, in the Nov. 16, 2004 entry.
Broken: XP logon error message
Alex Burka writes:
This error message appears whenever I log on to any limited (not administrator) account on my brand new eMachines computer with WinXP. Everything else works fine, though!
Broken: HOJO hotel features
Mark Makower points out this screenshot from HOJO.com (from the Howard Johnson hotel chain). Look carefully in the lower-left corner to see two of the perks of this particular location:
Free Copy Machine - $.25 Per Copy
Free Faxing - $1.25 Per Page
Just shows that nothing in life is free - unless, of course, you're charged for it.
Broken: Restroom sign
Catherine Mullican writes:
Here's a restroom sign of ambiguous gender. I found it in a research institute in San Diego. Sorry about the angle and quality; all I had with me was a cameraphone, and the hallway wasn't wide enough to get both signs in frame without angling.
[Makes one wonder what's being researched... -mh]
Broken: Tech-shopping guides
If you open up a technology shopping guide in any magazine or newspaper, you're likely to see lists of the 25 possible digital cameras to buy; nine MP3 players to choose from; 42 available combinations of computer parts to create the perfect PC... a dizzying array of choices for every single purchase.
Wait.. wasn't the guide supposed to help? A guide is supposed to make the choosing easier and quicker, not more complicated!
With this in mind, I wrote my own "fix" to this problem: the Uncle Mark 2005 Gift Guide and Almanac, a free PDF download, containing all my suggestions for what technology to buy. Not the 18 things you could buy, but the one thing in each category I think is the best.
Hope you enjoy it... and happy holidays!
Update Dec. 19: I have taken down comments on this post because this post brought forth a hail of complaints from readers who disagreed with my opinion-based recommendations. It's a risky venture, recommending a Macintosh computer or a Nintendo video game system. (Caveat recommender!)
For those readers who want more recommendations, I highly recommend Matthew Baldwin's work: he has a 2004 game guide and, previously, a 2002 "guide for slackers."
Broken: Elevator call button
David Lewis writes:
This is the elevator call button on the ground floor of the Xerox building in downtown Halifax, Canada.
I rarely use this elevator, but every time I do I have to stop and think for a second which button to press to call the elevator. There is also always this subtle sense of something bad happening if I press the wrong button due to presence of the word "EMERGENCY" in the bright red all caps.
The call button is the round white one. If you press the "Emergency" button by the way, absolutely nothing happens... as far as I can tell.
Broken: Amex Rewards calculator
Robert Hruska writes:
My friend Elaine works in Marketing and buys a ton of stuff for the company on her American Express card. This gives her reward points, which recently have been matched up with other rewards programs at various conversion rates.
She wanted to find out how many American Express Rewards points she could convert into Starwood Points, & tried to use the (rather backwards) points calculator. The calculator returned an error, asking her to only use multiples of 333. If she somehow knew multiples of 333, why would she even need the calculator? This is so totally broken.
Broken: LimeWire upgrade dialog box
Ilan Bouchard-Gordon writes:
When LimeWire starts up, it shows a dialog box with an offer to upgrade to LimeWire Pro. Each time it starts up, I press "Later". However, LimeWire rotates the positions of the buttons, "Later", "Yes", and "Why Go Pro?" every time it starts up.
If I accidently press "Yes", as I've done many times because of this stupid design, I'm not more likely to sign up for an upgrade. It's just annoying, not effective.
Broken: Target.com glitch
Edward Alomar writes that Target.com has an error on its product page for the movie "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events."
From the Target.com page: "This title will be released on December 31, 1969. You may order it now and we will ship it to you when it arrives."
Broken: LiveStrong bracelets in hospitals
David Owen points us to a San Francisco Chronicle article about those ubiquitous yellow bracelets:
"A hospital chain is taping over patients' LiveStrong wristbands because they are yellow -- the same color as the 'do not resuscitate' bands it puts on patients who do not want to be saved if their heart stops."
Broken: Bank account names
An anonymous reader writes:
It really bugs me when companies make up cryptic internal names for things, like the type of bank account, and force the customer to deal with them. Why not list my accounts in plain English, like Checking and Savings?
Look at this on-line banking screenshot and guess which is my checking, and which is my savings account.
Answer: "FleetOne MMS" turns out to be my savings account (Money-Market Savings), and "Interest CK" is code for checking. The CK is a stretch abbreviation for checking, but the Interest led me toward thinking of it as a savings account.
Broken: Hotel soap combos
Terry Jones writes:
You have certainly noticed the laudable trend of hotels that provide liquid soap and shampoo in showers to save the cost of all those little soaps. Most hotels do it like this, with one bottle for soap and one for shampoo
However on a Ferry from St. Petersberg, Russia to Tallinn, Estonia I noticed a disturbing new trend. The container said, "shower gel and conditioning shampoo", but there was only one lever and one hole (i.e. one liquid for both functions)
This was topped in my hotel in Copenhagen when the container over the sink proclaimed: "Hand Soap, Shower Gel and Hair Shampoo".
What's next? Soap, gel, shampoo, conditioner, hair restorer, colorizer, and motor oil? A universal solvent??
[I have to say, I like Gel the best.. -mh]
Broken: Stereo hookups (FIX included)
Dave Collins writes:
Whenever I hooked up speakers on my old stereo, I faced a dilemma in hooking up the Left and Right speaker wires:
L R
Hm. Do they mean 'Left/Right' from where I'm hooking it up, so the left speaker is on my left, or do they mean 'Left/Right' while facing the stereo when in use, so the left speaker is currently on my right?
But my new Panasonic stereo receiver is not broken - how refreshing. It's actually cleverly designed.
They've set it up like this:
R L
Ah! They have rendered the ambiguity moot. The only way the hookup makes any sense now is for each speaker to connect its closest corresponding terminal. Thus the speaker on my left will hook up to the terminal on the left, (which is labelled R, which indicates they mean: 'Right side from the POV of the front of the stereo').
How usable.
Broken: Parking meter
Chris Clark writes from Western Australia:
This parking meter (and its brethren) charge 60 cents per hour. That's pretty reasonable, but the fine print: "60 cents per hour or part thereof" is something you won't find on the machine itself, nor will you notice until you drop a 50-cent coin in the slot only to be told you've bought precisely zero minutes worth of parking.
Across the street you can get parking at the same rate, but without the catch. Ten cents will buy you ten minutes, just the way you'd expect it to. Senseless.
Broken: Paris street sign
Michelle Reamy writes:
This sign was posted on the street in Paris. Such simple design, such unclear intent. What are they trying to communicate? Do not hold your child's hand while crossing the street? Children crossing is prohibited? Or perhaps no pedestrian crossing permitted at all?
Note: Readers have pointed out that this is a standard sign design in France. Thus it is not "broken" in Paris. This post merely points out the difference in the user's perception, based on the designs one is accustomed to seeing.
Broken: Travel game package
Megan writes:
Attached is a picture of a "Pocket Travel Game" my fiancé and I found in an Osco one day while shopping. We stopped to look at this because we didn't know what the game was, then found that the manufacturers apparently don't, either.
Nowhere on the box--front or back--does it specify any name of the game, even odder when you take into consideration that the other games in this series are immediately identifiable (although also not labeled)--chess, for example, was right behind this strange game.
I'd say this is broken. :)
Broken: SAT practice question
An anonymous reader writes in:
One of the Princeton Review practice tests for the SAT is broken! Bob must have felt really ill after drinking all those cookies!
Broken: Sugar/sweetener packets
Michael Dwyer writes:
I have a problem telling apart new designer sugar/sweetener packets:
Most of the time, sugar bowls contain three different packets. A vaguely 'EQUAL'-looking blue packet, a vaguely 'SWEET-N-LOW'-looking pink packet, and your generic white sugar packet. So I was quite confused when I found a bunch of packets that seemed to differ ONLY by the tiny colored marks on the ends.
You tell me -- with just a glance -- which one is a Sweet-N-Low and which is sugar?
I'm somewhat color-blind, so maybe I'm broken -- but I still find it difficult to tell the pink ones from the white ones in low light.
[P.S. Read this similar post from July. -mh]
Broken: List of 7-11s in Hawaii
A blogger in Hawaii, who claims to live down the block from a 7-11, goes on to the 7-11 corporate website to see all the 7-11s in his area.
Even though there are dozens of 7-11s in the state of Hawaii, the closest store listed in the website would be a very long and difficult drive.
Thanks to Brad Fitzpatrick for the entry.
Here's the original blog entry.