The one way flight option is selected by default, so it must be they don't really want me to fly with their company on my way back?! A friend of mine at a UK airline tells me that the bookings they get are more than 90% returns, so you see my point.
I'll fly out from London, Heathrow is very close to me so I go on and delete Gatwick from the default entry London Gatwick, then tab to the To input field that suddenly changes to Abidjan. Common guys, you can do better than that, you are a Belgian company, where would you like me to fly? I'll help you this time, it is Brussels. So here I go and type in Brussels, all the way to the end because there is no AJAX to help me on, nor a drop-down.
The calendar control is useless
so I'll have to enter the dates manually. Click the departure day control, choose the 24th, yes, November is correct, well done, click on the arrival day control, choose 25 and it is so smart that it figures it has to choose a return month for me, but it gets it all wrong: I can't possibly fly out in Nov and return in October!
Ok, by now I should have overcome all obstacles, after all I did not expect that a journey from London all the way to Brussels would incur no risks at all, I am happy to fight them.Click Submit, and here I am ... where?! NO, I told you I was going to Brussels, not to Abidjan, oh yeah, ok, that's fair, let's blame my English. (by the way, the desperate one in the upper right corner of the picture below is not me ... frown)
I will behave, so I won't use the browser Back button, and click Change your selection instead. One thing you got wrong is the button label, it should say Where did you say you wanted to go? you don't remember right? don't worry, let me choose again Heathrow instead of Gatwick, Brussels instead of Abidjan (this time there are dropdowns, so they guessed my mind, they might be good after all), wow, my travel dates are the correct ones. No, it is not a flexible date search, I told you it was an exact date one.
So show me what you've got. Leaving at 10:20 is sensible, returning in the evening. (At this moment, I don't dare play a lot with the radio buttons). I proceed to the payment pages, use my card, and I get the confirmation page saying the flight is actually leaving at 11:20 instead. So I put this on the recent DST changes and wait for the confirmation email and e-ticket. I'll probably have to call them and confirm the travel times?
Yes, 2 new items in my Inbox. E-ticket and booking confirmation. Only that the latter starts with
Server Error in '/' Application.
Input string was not in a correct format.
....
Did you actually want to communicate to me something important instead, like baggage allowance information, regulations, how many bottles of cider I am allowed to pack?
Also thanks for the stack trace but no, I won't debug your application.
To the developers supporting the site:
- my life should be simpler than this
- I used FF 2.0.0.8
- no, I won't try it with IE, that's your job
- yes, I did maintenance and support work for the website of an airline company
To the site owners:
- for the sake of your customers, enforce some quality metrics on your website solution maintainer
- you'll even get fewer calls in support, so you'll save money
- you'll even get fewer bookings done by agents, so you'll save money
I hope you fly better than your website performs, see you in Brussels!
1 comment:
Keep up the good work.
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