From the article: Ecommerce Annoyances
What annoys you about ecommerce? Have you experienced things on website stores that makes you want to leave and never come back? What about little things that just make them hard to use? What ecommerce annoyances have you experienced? Share Your Annoyances
Change of Address Problems
- I hate it when you move and they take forever to ship your purchase. It's like, come on! How incompetent do you have to be to not be able to read a new address? Really annoying. And no matter how many times you write for help, no one answers you.
- —Guest Sari M
Lie LIe LIE
- my advice ( edith t ). when asked to provide personal information IRRELEVANT to online purchases ,(and such): Lie. There's less chance of identity theft when you provide them with false information about yourself. Of course, this rule does not apply when submitting your taxes etc.
- —Guest tee
scrolling pictures
- What is it with all these scrolling images on websites lately. They scroll vertically, but mostly they scroll horizontally. When you 'hover over' with the mouse the scrolling ceases. I find this annoying to the extreme. I just want to get as far away from this url as possible. Some times, which makes the effect seem even more bizarre, the scrolling is set way too fast and the images blur in to one another.
- —Guest tee
Shipping Charges
- A real irritation is to not be able to see shipping charges until deep in the checkout process. Many times I've just cancelled out and bought somewhere else.
- —Guest arbala
Lack of details
- I hate when stores fail to notify you if they have the product available in the "real" store or if it is only available online. I enjoy pre-shopping online and then picking up the item in the store. Also many times they do not include dimensions of the product.
- —Guest Sarah
Be careful with Order Tracking
- E-commerce merchants should think twice about providing order tracking or updating. As convenient as it might be for legitimate customers, it also provides an easy method for the merchant to become a victim of fraud that will result in chargebacks. Remember that, armed with enough information, a fraudster can use someone else's credit card and have the order pass most fraud screening tools including AVS. You will ship to the real cardholder's verified billing address, but with a tracking code, the thief can redirect the shipment in transit and have it shipped directly to him or a nearby vacant house for pick up. I strongly suggest not making order tracking available on line. Give the customer a phone number or email address so that you can provide the tracking information. Tom Mahoney, Director Merchant911.org Over 3800 merchants united against fraud.
- —Guest Tom Mahoney
Forced to provide personal data
- Recently when I tried to order information packages I was forced to register but also to provide my date of birth. I did not understand why I shold do so - the product had nothing to do with the buyer's age and anyway registration was necessary before placing the order. Then, they sent me an e-mail with a link to activate the registration but all that happened was that I was redirected to an absolutely annoyingly slowly loading page with lots of proof of the web designer's desire to express himself through huge sliding flash elements but after finally it loaded the site only said "There has been an error while activating". I tried to activate through the link several times but it did not work. I wrote to the company but they have not answered for a week so far. Here I am with no order placed, only with a registration that can't be activated and with my birth data provided to people who have not dignified me with a reply.
- —Guest Edith T
Post-Purchase E-Commerce Annoyances
- I recently experienced a problem where I purchased a product that turned out to be out-of-stock (no mention of that on the website and no prevention of me going through the online check out process). The company I ordered from was good enough not to charge my credit card; however, I would have appreciated it had they notified me. Here I am, checking the mailbox again and again, with no product arriving. I finally put two-and-two together regarding what happened when I went back to the site, saw they were now saying they were out of stock and then looked at my credit card bills and noticed they didn't charge me. Poor communication is frustrating. Unexpected shipping delays without communication are also annoying. {From Jennifer: I've had that happen too! Man it's really annoying!}
- —Guest Shelley G
