A note to all companies with websites which are more complicated than they need to be.

[catsidhe]

A note to far too many organisations who have websites which are meant to deliver a service: Your website is overcomplicated, baroque, brittle, and absolutely unusable. You are paying your web devs to piss people off and chase them away. You are declaring that the disabled can just fuck right off because you would rather stab yourself in the head than make something accessible to them. You are what is wrong with the internet.

Telstra, I'm not just looking at you, I'm setting fire to you with my eyes. I wanted to see what mobile phones are available on my current plan... ideally which ones are available at $0 extra cost. That shouldn't be a hard thing to ask for. Not only did I used to be able to do it, it used to be easy.

Now, however...

First, you have made it extremely difficult to even find where my plan is described. I have to know the genus, family, and species of plan before I can compare instances. And I can't compare across plan genuses. And the web page just tells me that "phones are available", but there is nowhere, nowhere where I can find out which ones.

And when I was trying to look, the website popped up some javascript abomination or other to get my feedback. Which was intrusive, complicated, and didn't work. And then I went to give some feedback on my browsing experience, and you've made it so insanely complicated and baroque that I can't even figure out how to do that! I started off annoyed, then deeply annoyed, and then angry, at which point I wanted to give some pointed feedback. But the process of trying to figure out how to give feedback escalated my feelings to wanting to abuse you and all your web developers and user interface architects, to wanting to fill in the feedback form (wherever the hell it is) with a couple of megabytes of insults, cursewords and wishes for your horrible deaths, and then the desire to hunt you down with my feedback literally written on a sharp stake and giving you some "pointed feedback" in a very visceral and non-metaphoric manner.

The thing is, this sort of thing isn't that hard. It's not trivial, but it's a solved problem. You have had this functionality in the past, and you systematically stripped it out because ... because reasons? Because you literally hate us and want us to suffer? Because you are going out of your way to make it impossible to choose the sort of sensible plan I've had for decades and push me onto something which isn't as functional for only twice the price?

What you're doing is very clearly trying to look clever. And the thing about looking clever is that people or organisations who actually are clever don't need to work that hard to look it. Corollary: the harder you're trying to look clever, the more likely it is that you simply aren't. Corollary to the corollary: your website shows you up as a bunch of blithering fools, desperately signing up to the latest buzzword du jour in the frantic hope that you'll be taken seriously this time, all the time alienating the people who would want to use your service, and not fooling any of the ones who need to be convinced, except for the ones whose custom you don't want, but obviously deserve.


Summary: go stick your heads in a fucking pig, the whole fucking lot of you. Your obvious contempt for those who would dare attempt to become your customers on their terms is returned.

Comments

[ideological_cuddle]

I won't for a moment try to argue that many websites aren't far too complicated for what they're supposed to be doing -- I do accessibility audits for a living, after all! -- but seriously, if you think the previous iteration of the Telstra website was better than what they have now then I reckon maybe time has dulled your recollection, because the old one was much worse.

The really hateful thing about mobile phone stuff online is that you pretty much need to build a spreadsheet to adequately compare the options, even if you're only looking at one supplier. Yeah, okay, so you're offering "$550 value" on your plan, but what does that actually mean? Oh, you're charging calls at $2/minute on that plan? Really? And so on.

Telstra do however really want you to just sign up for one of the "Every Day Connect" plans, which start at $60/mo and go up from there. Which is why that's what you get when you click on "Mobiles". I'm guessing from your rant you're on one of the legacy plans where you pay a very low monthly fee but don't get (m)any included calls?

(My own plan is no longer on the website at all, it's so "legacy", but it was the standard deal only a year ago.)

[catsidhe]

They may have tightened this or tweaked with that, but the user experience – for this user at least – is that it's unusable.

Yes, I have a legacy plan. They advertise that I can get a phone with it. I understand that this is not going to be a Galaxy SIII 4G with bells whistles and gongs, but I'd at least like to know what is available, and it simply will not allow me to find that out.

Their "Every Day Connect" plans are twice as expensive as what I'm paying, for no (to me) benefit at all. Whatsoever.

And, have you tried to figure out how to get information into or out of that "feedback" thing there's a tab for hovering on the left-hand margin? I mean, I have an IQ of 140, and my reaction to the thing can be summarised as WAT. When someone is confused and stressed and looking for a simple answer, breaking their brain is considered sub-optimal.

But I can sign in with Facebook, so that makes it alright. Apparently Facebook is the Internet now. (And it's a separate rant that so many places, including the ABC for fuck's sake, have decided that you can have an opportunity to provide feedback, IFF you do so through Facebook or Twitter. I've tried using the feedback and forum functions on the ABC website for various programs, and they bite donkey's balls, and the "email us" form seems to be a complete black hole... I have never received any response from anything fed into that entropy sink. But inane vapidity on Twitter gets read out live on air.)

[ideological_cuddle]

I've never bothered to click that "Feedback" hover thing, but yeah, I see what you mean. "CrowdSupport" is just Telstra-speak for "forums".

I think what you actually want is the complaints form, which is what I found first before realising what you were talking about. It's under "Contact Us" on the left-hand navigation menu.

Reading the detail on the "Mobile Member" and "Mobile Phone" plan pages, I would infer that you cannot in fact get a free phone on those outside of any special deal they might have running. There's no mention of an MRO (Mobile Repayment Option) allowance.

But I make this inference based on product knowledge that the average punter ought not need to have, and either way it really ought to be more clearly spelled out on the site.

[catsidhe]

Actually, I think I'm on the $30 "Mobile Phone Plan", not the $30 "Mobile Member Plan", and the whole point of that distinction is the presence of a handset. (Deep linking works: possibly the only good thing I can say about the site.)

Moreover, I bought a 1GB datapack when it was still $10pcm. It is now $15pcm for the same thing, but I think I'm grandfathered into the old price. Who knows?


And further: do you see what I mean about needing to know the Family, Genus and Species before you can do anything? You cannot search for something likely, you have to know exactly what you're looking for, and have a good idea where to look, before you can find anything.

[ideological_cuddle]

Reading the "Mobile Phone Plan" page I still reckon it doesn't come with a handset, though that may just be the site being exceedingly unclear. The typical deal with Telstra and handsets is that each handset will have an "MRO" price attached (the amount you'll pay per month to get it), and then the plans have an "MRO allowance".

So if your plan has a $20 MRO allowance and the handset you want has a $30 MRO, you pay an additional $10 over and above the plan fee.

I do understand what you mean about the family/genus/species problem, but I'm pretty sure this was true of the previous version of the site too. And on that it was also a lot harder to find out just how much you'd pay for a particular handset+plan combination until you got to the checkout...

[ideological_cuddle]

Oh, and if you use the phone as little as your choice of plan suggests, you might want to look at their pre-pay options. Last time I ran the numbers they were pretty competitively priced.

Google are doing the Nexus 4 for AU$350 outright, if and when they get more stock, and that'll work on any network you like.

[catsidhe]

I started on a $20pcm plan, back when my phone was too big to fit in my pocket. When I got an Android, I bumped up to the $30 plan because I couldn't get an Android on anything less. This plan is coming to an end, but I do not trust my organisational skills or discipline enough to risk getting a pre-paid where I have to think about what and when I pay.

Seriously, I've had a lifetime of practice with this, and if it's not a fire-and-forget deal, then I will at some point fuck it up. I like predictability, and I like having things Just Happen. I make a deal that I pay $x, every month I get a paper bill which I can put on the fridge with the others in temporal order, and pay them as they approach due in a controlled fashion.

Changing to a pre-paid is change, and it's change to an inherently less predictable thing. I don't care if I could save $10 here or there, if the price is that I lose that comfortable stability. Fuck, it's hard enough dealing with the phone changeover at the end of contract. (Which is more or less now.)

Being overcharged by $30pcm for what I'm getting now, that I'm not going to out up with. But then, moving to that would also be change, to which I'm averse even if it weren't an obvious and blatant rip-off.

[ideological_cuddle]

Fair enough, all perfectly rational.

[catsidhe]

It's right there in the big green box at the top:

$30 per month for 24 months. (Minimum cost $720)
=
$25 of standard calls, text and MMS1
+
$5 of data allowance to use in Australia
+
$0 upfront for selected phones
+
Bonus Options

It just won't in any way let me know what a "selected phone" is.

[ideological_cuddle]

How embarrassing. You're quite right, I was focusing on the detail section below, where they'd typically cite an MRO allowance.

My best guess is that it's probably the cheaper couple in the prepaid section, but you'll need to talk with them by phone or with the "live chat" thingo up the top.

[catsidhe]

Which is also the point. If I wanted to, or were able to, "simply" talk to them on the phone, then I would do that, like I have a choice. The reason I went to the website first is because "simply" calling someone on the phone is not something I can do.

At some point I'm going to have to walk into a shop and ask them what's going. I would prefer to have some research behind me when I do that, but the website is actively preventing me from being able to do that in any meaningful and relevant way.

[ideological_cuddle]

Hey, I didn't say "simply".

Would using the IM thing be easier?

[catsidhe]

With a robot? If I knew it was a robot, then yes.
If it was a scripted email type thing, maybe.

Realtime with a live stranger, no. Not really.