Imbeciles in Positions of Competence

I had to do battle with another of my pet peeves today: websites that do not function correctly.

As a former instructor of web design, I am particularly annoyed by websites that do not function well, but I become absolutely apoplectic when those sites are sponsored by large corporate entities, or, one government agency or another—any of whom have sufficient resources to hire competent, talented people to run their sites properly.

Imagine, then, how frustrating it is to try to do something as simple as creating an online account with the U.S. Postal Service, on a website that has more bugs than a junkyard dog! Even after contacting the agency responsible for the website and requesting assistance, I was STILL unable to create an account.

I double-checked all of the usual culprits: Java, cookies, etc., but still NOTHING. I will say that I received an immediate and polite reply to my query, but even the advice offered contradicted what the website states.

For instance, the website states clearly that one may use one's email address as a User Id. However, the representative who responded to my query stated that the User Id could be no longer than 12 characters and could not contain any special characters.

Hello-o-o-o-o-o, U.S.P.S., you may not be aware of this, but "@" is a special character and is a required part of any email address, and further, most addresses are LONGER than 12 characters because they must necessarily contain the ISP balance of the address. For instance, @Google.com contains 10 characters leaving one a mere 2 characters for a User ID. It wouldn't take long for America's users to use up all possible 2 character User ID combinations but the fact is, many ISP address combinations are LONGER than 12 characters.

Worse, the error messages which the U.S.P.S. website spits out are erroneous, sending one in the wrong direction in the troubleshooting process with messages such as I received that my User ID (my email address) was already in use. When I received that message I assumed I had already created an account at some distant point in time that had been forgotten, so I chose the usual "I have forgotten my password" option expecting to get an email. According to the representative who contacted me, however, there is no record of an account in the system with my name or email address. Say what?

Another problem arose from the User ID selection: if one attempts to create a User ID which is already in the system, several options are presented instead. After attempting to create my own, unique, ID in 15 tries, I gave up and decided to use one of the system options, stupid though they were. But NO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O, the system options don't work, either, and I was spit out repeatedly with "null User ID is invalid" errors. And, EACH AND EVERY TIME, I had to reinput name, address, telephone number, etc. for each User ID creation attempt!

This is but one small example of what individuals have to contend with on a daily basis all over the world because employers no longer hire for intelligence and competence, but who they can get for the cheapest $-$-$ bottom line.

The only solution to this problem is to stop buying goods and services from those organizations who put customer service LAST. In the case of the U.S. Postal Service, or ANY government agency, that is far easier to say than to actually follow through with and the only option left for us is to file complaints as high up as they can go.

I am drafting a letter of complaint to the Postmaster General at this moment.