web
HMV.com – Trying to help, failing.
This is another one of those “tiny detail” things, except this time the good intention has gone awry. I ordered something from HMV.com the other night, something I don’t do that often as I’m usually happy with Amazon or Play but on this occasion HMV had what I wanted a good fiver less than both of them.
Turned out it had been so long that my credit card had expired so I needed to update it. Clearly whoever had designed their credit card information entry form knew very well that humans think of months in terms of names, not numbers, so their expiry date dropdown looks like this:
All very well, it’s much easier to find a month this way. Except a credit card doesn’t give the month as a name, it gives it as a number, usually in a mm/yy form. Which means you have to make the mental calculation in your head from what 08/10 on the card means in terms of named months. Not, I admit, the most difficult of tasks, but an unnecessary step converting from one format to another. It’s also the reason I spent 10 minutes cursing at the HMV website refusing to accept payment until I realised 08 is August and not September. I know that was a dumb mistake on my part, but it was late at night and I had been forced to think about something that I shouldn’t need to.
HMV, I love the good intention, but you got it wrong.