As most of you know, I hate talking on the phone. I will avoid it at all costs. If a company does not have email support, I will usually just move on to the next one. Well, I almost did just that when I ran into a problem ordering a ring online.

My fiancee found a ring online she loves, so I went to the jeweler's website and tried placing the order using my store credit card. I double-checked all my information and tried submitting it several times over the course of two days. I figured maybe their system was having issues, so I tried again the next day. Still no luck.

Finally, I had to do the one thing I dread most... Call customer support. Turns out the problem was with my billing address. I had entered "Terrace" in the shipping address, but the billing address on file used "Ter." That tiny difference caused the system to reject my order. Seriously.

This is an example of horrible website and database design.

Your system should not be so strict with address validation. If someone enters "St." instead of "Street," that should not trigger a failure. Allow for some flexibility.

After submitting my order three times, my card got flagged and locked by the credit card company. This locked me out entirely, and I had to waste even more time getting that fixed.

A simple text verification could have solved this whole issue in seconds, but instead, I spent hours trying to resolve it. My bank has lighter security than this. American Express has lighter security than this.

For everyone out there building databases and/or websites, remember this. Do not be overly strict with your data validation. Allow for some wiggle room. If your security is so tight that it costs you business, you need to rethink your system. I was very close to saying forget it and going elsewhere. This company almost lost out on a pretty big sale.

In the end, I got everything sorted, but only after wasting far too much time on a problem that could have been easily avoided.

Lesson of the day. Find the balance between security and customer satisfaction. Make it too hard for someone to order, and they will go somewhere else. If any of you find my website too hard to navigate, find your courses, or place an order, I want to know about it!

Also, make it easy to contact customer support. Offer email support, people. Email! I hate it when companies don't offer email support.

Live long and prosper.
RR

P.S. I'm getting married tomorrow. Yeah, I buried the lead. Nothing fancy - just the two of us and a few friends. We live in Florida and all of our family lives up north, so it's like herding cats trying to get everyone together for a proper ceremony. We'll save that for later.