Monday, January 16, 2017

Your website is out of date

There are times when an out of date website can be a total frustration.

I recently was looking into getting a new anti-virus program for our business so basically our own notebooks. I didn’t think it would be such a challenge until after we decided which package to purchase. I went onto the company website and selected the product which was easy enough and then entered our credit card information in and then this is where the problems started. After entering everything and getting all the necessary check marks I clicked on the purchase button. This should have been the final step in the process but it was the beginning of the frustration that I then had to deal with. The website informed me that they couldn’t validate my address so I checked everything and tried again and again, only to have this same message pop up. So there was this message that said if you are having problems please contact support. Yes it said support for someone that is trying to make a purchase.

Now here is where most of frustration happened because it wasn’t going to be as easy as making one phone call. I called support and waited on hold until I was connected to a support person which wasn’t too long only a minute or two. After explaining the problem that was having I was having I was informed that I should have called customer service and not support like the screen told me to do. I was then put on hold for 2 – 3 minutes while the support person looked up the phone number for me to call. Yes, I had to hang up and dial a different number because this person couldn’t transfer to customer service.

Ok, I called customer service and figured that would be great and simple and they would be able to resolve the issue. That wait was once again another 2 – 3 minutes until a customer service representative was able to take my call. I once again explained the issue that I was having about not being able to purchase the product I wanted online. The rep asked me again which product I was trying to purchase and I told her again. Now this is the line I get from her “Oh, you should be talking to sales and not customer service if you want to purchase that product, you called the wrong person.” Yes, I was given customer service by support only to be told that I had the wrong department again. Maybe this is when I should have just hung up and ran away but I did. At least customer service was able to transfer me to sales.

I finally got in contact with a sales person and once again explained the situation. The first response I got was well you are probably trying to purchase something from the American site and not the Canadian site. I did explain that I had selected the Canadian site and the price did have a C before the dollar sign so that should mean Canadian dollars. The sales person then asked me what product I was trying to purchase and I told him for the second time. The response I got made me extremely mad when I heard, “Oh, that product is no longer available but if you go to our website you can purchase the new product that we have.” He provided me with the website and instead of purchasing a product with 5 licenses I would now have to purchase individual licenses and each license would cost me $40 or almost $180 instead of the old product being $79.99 Canadian for 5 licenses. He did offer me a 20% discount if I made the purchase but you can imagine that I quickly said I needed to talk to my business partner before making that purchase.

Yes, so an out of date website meant over half an hour of my time getting frustrated only to discover that I now need to look at what I want in the anti-virus software and figure out where I will be purchasing it. If you are going to discontinue a product make sure that the first place that it is removed is from the website. If a person can easily find it on a current webpage you should still be selling it. Also instead of telling me that my address was invalid I should have received a message that “This product is no longer available.” An out of date website can really impact a consumers impression of a business and my impression of this business is not good right now.

Now I must go and figure out our new anti-virus program as that is the next project on my list of things to do.

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