die if $address =~ /box/;

jhorwitz on 2005-02-26T19:27:25

My cell phone finally died last night and by some miraculous alignment of the planets, today was the first day I was eligible for a free upgrade phone. So I go to order my new phone on Verizon's site, and as part of the last step, I enter my shipping address. It bombs out, saying they can't deliver to a P.O. box. Um, I live on a street, not a P.O. box!

After retrying 2 or 3 times, I realized what was happening. My street name is Boxford, and some idiot programmer decided that anything with the string "box" in it was a P.O. box. Brilliant!

Anyway, instead of taking hours to explain this problem to some customer service rep who doesn't deal with website problems, I went to the nearest Verizon store and got my phone there. I ended up paying $20 more for an accessory package (car charger, etc.) that was cheaper online, but I'll be writing Verizon to complain about that.

---

"I want to help!"

rjbs on 2005-02-27T03:33:13

I was complaining about just this sort of thing a few weeks ago. I frequently come across these kinds of stupid bugs, and I want to fix them! If their sites are in ASP or Perl or some other simple technology, it would be my pleasure (sort of) to fix stupid problems like this, or broken menu options, or inefficient screen organization. Instead, because everyone runs his own goofy proprietary e-business software, I am reduced to writing letters that are not, I think, ever read by the people who could act on them.

Is there some better alternative solution to these problems?