SprintPCS has a broken website (Updated)
Friday, September 14th, 2007Yet another story about a badly programmed website, with really bad error messages.
I went to pay my monthly cell phone bill. Just last month, SprintPCS instituted a new policy, requiring stricter passwords with more letters and numbers in them. So I was forced to change my password. Perhaps I was also in a hurry, as I did not write it down in the usual place.
Today, unable to remember the new password, I clicked the link they offer for “Forgot your password?” I came to the screen you see in the first image.
I typed in my “username”, which is simply my telephone number. When I hit the submit button, I got, in response, a blank white page with the text “Error: 500″. That’s it. Nothing else. Just that text on a blank white page. You can see it in this second image:
I offer this anecodote as one more small piece of evidence for the case that most web sites are horribly programmed and poorly tested. I don’t mean to pick on SprintPCS, since there are many sites that are just as bad, but this just happens to be the broken website that I interacted with today.
Mind you, the above incident happened this morning, around 11 AM, and now it is 11 PM. I just went back to get screenshots. Twelve hours later, the problem is still there.
I sent SprintPCS an email about this. I have not yet heard back from them. I’ll update this post if I do hear from them.
UPDATE: wonderful response time. I just got this, on the 17th. The irony:
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:08:18 -0500 [02:08:18 PM CDT]
From: Sprint Customer Solutions <ecare@cc.sprintpcs.com>
Subject: Re: Subject: ID # 20070914212929 (KMM38317571I123L0KM)
Hello Lawrence Krubner,
Thank you for contacting Sprint.
A ticket has been submitted in reference to the difficulty you are experiencing logging into your account online at Sprint.com. The ticket number is 16880851.
A follow-up call will be made to you within 36 business hours.
Thank you again for contacting Sprint. We appreciate your business.
Mary O.
E-Care
Sprint
“Where our customers come first!”Refer someone to Sprint and get $25.
So after 3 days, they send me an email in which they promise to contact me within 3 days. Then they close with “Where our customers come first!” Hate to think how we’d be treated if we came second.