Recently I made the decision to switch my primary email address to something else in an effort to combat spam. This means I had to modify all the accounts I have that pointed to the old address.
This is a long, long, long and arduous process. If you have under 25 accounts (instant messenger accounts, Facebook, MySpace, etc.), consider yourself lucky because I have over 100.
At the time I write this I’m not even done with modifying all the accounts and have run into problems galore with poorly programmed web sites in the way they handle user accounts. It’s from this that I came up with my 9 things that I hate about changing email addresses for web services.
1. Our support system is an email address.
I attempted to change my email address on the Facebook web site, only to receive a big red nasty notice that said the address I was trying to use was disabled for use, and to send an email to disabled@facebook.com for further instructions.
Let me tell you why this is such a huge pile of fail.
- The fact one of the largest web sites on the planet uses a flat email address instead of a contact form is so stupid I don’t even know where to begin with that. There is no form. No instructions on what to send in your email. No support ticket number. Nothing. Dumb, dumb, dumb and more dumb.
- I had never used the email address I was trying to switch to on the Facebook site before attempting to use it. Usually you get the disabled notice when you are banned from the system. I’m not banned – but the email address is. Why? I have no idea.
- Being there is no support ticket, there is no way to check to see if someone at Facebook actually received your email. Oh sure, they’ll send you a “we received this” confirmation email, but that confirms nothing because it’s nothing more than a canned response. When I say “someone”, I mean a real live human being and not a machine.
The disabled@facebook.com method of inquiring about a disabled email address hearkens back to the days of Web 1.0 in the late 1990s. So, so stupid.
2. Originally registered December 31, 1969.
If you have an account somewhere that you haven’t logged into in a really long time, then login to change some account info such as the email address, there’s a good chance the system has been upgraded/migrated and randomly changes things in your account – including the activation date. Yes, you’ll be able to get into the system without issue, but your activation date is totally screwed up. In many instances it will revert to December 31, 1969. Why that specific date? That’s a UNIX epoch date thing.
This doesn’t mean UNIX is the problem, by the way. It means the web server administrator is a moron that doesn’t know how to migrate data correctly.
3. The old address/new address flip-flop.
If this were described as a conversation, this is how it would go:
You: “I’d like to change my registered email address, please.”
Web site: “Sure, no problem! Go login to your old email address first to get the activation link.”
You: “Why do I have to do that?”
Web site: “It’s more secure, trust me. Just do it.”
You: “Um.. okay.”
Web site: “Do you see the activation link?”
You: “Yes.”
Web site: “Good. Click that. Now I’m going to send you another email to your new address so you can activate that.”
You: “But I just activated from the old address, why do I have to do it again?”
Web site: “Because I’m stupid and need two activation emails just to register the new email address you want.”
You: “Oh. Well.. at least you’re honest about it.”
That’s more or less how it goes, but here’s where it gets really stupid:
What if you can’t access your old email account?
You’re screwed at that point and you might as well say goodbye to that account, because you’re never getting into it again.
4. You can’t change your registered email address here. Sorry.
In another volley of stupidity, there are some web sites that simply won’t allow you to change your registered address AT ALL.
Sure, I can understand why you cannot change the actual name of an email account, but what I’m talking about are sites that are not email accounts. Two examples of sites that completely disallow registered email address changes are Nexon and Stickam. Both state the same thing as to why they don’t allow it: “Security purposes.” Bullsh*t. It’s the way it is because they’re lazy. A gaming site like Nexon is Steam and a video streaming site like Stickam is Ustream; they don’t have a problem with you changing your registered email address.
5. Our confirmation email is guaranteed to land in your “Spam” or “Junk” folder. Always.
Something that truly baffles me is why so many confirmation emails, as in the emails with the link to confirm your new address, always get flagged as spam. When I say guaranteed, I mean guaranteed. In fact, every time a web site tells me to look for a confirmation mail, I always look in the Spam folder first because it will probably go there anyway!
6. Our web site doesn’t know how to do anything right, so we locked you out. Have a nice day!
You login to a web site and go to change your email address, and of course the system says it just emailed a confirmation link to you. You check your mail, and there are not one but two of them from the same site. Uh-oh. Which one do you click, the first or the second?
Let’s try the first. Nope, that didn’t work. The site says it’s an expired link or something. Let’s try the second. Okay, I got “half-way” in the site, but something’s not right here so I’ll just logout and try again. Wait a second.. I can’t login now. I’m locked out.
Now I have to send an email to support to tell them their web site is a complete piece of sh*t. Oh, silly me, I can’t do that BECAUSE I NEED MY ACCOUNT ENABLED TO SUBMIT A SUPPORT REQUEST.
7. Please add these FOUR email addresses to your contact list.
Online banking web sites as absolutely notorious for doing this.
The best way to explain this problem is to first mention a web site that actually gets it right, YouTube.
YouTube has only one email address they use for all messages, updates and so on, service@youtube.com. That’s it. And it works. No problems, no issues, it’s all good.
Then there are other places like online banking sites that say, “Okay, see.. you just changed your email address, so add these four addresses to your contacts so mail from us doesn’t get flagged as spam by mistake: billing.statements@stupid-ass-bank.com, notify@stupid-ass-bank.com, contact@stupid-ass-bank.com, flying.purple.chickens@stupid-ass-bank.com. We appreciate you as a customer!”
No, I don’t think you do appreciate me as a customer because you have 10,000 different email addresses just so I can get an email telling me what my account balance is. Why don’t you just get rid of all of those and use one? Google doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, and they’re a lot bigger than you are and transmit a lot more mail than you do. And yeah, they do commerce, too.
Oh, and guess what? Those email addresses that Stupid-Ass Bank told you to add to your contact list will change in six months, so you’ll have to do it all over again.
8. Please “compute dangerous” to get our stupid change form to work.
There are still some web sites to this day that will not work unless you have the configuration of what I call The Worst Setup In The World, and that setup is this:
- A PC running Windows XP with no service packs whatsoever.
- No anti-virus or firewall whatsoever.
- IE 6.0.
If not running The Worst Setup In The World, the form won’t work. Don’t bother trying IE7 because that’s “too new” for this site. Geez, you’d think people were connecting at over 56k or something. Slow down there, buddy!
When I say that the form doesn’t work, what happens is that you painstakingly fill out this ridiculously long form just to change your email address, click the Submit button, and… nothing. You can click until you’re your finger cramps up, but it won’t matter because that button won’t work.
At that point you sit there for a moment steaming with anger because you just spent 15 minutes filling out a form. And darn it, you did a good job at it, too. But all that work was for nothing and the moment you hit that refresh button, it’s all gone and you’ll have to do it all over again – possibly several times.
It is for this reason I keep a virtualized older version of Windows using The Worst Setup In The World, because I know it will work right the first time for sites that go all wonky on me with their forms.
I want to note that it’s rare this happens – but it does even now in 2010.
9. You’ll receive our confirmation email in a few minutes.. about 2,160 of them.
In yet another example of web servers run by morons, when you change your registered email address and the site says, “We’ll email you a confirmation mail in a few minutes”, it never arrives, so you change it again, wait another few minutes, and again, nothing. You do it again. And again. And again. Then you give up.
The next day your inbox is flooded with confirmation emails, all in a row.
Sigh..
You delete all those, submit another change request, then wait a day because you know it takes that long to get to you. Then you can finally confirm your new email address properly.
2,160 minutes is 1.5 days, by the way.
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