I will say at the outset that I love e-commerce. I never set foot in a store unless I absolutely have to do so. But the internet has not necessarily simplified commerce, as seen by the example below:
The old way:
You choose the item from the shelf, walk to the front of the store and hand the guy $21.49 in cash for the item. He puts it in a bag and hands it to you.
The new, simplified way:
You choose the item from the web site, ignoring the pop-up from “Fore See” asking you to take part in a survey when your shopping experience is finished. The item goes into your shopping cart. When you click on your shopping cart to purchase the item you have to ignore the ads for “people who bought this item also bought…” You click check out and it asks you if you are a new customer or if you’d like to create an account. You can’t remember ever shopping with them, so you choose “create new account.” You fill out the forty specific fields on the form, and it is rejected because you used your 9-digit zip-code and it only wanted 5 digits. You fill all forty fields in again, and it rejects your form because it can’t find the street on which you’ve lived for 16 years. You accept their suggestion (it has an extra space between the words), and fill in the 40 fields again. It rejects it because you got the warped visual “Captcha” letters wrong. You fill out the forty fields again, and it rejects your form because your password was too weak, and should include “at least one number, one capital letter, and one special character, but not #, %, @, or &.” You come up with a password you will never remember, and it rejects your form because “an account already exists for this email address.”
So, you try to log in with your existing account. It tells you either your username or password are incorrect. You are given the choice “forgot username” and “forgot password.” You choose “forgot password”, and it asks you to verify your account by security questions. The first one is easy -“What is your favorite color?” You’re sure it is blue, but wait, did your wife set up this account in which case it would be red? You guess correctly, and it asks “what is your maternal grandmother’s maiden name?” Racking your brains, you come up with a name you are pretty sure about, but it turns out it was your paternal grandmother’s maiden name. It gives you another chance, and you get it right. It sends an email to your email address on file, so you open another browser window and log in to your email. There is a message from the company from whom you are trying to make the purchase, with a link that says “reset password”. You follow the link (it opens another browser window), and it asks you to type a password and repeat the password. Having been through this, you know to include at least one number, one capital letter, and a special character but not #, %, @, or &. The little “Strong” icon pops up next to your password, so you click “submit.” You get the message “You may not use any password you have used in the past 90 days.” So you come up with a new one. It accepts the new password.
You’re in, except that your shopping cart has expired, and you have to find the item again. You locate the item, put it in your shopping cart, and click “checkout.” It asks how you want to pay and you choose “PayPal.” A Paypal log in pops up. You rack your brain to remember which email address you used when you opened your Paypal account. You guess correctly, but immediately opt for the “forgot password” choice. Paypal sends you an email with a link to reset your password. You reset it, using the above procedure, and are confronted with a new set of warped letters to decode. You get it wrong twice and click the “listen” button. Someone with a strong German accent and a lot of background noise says “depletion”. You type it in, and the screen refreshes with a page that looks like an invoice, except that it says, “The item you has ordered is no longer in stock. We suggest these other items as a replacement.” None of the items have absolutely anything to do with what you wanted.
You go away and play “Bejeweled Blitz” in frustration.