ADT Security Service Online Bill Pay - Fail

So I receive this email today from ADT Security Services who I signed up with about two months ago for my home alarm system. The body of the email introduces the new ADT Online Bill Pay system, and contains an image of a suitably excited lady looking at her laptop and using her cellphone.

So already I am pretty interested to see what this is all about. I love managing my bills online, both for saving the environment, and the fact that I lose papers pretty easily.

I go ahead and click the button to pay my bill that takes me to the Secure login form.

So at first I am vexed by the fact that I never received a login. Maybe I need to register? That seems like a logical next step.

This is where my search for a "Register Account" link begins, which after a minute or two of searching is nowhere to be found.

So I click "Cancel", the only other option I have at this time.

Lo and behold, the exact same form reappears, but now with a line reading:

"Not signed up yet? Create and online account"

To whomever designed the user interface, why not have this on the first login screen? It would have saved me at least 2 minutes of my life I will never get back.

After clicking the Create Account I go through another form that looks pretty standard. The only problem comes when I need to choose a password.

The password complexity rules are:

"The password needs to contain alphabetical characters and numbers, be a minimum of 4 characters, and can not contain 2 repeating characters"

This rules out both my super secure passwords that are 10 characters in length. One contains special characters (not allowed) and the other has two repeating characters (also not allowed). I end up going with something I'l probably forget. And by the way, they don't send you your password in email when you forget it, they only allow you to reset it to something new (that you probably won't remember).

After registering I try to login with my new user and password. The first two times it takes me back to  the login screen, no errors or notifications. 3rd time lucky!! I'm in.

Now I am faced with the following screen. The kicker here is the phrase "Please do NOT use your browser's Back or Forward buttons with Pay My Bill"

Are you kidding? We need to change the way we have understood browsers for the last 20 years just so we can operate the online billing payment system?

Obviously throughout my ordeal it was not able to figure out who I was and which account I needed see within the portal. Could they not have asked this during registration, rather than have a special "Enroll an Account" button so late in the game?

Well I sure as hell did not get this far to give up now.

What I was faced with now was the straw that broke the camel's back. Read carefully on line 2 of this form.

"Please have your paper bill in hand to help guide you though the fields below".

Two issues with this:

1. "Through" is spelled incorrectly. Very sloppy!

2. I dont have a damn paper bill. That's the whole point of me going through all this!!

I gave up at this stage because now I have to pick up the phone to spend the next ten minutes getting to someone at ADT to help me find my account number so I can complete the form. It finally becomes clear why the good looking lady in the email had a cellphone to her ear!

Really ADT, in this day and age we would expect you to be able to handle a simple online billing portal.

Marcy Strength Bench - Fail

The Marcy Strength bench from Academy Sports is a work of art, more for being a useless inanimate object than it is a triumph of product design.

Firstly there is the width of the support structure itself. They claim it is a "Space saving design". I say its a bench that's far too narrow to make it useful for what it was designed to do.

The barbell sits on top of the two "support pillars" (for lack of a better term). These pillars are far too close together, so when you try to do a bench press you are forced to grab the bar with you hands really close together. Why is this a problem? Well, if you do a close grip bench press you end up working out your triceps, not your chest. Just so it's clear, I have a very average build so my puny chest is not the problem in this equation.

So naturally when you get the weight off the bench you try to shift your hands apart slightly to make it comfortable and to straighten your form a bit. Problem solved! Not quite. Try doing 15 reps and then putting the bar back gently without pinching your shaking (now tired) hands between the 100-pound barbell and the sharp jagged angles of the support pillar.

The other seriously stupid design flaw is the preacher curl arm pad. If the arm pad is in place you can't do leg exercises because when lifting your legs up the mechanism catches on the arm pad. Now you need to yank the arm pad out of the structure itself every time you want to use the "multi function" features.

Now many of you would say: "What did you expect from a $99 bench and weight set!". Well my answer is simple, something that is cheap and flimsy, but that can do what it is says on the box, regardless of a low budget design.

In hindsight, I should have spent the extra $50 to get the next model up, but now that I built the whole damn thing I'm far too lazy to pack it back up. Besides, my wife is starting to love my freakishly large tricep muscles.

VW New Beetle - Fail

So these are some very small dodgy elements of a otherwise pretty good little "run-around". The VW Beetle is fantastic for what it was built to do, it's reliable and it gets me where I need to be.

Its a somewhat emasculating car to drive around Texas with even soccer moms driving Ford F-250's or Dodge RAM's, but I get by.

The thing that annoys me to no end has to be the window buttons. They could not have put them in a less comfortable position if they tried. They are flat against the door, and also have a shape that really makes it difficult to push them up or down. I have had many close calls in traffic trying to work these little buttons.

To operate them you have to angle your arm in a way that twists your wrist into a strange backward bend, which when driving in rush hour traffic can be extremely distracting.

My model is a 2008, hopefully this has been fixed in later models. If you have a later model (or one from the same year) please comment on this thread about your experiences.

By the way, have a look at the brand new shape just released this year:

VW New Beetle 2011

Apparently the shape will appeal more to a mass market, not just females. By the way, did I mention it's my wife's car and not mine?

So I was eating the other night at Freddy's hamburgers. On the table was an invitation to join their fan club, with the incentive of a coupon for a free custard. What the heck, who wouldn't want a free custard? The link was a QR code, so I scanned it on my iPhone, added my email, and joined the fan club. I immediately got an image on my phone - Free Custard at your next visit. Fantastic.

Except I didn't know when I was going to return, and I am all about instant gratification, so I took my image of the coupon on my phone to the cashier (also the on-duty store manager) and asked if I could go ahead and redeem the coupon now, since I had already purchased several meals that visit. They told me, "I need an actual coupon". To which I replied, "How would I print from my phone?". That of course was a stumper. Instead of pressing the matter, I told them that I'm sure I would just wait for the email confirmation, and print the coupon then and redeem it on my next visit. Disappointing to wait, sure, but not a big deal.

Later that evening, I checked my email and sure enough, there was the confirmation that I had joined the club! Only problem was there was no coupon, no link to a coupon, no mention of a free custard anywhere.

Hmm, I wonder if anyone got a free custard ever from this Freddy's promotion? More of a marketing promo fail than a product fail, but I think it qualifies for this blog.

Fiber One Bars - Fake Strawberries

To those who think they are eating real strawberries, think again. Read the fine print "Strawberry flavored fruit pieces".

Wonder what kind of fruit they are talking about?

Box says (sugar, cranberries, citric acid, flavor, elderberry juice, sunflower oil, soy lecithin). Yum!!