A Really Bad Customer Experience

June 29, 2005 | 14 Comments

If you like rants you might like this.

I came across the worst customer experience I’ve ever had online last night. It was while trying to redeem a gift certificate for a few DVDs at Overstock.com.

Let me tell you, “Sometimes it’s all about the frustration.”

I was on their site for about an hour all told, in several sessions. I think I ran into every damn user interface mistake possible. And a few I’d never thought existed. I hit errors, display issues, feedback issues, ridiculous policy, findability problems and more. Even after speaking to real people I never was able to get my order finished off.

If you’re doing business online, in my opinion anyway, that should never happen. So let’s see if we can learn from their mistakes, shall we? First let me talk about what went wrong.

A list of Issues

At the risk of giving away a free usability review I wanted to point out a few things that just blew me away. And if someone from Overstock is reading this, you can hire me to help you sort it all out.

The site is SLOW as heck.
The search sucked. Poor performance, poor display, poor placement, poor results—the whole nine.
More findability woes. I understand they’ve got a lot of product, but it’s really hard to sort through it. I was really having a hard time figuring out how to spend my money. Not a good sign.
I lost my shopping cart twice. Guess the cookies don’t work?
When choosing payment, via radio button, the visual response was like 10 seconds. I’ve never seen that. As you can imagine, I thought it was broken.
There was no option to redeem my gift certificate after I created an account, even though they explicitly tell me to look for it. I clicked the redeem button before I created an account, but it never showed up in the payment options.
Why do I have to create an account anyway? I’ll never get that, even though it’s so common. I understand asking for some of that info, but not all of it. First key to a good form—only ask for what you need. Overstock is asking for too much.
The persistent product navigation is overwhelming, it sits there on the left no matter what task you’re doing. Why do I need to see links to product all over the place when I’m looking for support?
There are product feature spots on the account pages. Similar to the persistent navigation, what are these for? I’m no longer looking to buy anything, I’m looking for help.
While trying to pull up my order, I had to log in multiple times. Pretty much every time I left the account editing / support loop.
They show my order as pending payment, yet offer me no options to change or provide that payment.
The help section (called “FAQ”?) crashed my browser (Firefox).
Once I finally did get my e-mail support request sent off it bounced back as undeliverable!!!

Argh.

All of this occurred before I bit the bullet and really tried to get my issue sorted out via chat. I much prefer self-service, but there are times when you just need to touch base with an actual person.

The there was my support chat…

I tried e-mail first as I figured my issue might need some work to resolve, but when that bounced I went to their online chat. This got me the answer, I suppose. Eventually. Turns out I’ve got to try it all over again, but since I’ve got an account now I should have the proper payment options. Not cool.

Worse than that, there were some things that really bugged me about that chat session.

First off the application itself; there was a broken image and the text entry field was too small and didn’t wrap. It kept refreshing and flashing, which was very disconcerting. The poor guy on the other end also gave his opening line (“Hi I’m so-and-so, what can I help you with”) three times. I suppose he can’t be faulted for trying to multi-task, and my guess it’s more a problem for the application, but it was beyond annoying.

But I could have dealt with that. What really bugged me was some of the policies that Overstock.com has in place.

For whatever reason they couldn’t void my order. So, I have to wait for it to time-out before I can try again. That seems very silly to me.
At the end of the chat I was actually sent to a featured item page! What the hell? I’m trying to get support on a current order, and here they are trying to push more product on me. This is very inappropriate. I mean, even the item selected was way off. It was a foam bed cover and was couched as something I might like? Says who? I mean I was ordering The Office, Harold and Kumar and The Machinist on DVD, why would I want foam bedding?

If nothing else, they really need to remove all that product placement from their support and chat pages. I can’t imagine they get many sales out of it and it’s borderline offensive to someone who is looking for help.

The balance between business goals and customer goals

I’m sure Overstock.com does pretty well, but they seem to be overly focused on their business goals. Unfortunately for their customers this leaves quite a bit to be desired when it comes to the experience of visiting their Web site. What they might not realize is they’re probably effecting their own bottom line quite a bit as well.

Had I not been dealing with a gift certificate you can bet your ass I’d not have purchased anything. I understand the need to sell and make money, but that has to be balanced with the needs of your customers. This is especially needed on sites like Overstock.com. I’ll probably never shop there again, that’s for sure, and I sure as heck aren’t going to recommend them to anyone.

The good thing about the Web is that nothing is set in stone. Hopefully they fix some of these problems, and maybe cut back on the selling a bit. My guess is that, ironically, they’ll notice they’re selling even more.

Filed under: Usability
Keyword Tags: customer+service overstock.com usability business goals web

Comments

1. Brian Fox said:

Sounds like the encounter that I had with them a while back. One could do an entire case study on the differences between Overstock and Amazon: Every area where the Amazon guys thought things through, you can see Overstock fall short. Usability is a really major thing when designing a site: when will Overstock learn? I know after my experiences with them I wont be shopping there again.

Overstock may have better prices on a good number of their books, but the intelligent & thoughtful design of Amazon.com will make me come back over and over again. The folks at Amazon have done their homework when it comes to usability. Even as a web designer, I can appreciate things that ‘just work’ correctly: for that I will pay a little extra. In my opinion it is money well spent in rewarding the Amazon.com team for their good work. (It reminds me of some of the reasons why I spent extra for my Mac).

Posted on June 29, 2005 10:48 AM | #

2. Dave P said:

Moral of the story: Don’t buy anything else from overstock.com.

It’s interesting that you point out a balance between business and customer goals, but too few companies see this. Affect the business goals directly though (by not using them), and the semi-smart ones take notice. The others die the death that they deserve.

(Yeah, I saw you had a gift certificate, I’m just saying is all.)

It’s funny, I’m moving this week, and I’ve been trying to do the following: switch phone, disconnect adsl, switch cable tv, add cable internet.

I’ve received one good experience and one disaster (as expected - your cnd. viewers will know where to group Telus).

You’ve inspired me to do a comparative rant as well.

Posted on June 29, 2005 11:00 AM | #

3. Joe said:

I’m afraid that I’ve also been an overstock.com victim. A book I ordered had a manufacturing defect with the binding. My experience emailing customer service was infuriating since it was like talking to a brick wall. I got a new person with each email and they never seemed to read the email thread before responding. Each response was the same standard by-the-book-cut-and-paste answer.

You roll the dice when you buy from Overstock. Sometimes the price just isn’t worth it because you get what you pay for in both product condition and customer service.

A successful online purchase, and one that encourages repeat business, will provide both a great user experience and deliver the product as promised.

Posted on June 29, 2005 12:07 PM | #

4. Peter Boersma said:

A friend of mine recently had a similarly bad experience at an airline’s frequent flyer signup site. He wrote about it here (using rather strong language, be warned ye weak of heart!):

“seriously. f*ck ‘em.”
http://tinyurl.com/78nfv

(Note that this is a shortened URL. The original, long, wrapping URL is: http://www.mattikeltanen.com/movable/archives/2005/06/seriously_fuck.html)

Posted on June 29, 2005 12:14 PM | #

5. Jens Meiert said:

When I encounter such a site, I usually run and have never been seen again (that’s customer retention). There are so many shops (and sites, in general) online with an inferior UX, it is unbelievable - people being able to fix even minor usability problems then simply can never get unemployed.

Posted on June 30, 2005 01:39 AM | #

6. Kurt said:

Keith,
Are you going to write them about your experience? The result could even be worse – you write them, they offer you another gift certificate for your troubles and you find yourself back in Overstock.com hell.

I don’t know how some of these place stay in business. Unfortunately, this is the type of thing that the average user faces and then just moves on, assuming this is the state of the web.

Posted on June 30, 2005 01:34 PM | #

7. jimmyd said:

Yeah, but the gal that does their tv spots is sooooo hot!

But still, I have had a couple of bad experiences as well…would never use again.

Posted on July 1, 2005 08:36 AM | #

8. Paul Solecki said:

I had a strange experience with dvdsoon. It’s an ok site and I never had any trouble before but for some reason now it won’t ask me for payment details!? I emailed them eventually - their form is a submit to an email address!! - and they responding saying it had gone through ok! Strange business model, still I’m not complaining about free stuff :)

Posted on July 4, 2005 09:05 AM | #

9. Blaze said:

I regularly get spam emails from OverStock.com and I never bother to read them. Any business that involves itself in such a practice doesnt really get my attention anyway but its good to know who not to buy from in any case.

Posted on July 5, 2005 05:18 PM | #

10. Dawn said:

I don’t know about Overstock.com, but I just had the most horrendous experience with AsSeenOnTV.com! Anybody else have an AsSeenOnTV nightmare??

After not receiving responses to several inquiries, I wrote a “very unhappy customer” email. Well, that got me a “very rude customer service rep” email. Long story short, I finally found out that the item was backordered, they claim they sent emails that I didn’t receive, and when going live to share the backorder beef and the rude email with a supervisor, I was treated even more rudely by the supervisor! I’m just blown away by this awful experience, and I’m going to be gun shy of other online shopping for a while, I fear.

Posted on September 1, 2005 02:01 PM | #

11. Sharon said:

(Overstock.com)when i used to work there, employers would tell you to tell customers that you only need their bank account number to just make sure they’re a member of a bank and thats all!little did i know until i read from your website that these people are being charged almost from the end of the call.they also promise bonus’s all day long for sales you get and then they find some way to take it back by saying one of the sales didnt go through but when you ask them for more information on it , they give you the runaround and never pay you.sounds like a manager might be getting the bonus not the employee on the phone. very deceptive business practices not good for employee or customer,,,only the company.very high turnover rate especially in some rooms because of vulgar unedited music in some of the dialer rooms…room E.when a new female employee complained about it,,right after the meeting she was taken out of the room and put in a nonproductive room as a way of weeding people out. she left the next day.very stressful environment… previous employee,sharon

Posted on September 18, 2005 01:05 AM | #

12. Angel said:

Okay…..I was just about to purchase an item on Overstock for my first time. But have found myself a little scared after reading all these comments. I’m not sure if I’ll proceed with my order. Thanks for all the info this site provided. It’s been great pre-purchase research!!

Posted on January 23, 2006 04:08 PM | #

13. Alison Singer said:

I ordered three pairs of earrings from overstock for Xmas. First they came late, second one pair was broken, and lastly the next two pairs were the wrong items. It has been two months and I still can not get this issue resolved. I am out over 60 dollars!

Posted on February 3, 2006 10:23 AM | #

14. H. K. Schroeder said:

I have just had several weeks of the most pathetic dealings with Overstock.com. I will never order from them again. My most recent order was four movies… all ordered from the same page… specials! I received 3 movies but the 4th did not arrive. I communicated that to them by email and received responses that clearly indicated that the person responding at either not read my email or had a poor understanding of the English language (Not good for customer service!) We wrote back and forth for awhile and I was assured that my movie was probably sent under separate cover and would be arriving soon. It finally did… but, it wasn’t a movie… it’s a book! I didn’t order a book. I ordered from a single page. Nowhere on that page does it indicate that out of the few items listed, any of them was a book. However, the big “O” stands by itself. My feeling is that they were out of stock on the movie, which is why it didn’t arrive with the original order, and sent the book instead. I am disabled and have some vision problems and don’t read a lot. I would not have ordered a book. Further, I learned that if you return the order (in received packaging, even), you are charged a HUGE restocking fee. For instance, on a $2.99 item, the restocking fee was over $8! This is just not acceptable for an on-line company. I expect any company from which I buy to have a good return policy… even WalMart almost went under after Sam’s death when they stopped taking returns without inquisitions. Helen, Sam’s wife put a stop to that, however, when SHE was denied being able to return an item. Sam built his business on that. I can’t imagine that an on-line company would have such a policy. DEADLY. I intend to let the stockholders know of my experience and a few consumer organizations too!
This is MY consumer page on MY site:
http://kelschbiblestudy.tripod.com/misc/consumer/
HUNDREDS OF CONSUMER RESOURCES for just such a problem as this. I’ve written this comment because I want to not only lodge a complaint, I want to let others know so they don’t get caught in the Big O trap.

Posted on March 26, 2006 02:06 AM | #