Fascinating customer problem: asked to login when ordering. (edit)

Matthew Saville

I have a perplexing problem, or I should say one of my customers does. The are using AOL to order prints through my smugmug, and at the billing info page when they click "next" it defaults back to a previous page, saying that "password information" does not "match", or something like that, whatever it means... Even though originally on NO previous page were they asked to input password information. They do not have a smugmug account, so they cannot proceed past the billing page and the "broken" next button. They're entering their own billing and shipping information, of course. Luckily their shopping cart is not emptied out when they get defaulted back to the bizarre password page.

ANYONE ever have a problem like this? What on earth is going on? Why is smugmug saying their passwords do not match when they haven't entered any password info in the first place? I asked the customer if there was any sort of option to "use smugmug billing / shipping info" since I know I have that on my own order forms, as a smugmug member. They don't have any options of that sort. I am completely perplexed. Even if someone else using the computer had created a smugmug account without the customer knowing, why would it ask them to log in right there?

=Matt=

[edit]

Okay, I logged out and tried to place an order. What the heck is this "new order password" nonsense? Why is MY login password auto-entered in the first field? (I only assume it is my SmugMug login PW, just counting the digits...) Do customers have to create a password for each order? Again, whose idea was THAT? Seriously you guys, you have GOT TO STOP rolling out new features without telling me. The only thing I hate worse than wasting my time trying to figure out some new feature is when a customer wastes their own time trying to figure out some new feature... I know you're trying to be considerate of the people who may not want to be bothered with every tiny little update, but can I have an option to be notified about everything? When Don sneezes, I want an email. I searched "new order password" on the release notes smugblog and got nothing at all...

Andy

Your browser auto filled that field (based on settings you gave your browser).

Your customer likely put in different pwds for the order password field.

Andy

Matthew Saville wrote:

Seriously you guys, you have GOT TO STOP rolling out new features without telling me. The only thing I hate worse than wasting my time trying to figure out some new feature is when a customer wastes their own time trying to figure out some new feature... I know you're trying to be considerate of the people who may not want to be bothered with every tiny little update, but can I have an option to be notified about everything? When Don sneezes, I want an email.

Hi Matt, we didn't put out any such new feature, I'm sorry. Order passwords have been in the shopping cart for years.

Matthew Saville

Andy wrote:

Your browser auto filled that field (based on settings you gave your browser).

Your customer likely put in different pwds for the order password field.

I figured it was my browser auto-filling. But that's kinda un-cool that it is identifying that field as the same field as my login. Is there any way to avoid that on your end? It doesn't auto-fill my login PW for gallery passwords...

What is puzzling me about my customer's order is this now the following:

They don't notice the password fields on the first go-round. Okay, I can understand just overlooking them. But they asserted that they had not been asked for a password to begin with. I'm sure you can tell me that it's completely impossible for those PW fields to just vanish from the checkout billing page initially, and only show up after they click next. I'm sure they simply missed it.

But then when they do try and click "next" without entering a PW, they said that when it told them their passwords did not match, they DID try to create a password. And it still wouldn't let them continue. THAT is bizarre. Assuming of course they were typing in identical passwords. Might have just bungled the PW five times in a row? I dunno.

Lastly, they claimed that they had to re-enter their billing / shipping info every single time they got their PW rejected, which I did NOT have to do when I logged out and tried filling out the order form. If I left the PW field blank and clicked "next", it would ask me to re-fill the PW fields but it would retain all my other info, even my CC... Could this be a browser thing? They were using AOL to browse the net (is that even possible?) and I did recommend trying IE or FF, but I have not yet seen their order go through...

Andy wrote:

Hi Matt, we didn't put out any such new feature, I'm sorry. Order passwords have been in the shopping cart for years.

Alright, you win. I'M sorry for ranting. But seriously, WHY do orders need individual passwords? That is so weird. I can see how it serves a purpose to have a PW at a place like Adorama or B&H, where I spend thousands and thousands of dollars, but a PW for each individual print order? What point does it serve? When do customers need to USE that password, if they're DONE on the computer when they finish checking out? To check tracking or something?

=Matt=

Andy

Matt, if you can give me an order# we can dig further - but I can tell you we don't support AOL's browser, IE6/7, FF, and Safari only ... AOL's browser can well, cause problems, like you are seeing here.