[NetStrikeForce]

Most businesses have broken websites. I like to show this to whoever wants to break into IT and thinks there's too many clever people already working on it :)

Yesterday a friend ordered a sofa from a well known online retailer in the UK, then chose to finance it 12 months 0% APR. The retailer site sent him to a very well known bank's website, pre-filing part of the finance form with things they had already like forename and surname. Except he's Spanish and the site wrote his middle name and both surnames in the non-editable surname field.

Once he finishes filing the form with all the addresses he lived in the last 3 years he clicks on "continue" and is greeted with a "surname is in the wrong format" message.

Remember, that filed is non-editable and it's pre-filled by the retailer's website; so he effectively can't do nothing at all about it.

Conclusions?

1) This is living proof that diversity is a business advantage (they lost at least one £1200 sale).

2) The Internet is stupidly broken.

3) People working in IT is as clever or as stupid as anyone else.

[stevekemp]

Seems like a suitable time to share this link again, Falsehoods programmers believe about names:

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...