Lessons in Bad UI Design

Posted on February 29, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |

I went over to PG&E, my local utility company, to setup automatic payment of my bill. I hate bill paying so having stuff get automatically paid is great for me, and better yet is the points I accumulate that turn into Apple iTunes gift cards on a regular basis from using my Apple Visa card.

On a side note, this is the only credit card I have ever had where the company executes really well on their customer service and the points convert into something that is a regular “small luxury”. I haven’t paid for an iTunes purchase in over a year, I keep using the $25 gift cards that the credit card company sends me.

What a frustrating experience the PG&E web site is. On the sidebar under “billing” is an item for setting up an automatic payment, which you use to setup the thresholds like what is the max payment and when to send it. But when you click on “continue” you get an error message indicating you can’t continue until you setup the actual payment details, represented by the “add payment account” link in the top bar. Web users have pretty much been conditioned that “continue” means move on to the next step up until the point at which you want to actually commit a multi-page form, which is then done through something more explicit like “add automatic payment.”

When you click on add payment account you go to a page that has details for adding a check payment from your bank account, no credit cards. In order to setup an automatic payment with your credit card you have to click on the separate sidebar link labeled “pay bill with Visa card” and then “setup automatic payment”. So not only do they have two entirely separate pages for automatic payments, one of them is hidden in a page that suggests “pay your bill NOW with your Visa card.”

Also, you can’t use anything other than Visa for some reason, no Mastercard or Amex.


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