Training

Ignoring the fact that I needed to complain in the first place, this is a good exchange.

In anticipation of the forthcoming Weekend of Joy with a close friend in Leeds, I needed to book my rail tickets. Using Virgin's rail website - The Train Line - I noticed a rather annoying fault with their login page.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ashley Frieze [mailto:ashley@ccl4.org]
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 3:09 PM
To: webmaster@thetrainline.com
Subject: Annoying thing on your site

I'm using Internet Explorer 6.0

Here is something that keeps happening to me and annoying me.

I click on the Buy Tickets link from your front page
I'm prompted for email address and password, so I enter my email, press Tab, enter my password and press Enter
The enter key actually presses the "Clear" button on your form rather than the proceed button and so I end up having to do the whole thing again.

Since it's a two field form - is a clear button really necessary? Can Enter not just proceed? - I'm no keyboard freak, but in this situation, convention would allow me to use the keyboard in the way described, rather than having to resort to the mouse or fiddle on with pressing tab a few more times.

What do you think?

Ashley Frieze

A moderately terse message from me - it was intended as a bug report - techie to techie... I received a reply, a while later, which I think made my original email worth sending.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebMaster [mailto:webmaster@thetrainline.co.uk]
Sent: 19 September 2001 10:06
To: 'ashley@nonlinear.com'
Subject: RE: Annoying thing on your site

Hello,

Thank you for recent email and your comments regarding the design of the log on page of our web-site.

We are always pleased to receive comments and suggestions from our customers and we will pass these on to our Development Team, who are continually working to improve the site and its service.

Once again, many thanks for your comments,

Regards,

Webmaster@thetrainline.com

Which goes to show that people cannot improve their services without feedback and it's always worth offering feedback when you can.