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  • Author Author: Former Member
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A web site out of the ark

Former Member

After recent e-buying experiences, I'm going elsewhere as soon as I've sourced the little that I want for my current project.

 

Reasons are:

 

1.     The Farnell web site is cr@p. It breaks most of the rules of good web site design.

 

2.     I've had the experience of it submitting an order without my clicking on the submit button.

 

3.     Setting up my billing and delivery addresses was a farce during which I found an obvious bug and when I complained about it in forthright terms I got a lecture on political correctness from an obviously ill-educated oik (for Marxists that's a lumpenproletarian).

 

4.     The wording describing a 10% discount voucher code was so misleading as to be, IMO, illegal under UK Law.

 

5.     I cannot find the terms and conditions to which the voucher email refers anywhere on the web site as a result of its dreadful navigation facilities.

 

 

Before anyone says that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'll say that I was responsible for significant aspects of software QA on radar screen displays for a recent upgrade to the UK Air Traffic Control system. HCI doesn't get more critical and if you get it wrong you can kill people hundreds at a time.

 

The Farnell web site is, IMO, so bad that I'm simply not prepared to put up with it any longer than I have to.

 

Mouser beckons.

Parents

  • Im sorry but I really hate just this kind of approaches to comments. First of all consider that there is a lot of good persons involved and working at Farnell, like and as well as Farnell is investing - sure it is for a commercial return - a lot of money, instead of with super sales promotions and super cheap prices, to give to all including the users like you (sic!) the opportunity to test new products, discuss with very valuable and high skilled engineers, get solved problems and participate to very good challenges. All this just for free.

     

    So, IMHO (and this is just a suggestion), maybe the worth to try other forums and make a serious critical comparison with this before this kind of useless and non-constructive critics, limited to just a list of assertions. In the case that your wide knowledge about how the things should be reach the end of the web without finding any community at the expected decent level you point to maybe the case to create something really astonishing by yourself?

     

    Just another suggestion (if you permit). As this is not the place of the battle of curriculum, maybe more valuable that your wide expertise and knowledge will be listed in detail on your profile.

     

    You are welcome. Enrico

  • in reply to balearicdynamics

    Funnily enough I'm not hugely keen on this kind of approach to a reply. Some reactions:

     

    1.     Farnell are, IMO, not getting a very good web site for their money if, after much investment, it remains this bad.

     

    2.     I have given specific comments directly to Farnell, including a recommendation that they get their web site developers to read at least a basic text in GUI design. Specifically I have suggested that they refer to the book "GUI Bloopers" by Jeff Johnson, ISBN-10: 0123706432. From what I have seen of their web site, none of their web developers can have read it, or if they have, they have chosen to ignore it, since the site breaks several of the most elementary rules the book gives.

     

    3.     I was not engaging in a battle of curriculum but merely stating a basic level of qualification for what I was saying.

     

    If I were to make in my work the kinds of blunder that Farnell's web site designers have made, people could be killed. I am under no obligation to appear impressed or deferential when I see shoddy software engineering in whatever context it arises. With Farnell's business model, e-commerce is mission-critical. Just because the bugs piss people off rather than kill them, it does not mean than someone shouldn't expose their web developers' limitations of competence when she sees them.

     

    If you think I should appease the sensitivities of the incompetent, you are entitled to that view - but I consider such appeasement an utter waste of words.

     

     

Comment
  • in reply to balearicdynamics

    Funnily enough I'm not hugely keen on this kind of approach to a reply. Some reactions:

     

    1.     Farnell are, IMO, not getting a very good web site for their money if, after much investment, it remains this bad.

     

    2.     I have given specific comments directly to Farnell, including a recommendation that they get their web site developers to read at least a basic text in GUI design. Specifically I have suggested that they refer to the book "GUI Bloopers" by Jeff Johnson, ISBN-10: 0123706432. From what I have seen of their web site, none of their web developers can have read it, or if they have, they have chosen to ignore it, since the site breaks several of the most elementary rules the book gives.

     

    3.     I was not engaging in a battle of curriculum but merely stating a basic level of qualification for what I was saying.

     

    If I were to make in my work the kinds of blunder that Farnell's web site designers have made, people could be killed. I am under no obligation to appear impressed or deferential when I see shoddy software engineering in whatever context it arises. With Farnell's business model, e-commerce is mission-critical. Just because the bugs piss people off rather than kill them, it does not mean than someone shouldn't expose their web developers' limitations of competence when she sees them.

     

    If you think I should appease the sensitivities of the incompetent, you are entitled to that view - but I consider such appeasement an utter waste of words.

     

     

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