HileThoughts

I needed to get the nib replaced on my Montblanc pen. Searching the internet I decided to try the official Montblanc site to find a center near me http://www.montblanc.com/3511.php . They have a lovely flash based system. To find out where to send my pen I had to:

• Click my continent from a lovely circling globe. that expanded and I had to
• Click on my country that expanded to a map of the US without any state border shown where I had to select a state.
• Clicking around the US resulted in no change until I noticed a small white dot in Texas. It turns out that the only state available for selection was Texas.
• Click on Texas - That opened a map of Texas and I was asked to choose a city. Finally I was learning, I found the single white dot and
• Click on Forth Worth opening information on the sole US service center.

Now that I had unearthed the needed information I tried to highlight the address to paste it onto a label so I could send my pen off and — you guessed it — the flash page does not support copy and paste. I had to retype the whole thing.

How could this have been done better? Well once I clicked on a continent they could have simply listed the three service centers in North America. One click instead of 5 and adding the ability to copy rather than having to retype the information. This might not have been as pretty but it would have been a heck of a lot more efficient saving me, the customer, time, frustration, and energy.

In working on this post I ran the flash system a few times. Evidently that was not anticipated and I received an error message as flash crashed. After that I decided to send my pen elsewhere for repair.

One final note, when I related this story to Allison she asked why in the world I would expect a fountain pen company to understand advanced web design. I am sure they think their design is “advanced” it is just advanced in a way that does not consider the user.

Cross posted on my personal and professional blogs.