Created: 2018.02.08
If you are going to launch a big exciting new web site and tell 10's of millions of people to come. You probably should do some testing first! PC Optimum did a very poor job.
As many of you know, I'm involved in the management for the development of many very high end web sites, sites for various militaries, governments etc.., and I've been involved with high end software development off and on for decades.
Recently, PC Points and Shoppers Optimum (and related) joined together. I decided to give their web site a few days to 'get working correctly' before signing my 2 cards up. I figured they probably didn't test heavy loads and probably would crash the first few days.
So today, a week later, I decided to sign up my 2 cards. Here was my experience:
It accepted my 1st card and told me good news, I had 4000 points. (exact numbers altered to make it easier to read)
It accepted my 2nd card and told me good news, I had -10,000 points balance, combined with the 30,000 points on my 2nd card gives me a balance of 20,000 points. They 'stole' 14,000 point!
So I went to their contact form to send in a query. I submitted my question and they had an error on the page that crashes the page. They report it as 'an unknown error'. But I develop software so I looked in the programmer console and I can see - their javascript is poorly written, they are trying to access an attribute 'left' on a null object. (They should use Typescript to catch these errors before they deploy.)
I went to phone - and their phone number disconnects as soon as you call. (Probably too many people calling and complaining and crashing their phone system.)
I went to their chat. It said it was connecting, then waiting for agent, then it disconnected.
They have no other means to contact them. I guess I'll wait another week.
But … I record this as the most poorly tested launch I have encountered - and I gave them a week to work out the bugs BEFORE I tried! At the risk of being rude. The other interesting thing is, have you noticed the shade of Red (pink?) they choose? It looks like bright reds do after they've been out in the sun for a few months or a year - faded by the UV light from the sun. The first few I thought were defective (that they really HAD faded in the sun), but then I realized they were all that shade, even the signs indoor. So to my mind, a very poor choice of colour.