I dunno why, but often keep wondering why are most of the Indian sites so sucky. I mean they have a business here and internet in India is getting bigger and so is the online consumer/customer base and why can't they concentrate more on their websites and make them of better? Take for example the Airtel site www.airtel.in. The other day, i was searching for airtel offices in Chennai at the Airtel site. Their "Reach Airtel" page (get there by Main page "Contact us" > "Customer service centers" mobile > "Airtel Relationship Centre" and choose Tamilnadu from the "Select your circle" dropdown and hit go") contains every conceivable (well, nearly) city in TN EXCEPT Chennai. There's not even a 'Madras' in the list :-( I had to call up the customer care to get the list of offices near where i stay.
But the subject of the post oughta be given due consideration. So, here's the background. I wanted to setup my online account with airtel so that i can pay my bills online without having to go to an airtel office (I never do it on time, even this month i'm beyond my due date). I visited the airtel site and clicked on the "Register" link. I was taken to the registration form, which was thankfully over https. And whatsoever form i give my mobile number in, i wasn't able to successfully get through the registration, and i'd always get the error message 'Invalid mobile number' or something of that sort. Besides, on the login form, the 3rd row second column in the registration table (it looks like a table) was off by a column, which was suggestive of some "colspan" goof up and so i was interested in taking a look at the page source code. Though i dint end up validating my guess, i happened to see a good amount of javascript at the page, which contained lotsa dead code and an "alert" every other line. All the alerts in the main code path were commented out. I was even able to see that it was developed my Satyam Computer Services Ltd on Oct-10-2006. Seeing debug grade code running on the site, i decided not to get registered at the site, and that i'll pay from my bank account directly, or even better yet, go to some airtel office.
The present, the past and the ts.
The Airtel.in new account registration form
ts thought so at 9:58 AM Sunday, April 27, 2008 | Permalink |5 comments
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)