update: teva programmers finally get a clue

At last, at last, my dad got his gift certificate from Teva. It turned out that there was a glitch in the forms they use for processing—for some reason, the state of the shipping address was showing up as the state for the billing address in the receipt. Which means that, if the state is not your billing state (such as for a gift sent to Michigan from Connecticut), the credit card company will not process the transaction. As it shouldn’t.

With a lot of perseverance on the customer service rep Gina L.‘s part, and her willingness to tell the programmers that they had made a mistake (and telling them again and again until they fixed it—programmers never believe that laypeople know what the hell they’re talking about, do they? Even though I told Gina what to tell them, it still took a while to sink in. The fact that it just didn’t work should have been the tip-off, but programmers, particularly asp jockies, are often among the most arrogrant frecks on the planet.)

What’s really weird is nobody was ever notified of a failed transaction—not the customer (me), not the service reps—nobody. So I bet they lost thousands in sales over the 12 days the problem persisted. All those gift certificates that should have been sent ... on all the carts we manage, every single one notifies us if there is a failed transaction and, here’s a concept, even provides an error report so we know if it’s the customer who screwed up (like a mis-typed number) or if we did (like forgetting a piece of info that needs to be submitted). And we test test test before deploying a new system.

I would say that all’s well that ends well, but I’ll wait and see if my dad can successfully use his gift certificate on http://www.teva.com before I decide it’s ok. They did send him an apology for screwing up our father’s day present.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/03/06 at 05:00 PM
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