Well, feh.

[kyrielle]

I have ordered in the past from The Vermont Country Store - usually about once a year. They sell maple sugar, and maple sugar candy, and a whole lot of other things. Honestly, it was the candy that first drew me in, but they have some neat stuff.

Well, this year, I can't log into my account. It still exists. When I tell it I forgot my password, it asks me the expected question, accepts my answer, and returns a password I recognize as one I would use (it emails it to me). It contains an exclamation mark (which would be correct). When I type it in, however, the form tells me:

Error: You entered invalid characters in the previous form. For Web security reasons, the following characters are not allowed:

<,>,{,},!,&&,;,||,=

To correct this error, return to the form and re-enter your message without those characters.

But if I enter my password without the exclamation mark, then it's not valid and I get that error. So, I went ahead and placed my order unattached to my account (they let you do this, you don't have to have an account!). And I send them an email asking, you know, can they reset my password please?

They reply:

I am sorry I cannot change your password.  You are the only one who can do that for security reasons.

Understandable, but not useful since I can't log in to do that. I should note I am emailing them from the same email that is on that account - and the email address is the username. I send back a request of, in that case can they do anything, such as delete my account completely so that I can re-create it with a legal password? (I mean, the last time I made an order tied to that account has to be about a year ago, I think.)

They reply:

We appreciate you taking the time to contact us regarding the inability to change your password. You can go in as a guest or try to set up a new account for you to use.

But I can't create one using the same email I already used because it tells me that's in use. So I'd have to give another email address, and then all my receipts, shipping notices, etc., would route through that email, not the one I was getting them on and want to get them on.

I've sent another email but I don't really expect this to be resolved now, and while I could bounce emails around, I'm really not willing to do so in order to fix their technical screwup (because that password was allowed when I created it - for pity's sake, edit it, delete the account, do something!).

In that same email, I asked them where the heck my most recent order is. I got the notice that it had shipped a week ago today. With no tracking info. It's still not here. I'd like to actually get the order. I don't know if I'd've had tracking info if I tied it to my account and could get IN to my account, but I surely hope I would. In any case, I don't have it now and neither do I have my order.

I've got a serious case of customer dissatisfaction.

Comments

[mandydax.livejournal.com]

Someone in worldofwarcraft was compaining of the same sort of thing. They could log into the game fine, but the forums and account management on the site won't let them use an !. They can only change the password through the site, which of course, they cannot log into. It took them about 4 days of pestering via emails and in-game GM requests to get it set to something that they could use on the site. Of course, they were upset because they used the ! in the password to make it more secure.

It's ironic that you use the ! for extra security, and they say you can no longer do that for security reasons. :P

It reminds me of this:

(The alt text was "Her daughter is named Help I'm trapped in a driver's license factory.") XD

[kyrielle]

Yeah. I don't really mind that they've had to secure it that way, I assume there's some kind of issue easier avoided that way than by recoding to make sure you don't pull something off. I mind that they won't reset my password or delete the account or do SOMETHING to let me use the site, with an account that uses my email addy.

And that comic strip is hysterical.