There is good and then we have these examples ...

Many times I have posted about good technology products and services so that the Technology Plumbing readers could learn about them and take advantage of them as fits their needs. Today, I am going to turn that around and talk about the not so good things I have seen, experienced and heard about so the Technology Plumbing readers can learn about them and hopefully avoid them.

Now before I start, keep in mind that even products and services I mention may be just fine for you, depending on how you might use them, but there are probably better alternatives to the companies I will mention.

• The Comcast TV user interface is an example of a product from a company that thinks they can ignore user interface best practices just because it is for a TV vs. a website. It doesn't work that way as best practices are best practices no matter what the interface is to. The lack of search, low resolution (very few lines per page) and the absence of links dooms this interface to be replaced by another company or another platform.
  
  
• Websites that make it very easy to sign-up for a service but won't allow you to cancel the same service via the web (or make it too hard to find the cancel link) end up in my dog house. There are actually many sites that fail this test, but let me just name a few: Norton's Backup.com, McAfee's suite of products and Xsport Fitness lead my list, but there are many others. I of course would be glad to hear from vendors listed here if they can provide cancellation links and I will publish them.
  
  
• My last category is for sites that work in non-standard ways, especially if these non-standard ways can result in actions being taken that were not what the user was expecting. The winner in this category is United Airlines United.com for the way it handles dates when booking trips (I know that booking 2 weeks in advance saves you money, but that often business travel is more last minute). Most date functions default to the current date, but United defaults to 2 weeks out for the departure date and another week further out for the return date. This often means that one or both dates could be in the next month, which even if you catch the day to correct you can miss the month and end up booking your trip for the wrong dates. Given United and every other airlines proclivities for accessing fees if you need to change a trip this is not only a pain, but also a potentially costly pain.

Hopefully discussing these challenging products and services will allow my readers to avoid or at least be aware of these issues. I am sure my readers have a product or service that may also cause them some problems and look forward to hearing about them. I also hope the vendors who don't follow the generally accepted practices for user interaction will take this post as a wake-up call.