Thorntons Chocolates - not so sweet

I've been a member of the Thorntons Chocolates website for many years now. It's a UK based site, and I joined whilst living there - but since I've moved back to Australia, I've found it incredibly useful for sending presents to family members still there.

This week though, I've requested that my account be cancelled, and it's all down to terrible usability.

I receive the odd special offer from Thorntons, but as Christmas has gotten closer the number of emails I receive from them has started to increase. Instead of one a month or so, it now seems as if every couple of days a new email appears. That made me think carefully about how often I've ordered from specials, and in turn that made me realise that in fact I never have. My usage profile is pretty simple; on my mums or sisters birthday I order chocs and send them, or alternatively order flowers from another site. Specials have no effect on me.

Therefore I decided to unsubscribe. And this is where it all went wrong...

As a user, there is nothing I love more than a simple unsubscribe process. Click here to unsubscribe, confirm your address, and wham that's done. It shows respect for the user.

Equally, there is nothing more frustrating than the opposite. Thorntons has a link to unsubscribe in their email, but when you follow it you simply end up at the front door of their website. Great.

So, I log in. Now I'm being forced to trawl through the site and try and figure out how to unsubscribe. Wonderful. I start by going to my account, and straight away I see an opt in question. It reads:

"If you do not wish to receive future e-mail communications about special offers and products from Thorntons please untick this box"

So do I tick it, or untick it? Reading it twice I figured unticking was the right thing to do. Only problem was, it was already unticked...! Sooo, what next?

There were no other options relating to email, but eventually I spotted a list of other menu options for my Account area. I could change my address, change my payment method, review and set alerts for birthdays, change my pasword - but absolutely nothing relating to email offers.

By now I'm getting a little steamed. When I received the email I was a happy customer who simply wanted to stop receiving special offer emails all the time, but by now I'm seriously looking to kill my account entirely. Only there's no option for that, either...

In final desperation I go back to the original email to see if maybe I clicked the wrong link. Nope. However, I do spot another link relating to unsubscribing. It reads:

"or click here to email us. (This may take up to 14 days)"

So, I can email them and then wait two weeks for a response. that's the power of the Internet working for you... Needless to say, I did email and this time I definitely asked for my account to be removed.

As a (hopefully now former) customer of Thorntons, this entire process left me feeling extremely under-valued. I was left with no choice but to think that Thorntons didn't care what I wanted, it only wanted it to make it as difficult as humanly possible for me to stop receiving their spam.

I'd love to think that Thorntons would realise how easily this loss could have been avoided - but then again, I'd love to believe in Santa, too.

*UPDATE: Six days later I still haven't received any form of response, and I've received two more unwanted emails. Thanks Thorntons...

Website usability: Hyundai

Recently, I've had the pleasure (or not) of shopping for a new car. Our family seems to be forever growing larger, and the hassle of travelling everywhere in two vehicles is finally starting to wear a little too much.

I'm a big believer in reviews, so I checked out several and armed with those and a good idea of my budget, we quickly settled on the right car for us - the Hyundai iMax. This isn't a review of that vehicle, but instead a moan about that age old problem of 'heavy websites'.

Whilst we had a good idea of the vehicle we wanted, the colour was something we still had to agree on - so we hit www.hyundai.com.au. We did this in the evening, on a couch, on a relatively small laptop with a relatively slow wireless connection.

First problem; we saw the home page, we saw a large slow-loading Flash movie, and - well, not much else. We had to wait. And wait.

And wait....

Finally, 'Rodger' appears and starts telling us he's our guide to finding the right vehicle for us. He gets a few words out, but then stutters to a stop. And we wait...

Now, I (and MANY other people, from my testing experience) absolutely detest movies that load up and play without my choice or control - especially when I can't easily turn them off. Fortunately for us, Rodger had a minuscule - and I mean minuscule - 'off' switch, top right of the screen. Once we saw it he stopped stuttering and explaining the menu to us - but unfortunately didn't stop pointing at the menu's and explaining. The off controlled the volume, but not the movie. Therefore the page continued to slowly load and choke the laptop, whilst we struggle to see where to start. Great.

I won't go through the entire site experience, to be honest it wasn't horrendous but like the home page the rest of the site is heavy with visuals, animation and 'pomp'. It was in effect a very slow and painful process, not helped by the fact that the one decision we needed to make (colour) couldn't be made as the colour name we were given by a salesman doesn't appear.

Now I know I'm not the same as every other customer out there, but for me the rich, vibrant, deeply emersive experience I want is in the showroom, where I can touch and smell the car. On the website I want facts, pictures yes, and maybe even movies - but at my choice. I don't want long boring useless movies frustrating me before I get anywhere near the car page I want, and I definitely don't want Rodger explaining that I need to click on 'Latest offers' if I want to see what offers are available - I'm pretty sure I could have worked that bit out for myself.

For my money this is a clear case of getting the experience online completely wrong, based purely on brand and market research.

Unless of course I'm nothing like the average Hyundai purchaser...