If you’ve lived in Tucson any time in the past few years, you understand exactly what I mean. Well, maybe you do, unless you’re the fine folks in charge of TEP e-bill. If they knew it sucked so badly, they’d fix it, right?
Before I get too far into this, let me give the rest of you a little background information. TEP stands for Tucson Electric Power, a UniSource Energy Company. Now, there are a few things to complain about as far as TEP is concerned, but I’m just going to focus on the lovely TEP e-bill feature. (So I won’t mention that they give you very few convenient ways to pay your electric bill.) TEP e-bill utilizes MyCheckFree.com, though you’d be hard-pressed to find this information anywhere on TEP’s website.
Now that everyone’s caught up, I shall begin my Open Letter to TEP/UniSource.
Dear TEP,
We’re not going to talk about all the reasons why your website sucks, but we are going to talk about why TEP e-bill sucks. If you fix nothing else, I beg you, please fix this!
Now, I understand that MyCheckFree is a third-party application. And I’m sure it comes with certain limitations as far as implementation goes. (Not to mention I have my own issues with MyCheckFree.com as it is.) But you’ve got to be kidding me!
I’m an experienced web user. I work for a usability firm. And I still was somehow unable to pay my bill by the due date several times this year because of how jacked up this process is. I thought I’d paid the bill, went through what I thought was the whole process. Next thing I know, I’m getting a shut off notice. What the hell?
Well, I think I have it figured out now, but it still trips me up every damn time. Did I mention it pisses me off, too, every damn time? Let me take you through my user experience:
TEP's e-bill "feature" is at first deceptively easy.
1. I’ve just logged into the Account Manager (which is surprisingly a fairly painless process). I want to view and pay my bill online. Oh, yay! There’s a button that says I can do just that. I’m a happy user.
2. Except… when I click on it, the link doesn’t take me straight to my current bill with an option to pay. Was it so wrong of me to expect that to happen? What did I get instead? I get this:
I can't even find my current bill!
I can’t even be sure I’m on the same site anymore, really. Everything’s changed, and TEP isn’t even in the URL any more. Disruptive user interface changes aside, this page is certainly not what I was asking for when I clicked on “View/Pay Bill”. I see a list of bills… and I’m not exactly sure where my current month’s bill is; this only goes through February 2009. (To be quite honest, this listing of bills is different EVERY time I try to “View/Pay” my bill.) Now… how do I get to my bill to pay it?
3. Luckily, my husband has been through this torture enough times before to let me know the next step, saving me who knows how much time in trial and error. So, I click on “e-bills”. I get a similar, but slightly different looking list of bills. Indeed, my current bill is there now.
4. Now I want to view my bill, just to be sure. Oops, I’m using Safari. Guess I’ll have to switch over to FireFox start the whole process over again. (My husband had the great privilege of figuring this one out. Must have been trial and error to figure out he needed to use a different browser.)
Button order is more important than you think!
5. At this point, I’m more than ready to pay and get out of here. So I click on the link to pay my bill. This screen seems straight-forward enough. The trick here, though, is that the buttons at the bottom, they’re kinda in the wrong order. The most likely action should be right-most. Is this a usability nit-pick? Sure. But it’s not a little point. Like I said, I work in the usability industry; I know these sorts of things. I know that most sites do them wrong. But what do I always, instinctively click on? Yeah, “cancel”. Oy.
6. Once I’m passed that hurdle, there’s another. But this looks like an I’m done screen. If I wasn’t done, there’d be a button or something telling me to “Confirm”. That’s what other sites do. Yes, this is the point at which I failed to pay my bill on at least three separate occasions. I thought I was done. I closed my browser. Oops. Here comes the late notice!
- Whatever you do, don’t press the big red button!
7. I think I’ve finally learned that there’s one more step. I don’t think you people at TEP (or maybe this is CheckFree’s fault) realize just how invisible that big red button is. Seriously. I was looking for a confirm, continue, or something similar button. I’m expecting buttons to look the same throughout my process so I don’t get confused. Why the hell would I think to click on a big red one that says “CheckFree” – you know, if I even saw it?
8. Once I found the button and clicked it, I think I’m finally done. Now, if only there were a way to get back to the TEP home page…
TEP, please fix e-bill. Please.
Sincerely,
Sara Onstine
If you’re a “fan” of TEP in anyway, please comment below in the hopes that TEP will actually listen to their customers.
Edited to add: Here’s TEP’s friendly and helpful response!
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Tags: customer service fail, user experience, ux, website
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