Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Zippity Doo Dah: Adventures with the USPS

The wife and I are moving in about a week, and one of the tasks I've drawn is to change our address. Being a fairly busy person like you, I turn to the Interweb for help.

Do I need to say this? Bad idea.

I can't even begin to tell you how bad the user experience is on the USPS site. While some screen grabs might begin to help explain the inanity of the whole thing, I'll spare you those and simply say that you can't proceed until you select either a coupon to print out from one of their "business partners" and/or select a magazine to subscribe to. (Insert your own "Well, if only they offered Juggs" joke here.)

But here's the topper. Thinking I'll just go old school and walk over to the post office, I'm pretty sure *they* won't be able to tell me what my new zip code will be, so I figure I'll look it up before I go. And here's what I find when looking up my new zip:


Thankfully -- or should I say surprisingly -- "zip code" isn't a required field.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

well cut my legs and call me shorty. That stinks. And to think such a basic institution would have been running like a well oiled machine by now...