The problem with having cable companies and telephone companies as ISPs is that they don’t have any real experience creating web sites, and so they contract the job out. My current ISP must have hired someone who was too terrible to work on healthcare.gov.

First off, they don’t understand the difference between a sales and marketing web site, designed to bring in new business, and a web sites for the people who are already customers.

Trying to establish an account was one of the worst experiences with a web site I have ever had.

First off, there is the assumed knowledge – I was expected to know that they only gave me the part of the account number that changes, and I should automatically insert the 6 digits at the beginning that all accounts have in common, 6 digits that will appear on the written bill, if I ever get a written bill. Then there was the Personal Identification Number that no one told me I had or what it was.

The other annoyance was their password evaluation app. I generated a 14 character password with upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters, and their ‘evaluator’ declared it too weak to use. So then I went back and re-entered the first 8 characters, and the ‘evaluator’ found it acceptable. There is no information as to what they consider acceptable in passwords, all you have is the colored bar graph.

I assume that these guys provide e-mail accounts, but I’m too busy to find out if they exist. I may get one later that I can give to annoying people because I certainly have no intention of looking at anything that goes there.