Though I didn’t see it listed in Urban Dictionary, perhaps “Whirlpool” is slang for a website that sucks…
I just went through the hellish process of registering my new appliances on Whirlpool’s website. What a fiasco!
It wouldn’t let me complete the product registration process because it apparently didn’t like Chrome… I mean, it did let me spend a bunch of time filling out info… it just wouldn’t let me submit it… I’ll assume it was something specific to my computer. After all, I can’t imagine a company wouldn’t fully test their site on Chrome, given the 40% browser market share it has these days. After switching to IE, I was able to finish the registration process… but it definitely left with a few annoyances… Maybe it’s just an IT-guy thing, but this stuff bugs me…
First, even though I was signed into a registered account, I was still prompted for my name, address, and email address each time… Even if people don’t add their address when setting up their account, the site at least should be able to pre-fill the name and address, right? Even without that, when I click the “Register another product” link when I’m done filling out that info, there’s no excuse for those fields to all be blank again… That’s just laziness, unless Whirlpool is concerned that my name and location are changing in between mouse-clicks…
Second, the purchase date requires a four-digit year. Are these guys seriously concerned about someone attempting to register something from 1913?!?!? Or maybe they think my dishwasher will still be chugging right along in 3013… Whichever the case, it was annoying…
Lastly, and this was the big one, I bought my appliance at Home Depot… Was that an option in the dropdown? No. Hmm… Ok… But let’s see what choices were available:
Let me break this down for you… Home Depot has over 2000 locations in every state of the US and is also in Canada, Mexico, China, etc… They aren’t on the list, but some place called “Cowboy Maloney” is?!?!? Granted, they are up to 11 whole locations now… but I still think Home Depot would’ve been a better use of that slot… I don’t have the numbers to look at, but my gut tells me that “Nebraska Furniture” and “Western Auto” aren’t exactly making the same volume of appliance sales as Home Depot, either… But who knows…
And while we’re on the topic of that list, I noticed “Gift” is listed. Since Whirlpool obviously understands that people may be receiving these appliances as a gift, why does the product registration form require the purchase price and date in order to register an appliance? Shouldn’t it be optional? Or are people just expected to be all, “Hey, thanks for that amazing new stove-top. It must have cost a fortune! You are so generous! Speaking of which… If you had to put a dollar amount on that generosity, what would it be? Oh, and I need to know the date you were generous, too, please…. And that was in 2013…?” Oh, and what’s the difference between “Gift” and “Other – Gift”?
I just don’t get it…