Inherent stupidity

I'm feeling a little ranty this evening.... bear with me....
but I need to get this
Off. My. Chest.


I work for an insurance local insurance firm, yes? And one of the products we offer is a very affordable, very comprehensive travel insurance plan. Now, we also offer different ways to purchase this. You can call us, you can go online, or you can visit a branch. Obviously, if you're not visiting us, we'll be asking you for your credit card data too.

The thing about the online community is that SOME of us are pretty stupid. I find it ironic because the online community is supposed to be tech-savvy, educated, and should be able to read right?

Ho ho ho. Wrong-o.

Even before you get to our application page, there's a big red box in red, with the following text in bold : "The Online Application of Travel Insurance is compatible with Internet Explorer 6.0 and above only. Use of other browsers may cause a loss of some functionality."

Does that seem clear? Yes? No? I thought it was pretty straight forward.

Leaving aside the fact that my wonderful IT saw fit to utlise only IE, I get - on average - about 20 people each week asking why their transaction can't go through. By now, when we get that question, the first thing we ask is Are you on IE? Obviously, they're not.

Some people can't even tell what their browser is. *small sigh* Some people say But I'm using the latest version of Firefox / Safari / Mozilla! Still cannot! Why is your system so lousy? Hello? Was it IE in the first place? Can you not read? One woman even said "Yah, I saw that; I thought you guys were joking."

WTF? It's our company website, it's for an online purchase i.e. involving money. Why on earth would we joke?

By the way, I understand that the second sentence hedges, but I blame my company people. We seem to hire a lot of stupids. *shrugs* THAT is something I'm used to.


Bah, I keep lowering my expectations when it comes to people but I keep getting disappointed!