Confused.com Confuses Me

It’s that time of year again when I comparison-shop for car insurance, and every time I come across a new set of reasons to hate the developers at Confused.com. How do you confuse me? Let me count the ways.

No means yes

I was planning to enumerate my concerns to them directly, via their contact form, but when I went to do so I spotted this bit of genius, which clinched it and made me write a blog post instead:

Animated GIF showing how clicking on "No" on Confused.com's contact form checks the "Yes" box.
Clicking the word “Yes” means “Yes”. Clicking the word “No” means “Yes” as well.

Turns out that there’s a bit of the old sloppy-paste going on there:

<input type="radio" value="Yes" id="ContactByPhoneYes" name="contactByPhone" />
<label for="ContactByPhoneYes" class="label">Yes</label>
<input type="radio" value="No" id="ContactByPhoneNo" name="contactByPhone" />
<label for="ContactByPhoneYes" class="label">No</label>

I guess nobody had the “consent talk” with Confused.com?

That’s not my name!

Error message "Please enter a name between 2 and 30 letters long..." when Dan enters "Q" as his surname.
Somebody needs to brush up on their falsehoods programmers believe about names.

Honestly, I’m used to my unusual name causing trouble by now and I know how to work around it in the way that breaks the fewest systems (I can even usually get airline tickets without too much difficulty nowadays). But these kinds of (arbitrary) restrictions must frustrate folks like Janice Keihanaikukauakahihulihe’ekahaunaele.

I guess their developers didn’t realise that this blog post was parody?

Also, that’s not my title!

This one, though, pisses me off:

Animation showing title selector with options "Mr", "Mrs", "Miss", and "More...". Clicking "More..." reveals three more: "Ms", "Dr (Male)" and "Dr (Female)"
As everybody knows, there are only six titles, and two of them are “Dr”.

This is a perfect example of why your forms should ask for what you actually want to know, not for what you think people want to tell you. Just ask!

  1. If you want to know my gender, ask for my gender! (I’m a man, by the way.)
    I don’t understand why you want to know – after all, it’s been illegal since 2012 to risk-assess/price car insurance differently on the grounds of gender – but maybe you’ve got a valid reason. Which hopefully you’ll tell me in a tooltip. Like you’re using it as a (terrible checksum) when you check my driving license details, that’s fine!
  2. If you want to know my title, ask for my title! (I prefer not to use one, but if you must use one I’d prefer Mx.)
    This ought to be an optional field, of course, and ideally you want a free text input or else you’ll always have missed somebody (Lord, Reverend, Prince, Wing Commander…). It’s in your interests because I’m totally going to pick at random otherwise. Today I’m a Ms.

Consistency? Never heard of it.

It’s not a big thing, but if you come up with a user interface paradigm like “clicking More… shows more buttons”, you ought to stick to it.

Animation of marital statuses: clicking "More..." shows a dropdown instead of more buttons.
Maybe their internal style guide says “a More… button with three additional options should use buttons, but four additional options should be a drop-down”. But it seems more-likely that they just don’t have one.

Again, I’m not sure exactly what all of this data is used for, nor why there’s a need to differentiate between married couples and civil partnerships, but let’s just assume this is all necessary and legitimate and just ask ourselves: why are we using drop-downs now for “More…”? We were using buttons just a second ago!

"How many cars are at your home?" has a "More..." box that shows more buttons.
This was just crying out for a type-in field. But I guess the same developer who did the “Title” question did this one too, and wanted to show off the fancy “more buttons” control they’d written. (Imaginary style guide be damned!)

What’s my occupation again?

There’s so much to unpack in the “occupation” part of the form that I’m not even sure where to begin. Let’s just pick out a few things:

What type of student are you? List of options, many of which intersect.
I never answered a question this hard even in the exams I did when I was a student. Why do we care where students live… except if they’re postgrads? If I’m a mature student studying a postgraduate course in medicine while living at home with my parents… which of the five possible options should I pick? And, again: what difference could it conceivably make?

The student thing is just the beginning, though. You can declare up to two jobs, but if the first one is “house person/parent” you can’t have a second one. If you’re self-employed, that has to be your first job even though the guidance says that the one you spend most time on must be the first one (this kind of thing infuriated me when I used to spend 60% of my work time employed, 20% self-employed, and 20% studying).

I’m not saying it’s easy to make a form like this. I know from experience that it’s not. I am saying that Confused.com make it look a lot harder than it is.

Tooltip reading "Please choose the employment status that reflects the majority of the work you do. For example if you are a house person and have a part time job of 5 hours a week, you should select 'House person/parent' as your primary job.
Well that clears everything up. Also, I think you mean “houseperson”, unless you’re referring to somebody who is half-house/half-person, like some kind of architectural werewolf.

What do you mean, you live with your partner?

At a glance, this sounds like a “poly world problem”, but hear me out:

Relationship to policy holder: Living together (couple) results in the error "The driver's marital status must be Living With Partner" if their relationship to the proposer is Living Together (Couple)".
What you’re seeing here is a reference-identity error. I can’t possibly be living together with somebody as a couple if their marital status isn’t “Living With Partner”.

I put Ruth‘s martial status as married, because she’s married to JTA. But then when it asked how she was related to me, it wouldn’t accept “Living together (couple)”.

Relationship to proposer question with 'spouse' option but not 'living with partner'.
If I put Ruth as the primary policyholder (proposer) though, I don’t even get the option of “living together (couple)” to describe her relationship with me. ‘Cos it’s physically impossible to have a partner and be married, right?

Even if you don’t think it’s odd that they hide “living with partner” button as an option to describe a married person’s relationship to somebody other than their spouse… you’ve still got to agree that it’s a little bit odd that they don’t hide the “spouse” button. In other words, this user interface is more-okay with you having multiple spouses than it is with you having a spouse and an unmarried partner!

And of course this isn’t just about polyamorous folks: there are perfectly “normal” reasons that a person might end up confused by this interface, too. For example a separated (but not yet divorced) couple, one of whom has a new partner (it’s not even inconceivable that such a pair might share custody of a car). Also interesting is the fact that the form doesn’t care about the gender of your spouse (it doesn’t ask for “husband” or “wife”) but does care about the gender of your parent, child, or sibling. What gives?

Half a dozen easy fixes. Go for it, Confused.com.

Given that their entire marketing plan for most of the last two decades has been that they reduce customer confusion, Confused.com’s user interface leaves a lot to be desired. As I’ve mentioned before – and speaking as a web developer that’s been in the game for longer than their company has – it’s not necessarily easy to get this kind of thing right. But you can improve a form like this, a little at a time. And every little win counts for something: a more-satisfied returning customer, perhaps, or a new word-of-mouth recommendation.

Or you can just let it languish and continue to have the kind of form that people mock on the public Internet.

It’ll be a year until I expect to comparison-shop for car insurance again: let’s see how they get on, shall we?

Update (21 January 2021): Confused.com Respond!

I didn’t expect to receive any response to this post: most organisations don’t when I call-out the problems with their websites (not least because I’m more than a little bit sarcastic about it!). I never heard back from the Digital Climate Strike folks, for example, when I pointed out that their website was a great example of exactly the kind of problem they were protesting. But Confused.com passed on my thoughts to Product Manager Gareth who took a look at them and gave me a £20 Amazon gift card by way of thanks. Nice one, Confused.com!

× × × × × × × × ×

Hello, Friendly Insurance Salesman!

Hello, friendly insurance salesman I spoke to earlier today! I’ve been expecting you. Also: sorry.

JTA, Ruth, and Dan at JTA and Ruth's wedding.
Here are the people you just sold car insurance to.

I’ve been expecting you because you seemed so keen to finish your shift and search for me and, with my name, I’m pretty easy to find. I knew that you planned to search for me because after I caused so much trouble for your computer systems then, well, I probably deserved it.

I’m sorry that I have such an awkward name and that you had to make your computer system work around it. At least it handled it better than Equifax’s did, and you were far friendlier about it than the Passport Office were. It’s an awkward name, yes, but mostly only because programmers are short-sighted when it comes to names. And I say that as a programmer.

I’m sorry that my unusual relationship structure made your computer system do a double-take. My partner Ruth can’t have a husband as well, can she not? Try telling her that! Don’t feel bad: you’re not even the first person this last fortnight to get confused by our uncommon arrangement, and even where my name doesn’t break computer systems, my relationship status does: even the census can’t cope. I’m sure people must assume we’re insanely radical but we’re honestly pretty boring: just like any other family, just with more love. Don’t believe me? We have spreadsheets. You can’t get more boring than that.

I’m sorry that the email address I gave you looked like a typo and you felt you had to check it thrice. It wasn’t, it’s just that I give a different email address to every company I deal with.

I’m sorry that what should have been a click-click-done exercise came down to a live chat session and then a phone call. I don’t mean to be more work for people.

John points to Arthur, our car
“Which car are we insuring, little fella’?” // “THE RED ONE!”

But thank you for being friendly. And useful. And generally awesome. I expected a painful process, perhaps because that’s what I’d had from my last insurer. You, on the other hand (and your Live Chat colleague who I spoke to beforehand) were fantastic. Somehow you were more-pleasant, more-competent, and represent better value than the insurer we’re coming from, so thank you. And that’s the real reason that I hope you’ll follow through on the suggestion that you search for me by name: because you deserve a pat on the back.

So thanks. But yeah: sorry.

× ×

Thoughts Of Tuesday

Cycling home last night I realised once again quite what a happy bunny I am. I enjoy my job, for which I am paid very reasonably. I live in a town that I love, and I’m surrounded by good friends. And, above all else, I have the love of a beautiful woman whom I love and adore with all my heart. When I got home, I told Kit, Bryn and Paul (who were already at my house, playing Super Monkey Ball 2) quite what a happy little creature I was. They didn’t seem particularly impressed.

Kit continues to get better at Super Monkey Ball 2. He kicked my arse at Monkey Target 2, in which the aim is to land gliders on small targets at sea, at least as much as I beat him. Might need to get some Super Monkey Practice in.

Andy’s latest journal entry is weird as ever. Slightly trippy, but inspirational nonetheless. I have a thought for a similar tale of my own, published to this site, but with an interesting twist upon the typical “serial story” theme. If I can be arsed I’ll make it happen. No promises. I have lots of other stuff to be getting on with.

This morning, picked up our insurance report from Daton Systems, who I’ve given a link because they didn’t charge me for the privilege. This report claims that the laptop is a write-off, which lets us stop the insurance company bugging us about having claimed it as such and bought a new one without any evidence.

Better get some work done, now, I guess.

Late

Running late for work. Was supposed to get up and take laptop to Daton as part of an insurance scam, but I’m still at home after having woken up late. Still, Claire’ll be at work until about 1am today… in Newtown… so there’s no benefit to me coming home early. I’ll work late.

Updated Troma Night at long last – this web site chronicles the things I get up to on termtime Saturday nights.

Suppose I oughta go get this laptop sorted and put my paycheque into the bank, then get my lazy layabout arse to work.