More bad design decisions

Sep 22, 2026 Last reply: 4 hours ago 3 Replies

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Don Y 6 hours ago

IVR for bill pay.

"Your confirmation number is eff six bee pee ess three oh four"

Um, was that 'eff' or 'ess'? 'bee' or 'gee'? Maybe I should have that replayed (though that won't change the clarity of the synthetic voice).

And, why do you need *8* characters? And, alphanumerics thus dramatically increasing the range of possible values? You know my account number, the date the payment was made, the amount of the payment, etc. Shouldn't you need just a few digits to validate my claim that I actually *paid* it, if I dispute that?

Why can some firms adequately address this with a 4 *digit* code (having the same "security" as the 4 digit PINs we rely on so readily)?

Or, "your verification code is 'armadillo' -- not to be confused with 'octopus', 'kangaroo', 'banana', 'hockey', 'tom', 'seven', etc."

Some of our municipal accounts rattle off a 12 digit confirmation code in a second or two. "Huh? Could you repeat that? And, again? Just once more, please?" There aren't that many people in the

*country* to justify such a long code!

Ditto places like Amazon: every item number begins with B. So, why is it present? And, thereafter, why B vs. 8, 0 vs O, etc.? Surely you can restrict your item number generator to creating unambiguous identifiers? My passPHRASES are likely orders of magnitude more unique and far less tedious to recall or record.

Gotta wonder what criteria these folks are using for these "solutions"!

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Theo 5 hours ago

Amazon was a bookstore. ASINs started out as ISBNs, and indeed ISBNs are still the identifiers for books. When they started shipping non-book items, they added ASINs starting with a B to de-conflict with ISBNs which are numeric (plus maybe a terminal X as the check-digit)

Numbers on the product starting with an X are fulfillment IDs. They're for tracking items as they pass through the warehouses. There's no public way to convert them back to the ASIN.

LPN prefixes are for returned items that typically show up on Amazon Resale.

None of these are for humans, they're for automated systems. Staff are not typing them, there's a barcode for them to scan instead. You should never need to read one over the phone.

Theo

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Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson 5 hours ago

Well, it was probably at some point considered normal to read ISBNs over the phone for custom orders, before the internet took over as a communi- cation medium.

Of course, not at Amazon.

Best wishes, and happy book orders!

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Don Y 4 hours ago

The phone gripe related to "confirmation codes" from IVR systems. Identifiers that are conveyed by spoken word.

But, the potential ambiguity extends to amazon identifiers, CoAs, service tags, etc. There is no one constraining these people to use certain sets of characters; they are free to choose any subset or alternative form that *seems* appropriate.

To someone who thinks about how they are LIKELY going to be used.

By the entities that are likely to use them.

Obviously, they expect humans to be part of that class as they don't simply display barcodes for item identifiers!

You may need (want!) to type one in that you had previously recorded on a slip of paper. Note that Amazon deliberately recognizes such identifiers as search criteria so they have obviously anticipated this usage else they could have simply returned "item not found".

Ditto eBay (though their identifiers are purely numeric).

While I can differentiate *my* 'B' from *my* '8', and my 'O' from my '0', and a '1' from an 'L' (always written in uppercase for obvious reasons), seeing the difference on the screen isn't always that obvious.

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