Every now and then, I come across a link to an article on the al.com site. Today, I found a link to an article on the RS-84 in the Birmingham News, and sure enough, when I clicked on it, it took me to al.com.
Or, more precisely, al.com’s “give us your demographic info” screen. I have a perhaps unreasoning hatred of attempts to forcibly collect demographic info on me (I won’t shop at Sports Authority, for instance, because they demand my phone number), so any time I see this it immediately kills my interest in reading anything on the site — no matter how interesting it might have been a moment before.
Well, I decided today that I really wanted to read the article, so I entered some bogus info into the form (throwing sand in the all-seeing eye, as they say) and submitted it. At which point I was told by another screen that I must enable cookies on my machine to proceed into the site.
Well, that didn’t sit too well with me.
So, I tried to send them a note via their “Contact Us” form. Which, naturally, didn’t work — even when I gave it all the contact information demanded (even the stuff which was ostensibly “optional”, according to the instructions on the page), it still told me that I hadn’t entered the required information. No matter what I entered, it would not accept the form.
al.com has some serious problems with their customer service philosophy.