11 ms·

This sounds exactly like my kids school district. They send an email telling you you have a "secure message" and you need to log in to see it. So you try to sig

This sounds exactly like my kids school district. They send an email telling you you have a "secure message" and you need to log in to see it. So you try to sign up to see the message, but can't because you don't have the password. So you try calling them and they say they will reply via email. What they mean is that they will send you a secure message about your inability to receive secure messages. So you call again and they transfer you to a number that is only open between 9am and 4pm on weekdays. So you call back on Monday and, because this is the start of term, can't get through, like, at all, ever. So eventually on Wednesday you get through and they transfer you again, only this time you manage to invoke XKCD 806 and get a real person who knows how to "reset" the password you never set in the first place. So you finally manage to log in to the secure messaging portal and look at the email. Oh, it's a PDF download. You download the PDF and see it's a physical letter that has been scanned in to the system manually (seriously!). The letter? The reason you went to all this trouble? It's a welcome letter to the new "secure messaging" platform, with instructions about how to reset your password...

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
Banking, health insurance, education I see a trend!
- pas 5y ago
  It's not like Google or Amazon is better in customer friendliness. (Amazon at least has a working customer service where they get you a refund even if they have absolutely no idea wtf happened to your precious order.)
  - plankers 5y ago
    even when you keep making new accounts and "losing" the packages!
yarky 5y ago
Next time just fill out the "forgot your password" form.
- alasdair_ 5y ago
  The one that asks for an email address and then tells you that email address isn’t in the system despite the same system sending you email? Yeah, I did. Many times.
  - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
    Did you try all caps? Similar adjustments? Can't count how many times this kind of thing has worked.
    - monkeybutton 5y ago
      No. No more. No more guessing, no more trouble shooting or debugging. I don't care and OP probably has more important things to do too. Sure, I can do it. Exceptionally well too! But, they aren't paying me, and users aren't shouldn't be their free, outsourced QA team.
    - plorg 5y ago
      The password reset field accepts a certain character but the login form sanitizes it differently so it won't be accepted. Or even trying to set a password with that character results in an "HTTP 50x error something went horribly wrong".
thereticent 5y ago
It's hard to recover from the memories of wasted time, effort, and frustration when the schools when distance-learning only in 2020. "We will start using Google Classroom for all communication, class materials, lesson videos, live meetings, and grades" Sure. Good. Come grade time: "Your child is missing a lot of work. It's all due in a week." Kid, you have to do x,y,z missing assignments listed on Google Classroom. "Your child has already completed x." It was marked missing on Google Classroom. "Please refer to Infinite Campus to see which assignments are missing." Ok...I signed up for Infinite Campus, and I don't see anything. "Did you use the user/pass we automatically created for each parent?" What? No. "Sir, we sent out this information weeks ago." Search...search...manual search...I don't see it on Google Classroom. "Oh, we sent it through ClassDojo." --- This is very simplified. Google Classroom required teacher-provided codes to join "classes" for each subject, provided through...school email! School email is an unused morass for Google Classroom notification emails for every action your child or their teacher makes. Get a teacher message on ClassDojo? Sorry, can't tell if it was a mass message or directed at you, so you have to clarify whether it applies to your kid given their IEP. Got two parents using Dojo? Sorry, can't see if the other parent has already responded to a teacher message. Completed an assignment on Classroom but didn't click "Turn in"? Missing. Can't find where to enter answers? Oops, your child knows to use ImagineMathExploreLinkConnect to get to that material. Completed on that fourth-party platform, but didn't go back to Classroom to click "Turn in?" Missing. Triple checked everything but still a bunch of missing assignments in Infinite Campus? Teacher is behind on grading, and there's no way to know that, either from Infinite Campus or Google Classroom, but it was in the class newsletter we emailed to your child. Maybe not all employers, but at least mine does not realize quite how much further parents fell behind that year than those without school-age kids, on balance. When schools excitedly announce a new platform for learning anything, I want to punch myself in the face.
- corey_moncure 5y ago
  I hear you man. For me the most frustrating part about all of this is each platform comes with its own algorithmic placement system that has to learn your kid's level. My eldest kid has high-IQ exceptional needs, and by the time the algorithms would learn her level and place her accurately where she would make some progress, the classroom had already moved on to the next platform. I think I counted five different platforms for math in the past year, sometimes with multiple different logins on the same platform. It's a travesty and her growth has come to a complete halt since I stopped teaching her and gave her back to the school. My heart breaks but what can you do. As a kindergartener she was factorizing numbers in the bathtub and now as a third grader "Xtra Math" is asking her to identify whether a shape is a triangle or a circle.

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago

Banking, health insurance, education I see a trend!

pas 5y ago
It's not like Google or Amazon is better in customer friendliness. (Amazon at least has a working customer service where they get you a refund even if they have absolutely no idea wtf happened to your precious order.)
- plankers 5y ago
  even when you keep making new accounts and "losing" the packages!

yarky 5y ago

Next time just fill out the "forgot your password" form.

alasdair_ 5y ago
The one that asks for an email address and then tells you that email address isn’t in the system despite the same system sending you email? Yeah, I did. Many times.
- aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
  Did you try all caps? Similar adjustments? Can't count how many times this kind of thing has worked.
  - monkeybutton 5y ago
    No. No more. No more guessing, no more trouble shooting or debugging. I don't care and OP probably has more important things to do too. Sure, I can do it. Exceptionally well too! But, they aren't paying me, and users aren't shouldn't be their free, outsourced QA team.
  - plorg 5y ago
    The password reset field accepts a certain character but the login form sanitizes it differently so it won't be accepted. Or even trying to set a password with that character results in an "HTTP 50x error something went horribly wrong".

thereticent 5y ago

It's hard to recover from the memories of wasted time, effort, and frustration when the schools when distance-learning only in 2020. "We will start using Google Classroom for all communication, class materials, lesson videos, live meetings, and grades" Sure. Good. Come grade time: "Your child is missing a lot of work. It's all due in a week." Kid, you have to do x,y,z missing assignments listed on Google Classroom. "Your child has already completed x." It was marked missing on Google Classroom. "Please refer to Infinite Campus to see which assignments are missing." Ok...I signed up for Infinite Campus, and I don't see anything. "Did you use the user/pass we automatically created for each parent?" What? No. "Sir, we sent out this information weeks ago." Search...search...manual search...I don't see it on Google Classroom. "Oh, we sent it through ClassDojo." --- This is very simplified. Google Classroom required teacher-provided codes to join "classes" for each subject, provided through...school email! School email is an unused morass for Google Classroom notification emails for every action your child or their teacher makes. Get a teacher message on ClassDojo? Sorry, can't tell if it was a mass message or directed at you, so you have to clarify whether it applies to your kid given their IEP. Got two parents using Dojo? Sorry, can't see if the other parent has already responded to a teacher message. Completed an assignment on Classroom but didn't click "Turn in"? Missing. Can't find where to enter answers? Oops, your child knows to use ImagineMathExploreLinkConnect to get to that material. Completed on that fourth-party platform, but didn't go back to Classroom to click "Turn in?" Missing. Triple checked everything but still a bunch of missing assignments in Infinite Campus? Teacher is behind on grading, and there's no way to know that, either from Infinite Campus or Google Classroom, but it was in the class newsletter we emailed to your child. Maybe not all employers, but at least mine does not realize quite how much further parents fell behind that year than those without school-age kids, on balance. When schools excitedly announce a new platform for learning anything, I want to punch myself in the face.

corey_moncure 5y ago
I hear you man. For me the most frustrating part about all of this is each platform comes with its own algorithmic placement system that has to learn your kid's level. My eldest kid has high-IQ exceptional needs, and by the time the algorithms would learn her level and place her accurately where she would make some progress, the classroom had already moved on to the next platform. I think I counted five different platforms for math in the past year, sometimes with multiple different logins on the same platform. It's a travesty and her growth has come to a complete halt since I stopped teaching her and gave her back to the school. My heart breaks but what can you do. As a kindergartener she was factorizing numbers in the bathtub and now as a third grader "Xtra Math" is asking her to identify whether a shape is a triangle or a circle.