Great Minds Think Alike

I was all ready to go on a rant today about the UNC Athletics website. Not a huge rant, but a minor one.

Before I did, though, I went to catch up on Trina's blog, and found THIS post. Apparently, it's been a bad day or so in the ether!

Anyway, so my rant.

The UNC Athletics site is actually pretty good. It's easy to navigate, and reasonably easy to find information on schedules, results, summer camps, tickets, etc.

I went there today to see about getting tickets to the NCAA regionals (baseball). Carolina is hosting, and I didn't get tickets last year, so really wanted them this year. I got there and found out (actually I suspected this all along) that I could not buy single game tickets, so I selected what I needed for the whole series, then went to the order screen to debate if I actually wanted to do it.

Like most online ticketing sites, they have a timer, 5 minutes in this case, after which the tickets will be released. So, I think and debate and think some more, and with about a minute and a half left, click on "Purchase". I then have to create an account; OK, no biggie.

Except the time it takes to create the account counts against my 5 minutes!!!! THAT'S not right, at least not without making it very clear somewhere! But if a screen has two buttons, one labeled "Release Tickets" and one labeled "Purchase Tickets", I'm by golly going to assume that clicking Purchase Tickets is going to, oh, I don't know, earmark the tickets for purchase, perhaps?

Sheesh. I hate bad websites.