E-commerce "fail" (warning: bitch-fest)

If you'd told me when I first got on the web in my tender youth (well, almost) that in the year 2009 many commercial web sites would still be clunky and frustrating, I would have been exceedingly skeptical. After fifteen years of development? No way.

And yet, this is what I often find. For example I just found myself having to buy a couple of ebooks from something called Powell's Books, and, well, good lord.

OK, so the publisher, a small one, had chosen to use the Powell's site instead of just doing it themselves with Paypal or with Lulu. I don't see why, but OK, maybe it'll work.

First impression is OK, despite me having to go back and forth between the two sites to add the three e-books I want. Because they use not only credit cards, but also Paypal, so it should be dead easy.

Well, then, click the "check out with Paypal" button.
Message: to use paypal, check out with our normal system, and then select paypal.

So it turns out that I have to wade through four pages of registration, information, and surveys in order to make the order.
Oooh, but wait, it turns out that I have ordered two copies of one of the books (why would anybody want to pay for two "copies" of an e-book?). I'm pretty sure that was not what the shopping cart showed, but no matter, I'll have to go back and correct it. And then of course I have to log in again, and fill out part of the forms. (Oooh, I forgot, I had to register a username/login also, first of all.)

So I finally get through, make the order. I get a confirmation email with a download link. I click on download for the first book, and what do I get? A 1.4kb ".ascm" file. I have no clue what that is, and neither does my Mac. It's way too small to be an e-book, obviously. So I've mailed them, hoping a conscious being is on post to help me. And that's where things stand now.

And by the way, it seems the publisher has two identical "order" pages, where one of them was supposed to be a "contact" page. So there's no way to contact them.

I really doubt these people have studied Jakob Nielsen, or even just the market leaders.

Update: So at least Powell support was very quick indeed, cudos. It turns out the tiny files work with "Adobe Digital Editions", which as you might guess is a super-paranoid digital rights protection scheme which makes sure that if you want to lend a copy to a friend, you have to print it or buy a hard copy.

... I was wrong: it does not even allow you to print, not these books anyway. Wow.

... As I might have predicted, the book won't even allow me to copy text so I can get my Mac to make text-to-speech files from it. Man, I hate rampant paranoia.

And of course the Adobe DE interface is non-standard, so none of the usual, standard options work. Like Kay's Powertools.