Get far enough and you might find out if you won a prize



  • Today, I was given a gift certificate that included a little coupon saying that I could win a prize by entering a code on it on their web site. Fine, let’s give it a shot — you never know, I might just win myself grand prizes I’ll really need, like a bar of chocolate, a coffee machine or a ladies’ handbag.

    :wtf: 1: When I start typing my name, my browser offers to fill out the form for me, so I let it do that. For some reason, it puts my phone number into the field marked “TUSSENV.” which, for the non-Dutch-speakers in the audience, stands for tussenvoegsel — that is, one or more words between given name and family name, like de, van, van de, etc. which are properly part of the family name. Inspecting the element turns up :wtf: No. 2 (see below), and digging deeper gives the probable reason for the phone number being entered:

    <input type="text" name="firstname" placeholder="VOORNAAM" value="">
    <input type="text" name="prefix" placeholder="TUSSENV." value="">
    <input type="text" name="surname" placeholder="ACHTERNAAM" value="">
    

    The browser sees “prefix” and thinks it’s for a phone number. And why are these name fields in English when nearly every value for id and class on the page is in Dutch?

    :wtf: No. 2: This is the source for the main page of that site:

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd"> 
    <html>
    <head>
        <title>VVV Cadeaubonnen</title>
    	 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    </head>    		
    
    <frameset rows="*" cols="*" framespacing="0" frameborder="0" border="0">
    
    	<frame name="content" src="https://e.vvvcadeaubonnen.nl/3/4/1557/1/tla1XVU-HseAWsjCUr_MkSb7oHZCU0sbNLT_hdj1DHjRIhSlOcWVBWM2WnLG6tfF" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="auto" noresize>
    		
    <noframes>
    	<body>
    		<p>U browser ondersteunt geen frames.</p>
    
            <ul>
            	<li><a href="https://e.vvvcadeaubonnen.nl/3/4/1557/1/tla1XVU-HseAWsjCUr_MkSb7oHZCU0sbNLT_hdj1DHjRIhSlOcWVBWM2WnLG6tfF">https://e.vvvcadeaubonnen.nl/3/4/1557/1/tla1XVU-HseAWsjCUr_MkSb7oHZCU0sbNLT_hdj1DHjRIhSlOcWVBWM2WnLG6tfF</a>
            </ul>
    	</body></noframes>
    
    </frameset>
    </html>    
    

    Call me newfangled, but didn’t frames go out of fashion like, 15 years ago? (And let’s not mention the grammatical error “U browser”, which should be “Uw browser”, in the noframes bit.)

    :wtf: No. 3: Trying to submit the form, the button doesn’t work. No idea why, but for some reason it got disabled added to its code without the button changing appearance in any way. Reloading the page once or twice fixed it, but don’t ask me why either.

    :wtf: No. 4: I finally get through, read the terms and conditions (which have a few more typos), and decide to go ahead with this. Filling in a little more information asked of me, I get to the page that I suppose should show me the prize I’ve won, or a message saying I didn’t win anything. But it just shows a repeating slide show of very small pictures of all the possible prizes, which never seems to stop. So I hit Reload to try again.

    :wtf: No. 5: That brings me back to the front page (no surprise given that it’s in a frame), so I’ll have to enter my coupon’s code and my name again. Doing that, the site tells me I’ve already entered that code before and can’t try it again.

    What the hell? Do they think that allowing me to check the same code more than once might have me think I've won the same prize more than once too?

    :wtf: No. 6: Sometime after writing to the only email address I could find for this site, to complain about :wtf:s 4 and 5 above, I seem to get a reply. But no, it’s actually an automated message telling me I hadn’t entered all the information, with a link to try again. This takes me directly to the page of :wtf: 4, where I re-enter the info, and I get to the slideshow. This time, though, it stops after a few seconds and then tells me I’ve not won anything.

    This largely leaves me wondering: Why couldn’t this work first time?

    On the positive side, the field in which I had to enter my postcode to participate in the draw to win the car wasn’t limited to six characters (Dutch postcodes consisting of four digits, a space, and two letters, but most website builders don’t seem to know this).



  • I like the simple and understandable caption for the link in the <noframes> bit.



  • @hungrier It gets even better if you try going to that URL directly by copying and pasting it.


  • Java Dev

    @Gurth said in Get far enough and you might find out if you won a prize:

    Dutch postcodes consisting of four digits, a space, and two letters

    And a space in between. It always annoys me when there's no room for the space in between and I have to backup and remove the space.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @Gurth said in Get far enough and you might find out if you won a prize:

    @hungrier It gets even better if you try going to that URL directly by copying and pasting it.

    Eh? What's better?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Tsaukpaetra said in Get far enough and you might find out if you won a prize:

    What's better?

    Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.

    It's best so it's definitely better.



  • @Gurth

    I've "fixed" countless forms for myself by removing "disabled" from a button.


  • FoxDev

    TIL Conan the Barbarian is a @boomzilla alt


  • kills Dumbledore

    @RaceProUK I always pictured him more like Cohen


  • :belt_onion:

    @xaade said in Get far enough and you might find out if you won a prize:

    @Gurth

    I've "fixed" countless forms for myself by removing "disabled" from a button.

    A lot of forms set crap to disabled to prevent early submission but then don't account for browsers' auto-populate filling in all the values.

    Those forms are garbage.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @darkmatter Also the ones that tell you your email and confirm email don't match because there's been no keystroke in either box


  • :belt_onion:

    @darkmatter second quandary: auto-populate not firing all the onchange events... that would be more of a browser bug to me I think.


  • Java Dev

    @Jaloopa said in Get far enough and you might find out if you won a prize:

    @RaceProUK I always pictured him more like Cohen



  • @Tsaukpaetra said in Get far enough and you might find out if you won a prize:

    Eh? What's better?

    You realize you are lucky you didn't win because the grand prize is a Volkswagen :trollface:



  • @xaade said in Get far enough and you might find out if you won a prize:

    I've "fixed" countless forms for myself by removing "disabled" from a button.

    That was the very first thing I tried, and it still didn’t load the next page when clicked. After reloading the whole page did fix the problem, I gave up trying to figure out why removing disabled didn’t seem to do anything..



  • @TimeBandit said in Get far enough and you might find out if you won a prize:

    You realize you are lucky you didn't win because the grand prize is a Volkswagen :trollface:

    You can always sell it as scrap metal.


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