Zipcar UI: Ouch.

[prog]

Ouch. Zipcar has changed their interface and made it into crap.

Time was, the main reservation page was a set of parallel timelines, one for each car near you, with their reserved and unreserved times clearly blocked out. If there was an unreserved stretch that suited you, you clicked on it. Bing! Done.

Now you have to blindly enter pickup and return times first, with no other information, and then are told whether or not any cars meet your criteria. It's gone from picking things off a shelf to fishing. What were they thinking?!

Dude, I don't always know ahead of time when I want to take the car out! You tell me! Sometimes I plan my activities around when cars are avaialable, man. Gawrd.

After reading the FAQ, I see that you can apparently fake it by entering a days-long block of time in the first screen, getting some results, and then setting an option to show cars that conflict with your fake-requested time (probably all of them). This gives you some old-fashioned timelines, which then you can fine-tune down to what you really want. I hate that I have to do that now.

Yes, I am become one of those whiney bitches who has an aneurism upon a favorite website changing their look. I think I'm justified here, though.

Comments

[cnoocy]

Man do I ever agree. Send them mail so they know there's another person who doesn't like it. Maybe if they get enough complaints, they'll create an option to start out on the browsing page.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Done and done.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Augh! I got email from them about the changes, but I haven't gone to look yet. Sounds horrible :(

More complaints

[(Anonymous)]

I complained too. I hate it. I totally know what you mean about scheduling around when the cars you want are free.

Also: I told them it was too cutesy and I got a response from some tech person telling me that the folks building it also felt that way but they got their orders from marketing.

Blech.

Mary

Re: More complaints

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

I swear most marketing people are only good at selling themselves, not products. Every company that lets marketing people meddle with their product ends up with a shitty product and expensive ad campaigns.

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

Wow. Yes. Ugh. This is especially frustrating because it didn't really *need* an "update." The previous site was, in my opinion, a model of clean, functional, beautiful design. This is...not. The only improvement is the map option ("cars by location"), which I do like a lot.