Customer feedback

Dear eBookers.com,

Using your website, I was able to find exactly the flight I wanted: a return trip from London Gatwick to Austin, Texas in March 2005. However, I was unable to use the ebookers website to book the flight.

The reason why I couldn’t make my booking is down to some sloppily coded JavaScript validation. When I entered my year of birth in the format requested (YYYY), I was told that my year of birth was greater than the present year. I though that perhaps the on-screen instructions might have been inaccurate and that the year actually needed to be entered in a two digit format (YY) but this produced a message saying that the year provided must be greater than 1900.

Obviously I don’t want to give false personal information just to bypass some bad JavaScript. That still leaves me with a few options:

1) Turn off JavaScript (thereby running the risk of missing some genuinely useful form validation).

2) Make my booking via telephone (without the benefit of SSL).

3) Go to a different website.

I’m afraid option number three looks the simplest solution right now. Sorry :-(

For your information my browser is Safari 1.2.4 on OS X version 10.3.6.

Might I make the suggestion that any show-stopping form validation on your site be done on the server, rather than the client?

Regards,

Jeremy Keith

Saturday, December 11th, 2004 6:38pm

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