Message to GEICO: Usability First Please

Published: 6/15/2009 | Updated: 6/15/2009 | Discuss

Seriously, GEICO, how difficult is it to write a regex to accept a policy number exactly as you print it without resorting to the lame “do not include dashes”?

GEICO policy number field

Hang on, lemme help you: \d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{2}|\d{10}. Now you can go both ways.

This ain’t about the length of your database field. I couldn’t care less. It’s about improving usability.

You’re welcome. ;)

Comments

1 Carl | Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 6:10 AM

Your solution may not work because I'm guessing they've limited the input field to ten characters. If folks include dashes, then the user input won't fit into the textbox. :-)

2 Milan Negovan | Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 6:30 AM

Yep, hence my comment about the length of their database field. :)

It really doesn't matter to me what they do with the user input as long as they don't allow implementation details to leak. Which, in this case, they did.

3 Chris Lienert | Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 6:24 PM

Sites like this just scream "I'm a bad developer". Always all the more annoying for knowing that it could work properly with just a little effort.

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