Free Web Advice: Marvel

It’s been a few years since I wrote a “free web advice” piece, but I got really annoyed by the Marvel web site this morning.

About a year ago I subscribed to Marvel Unlimited – a plan that gave me access to all of Marvel’s digital comics for about £40 a year. This morning, I got an email from them saying that my subscription was about to be renewed but that my credit card had expired so I should log on to my account and update my credit card details.

I went to log on and found that I had forgotten my password. So I used the “forgotten password” link expecting to get an email containing a link I could use to reset my password. Instead, I got an email that contained both my username and my password in plain text. If Marvel are able to send my password to me, then they must be storing everyone’s password in a readable format. It’s astonishing that a company the size of Marvel don’t understand just what an incredibly stupid idea that is. And sending both my username and password in the same email just compounds their error.

So that’s strike one – storing plain text passwords.

Having recovered my password, I was able to log on and found the page where I could give them my credit card details. But it looked like this:

If you look closely, you’ll see that three fields – credit card type, expiration date and country – have captions, but no way to enter the required data. I’ve tried this page in both Firefox and Chrome and get the same results in both. I expect I’ll have to dig out a PC running Windows and try it on Internet Explorer as well.

I didn’t actually notice the missing fields at first. I just filled in the fields I could see and submitted the form. At that point I got an error pointing out what was missing. It’s interesting to note that the credit card type isn’t marked as required on the form (there’s no red asterisk next to it) but the error I got complained that it wasn’t filled it.

So that’s strikes two and three.
Strike two – always ensure that your web pages work on all the popular browsers.
Strike three – always mark your required data inputs accurately.

At that point I gave up trying to give money to Marvel. I poked around the site for a while to find a contact form. When I found it, it had the same problems as the credit card form – most of the input fields didn’t appear. Luckily, the contact page also gave an email address (that’s a really good idea that most web sites don’t follow). So I used that to report the problems. I’ll update this post if I get a response.

Interestingly, on my account page I was also given the option to upgrade my account. Apparently Marvel and I disagree on the meaning of the word “unlimited”. It’s not clear to me what extra benefits I could expect.

Update (four months later): Somehow, Marvel managed to renew my subscription, even though I never managed to update my credit card details. But bizarrely, this evening (over four months after writing to them) I got a reply from Marvel’s customer support. It said this:

Thank you for contacting Marvel’s Online Support services. We apologize for the delay in getting back to you. We see that you were able to renew your subscription, after contacting us. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Thanks again for contacting Marvel.

Four months to reply to a simple customer support message must be some kind of record.