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Comment by LPisGood | Hacker News Reader

What really grinds my gears is when the app is a _broken_ version of the website. I find the app really expects you to be on the happy path in a way the website does not.

Uhaul is a great example of this. The app looks a little better on mobile, but if you don’t make an account and search by reservation ID, all features related to things like extending a reservation time are nonfunctional. I have to go to the mobile site which looks bad and has poor navigation, trying to hijack my session and redirect me to the app, but at least it works.

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UHaul is the only app I've ever encountered that is less efficient than talking to a human being behind a counter. I have tried multiple times to pick up a reservation via the app and it has taken so long or failed at some point that I had to walk into the store anyway.

And it wants a photo of my license EVERY GODDAMN TIME. And no I can't store a photo of my license on my phone and just upload it - it has to take a photo directly. And boy does it not like to take photos in bright sunlight. You know, when I'm outside in a parking lot beside a white truck.

Their scheduling software is also blatantly broken. I understand the difficulty in monitoring a large distributed fleet, but their software loves to say trucks are unavailable where a quick phone call reveals they can accommodate the exact request.

That's funny, I've NEVER, not even once, encountered ANY app from any company, in any business, that is easier or more efficient than talking to a human being behind a counter. (So long as the human behind the counter is not also hamstrung by dreadful Indian crapware...)

Seriously, like most people, I have dozens of apps on my phone, forced on me by various needs. The ONLY one that makes anything easier or better is my password manager, which I have to have to safely keep and lookup the logins and passwords for all the damn apps...

Does that include waiting in line at an airport?

Yes! Airport gate workers can (and have, for me) frequently pull all kinds of strings and make all kinds of adjustments if you just ask (kindly).

The car rental desk at airports is one of the worst customer experiences I've ever seen. It's sometimes worse than what seems possible. It's sometimes bad in ways that don't even make sense.

I dunno. It's so hard to get a plain ordinary brewed coffee at Dunkin these days, the kind of coffee I used to get there back in the 1980s. On the app I could actually pick one out, in person I'm likely to have a teenager give me something else and then have a nervous breakdown when I point out the one thing I care about on their digital signs: "If we get your order wrong we'll re-do it"

I pretty much exclusively drink black coffee or plain espresso and I’ve yet to encounter any issues getting it.

I have seen lots of complaints and memes to this effect, but never has it been my lived experience. I’ve also never had an issue with politely saying “excuse me, I actually ordered X and I got Y by mistake.” No nervous breakdown at all

Dunkin' was taken over by the cheese mafia. Over half of their products now have cheese in them.

(Starbucks, too. They just discontinued the little protein box with hard-boiled eggs in favor of yet another one with cheese.)

I drifted away slowly.

I grew up in New Hampshire where it is almost as much as a religion as it in Massachusetts. We had one in Ithaca for a short time when I was in grad school which didn't last very long, I remember sitting there while a schizophrenic woman told me that the mob ran absolutely everything in New York, it was closed a long time, then a Thai restaurant moved in and then, decades later, a Dunkin moved in next door.

Early on I learned that the P&C supermarket made better donuts so when a dunkin opened across the street I wasn't so interested. And of course Dunkin used to be known for good coffee but now you can find good coffee anyhwhere except for a Starbucks and Collegetown Bagels.

> What really grinds my gears is when the app is a _broken_ version of the website. I find the app really expects you to be on the happy path in a way the website does not.

That's what the linked article is all about.

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