Failure in Web Development and Deployment: Pizza Hut

I eat a lot of pizza. A WHOLE lot. At any given time in my apartment you can usually find at least 2 empty pizza boxes, quite often more (yes, I am a bachelor, and yes, I do work late hours). You can imagine my joy, as an Internet-obsessed credit card holder, when online ordering became common amongst my favorite pizza joints.

Papa Johns came first - great service, only a couple small hitches. Nothing exceptionally fancy or crazy about the UI, and it all seemed to work well. Eventually they added credit card processing, which made it all the better - even though they had autocomplete on for the CC field (big no-no). Not sure if it got fixed yet, but I made sure to report it once I noticed it.

Pizza Hut finally started offering online ordering in my area recently, and I enjoy their breadsticks, so I gave them a go. The look was slick - smooth AJAX interface, attractive UI. I placed my order, and waited. Pizza Hut is notoriously slow for delivery in our area, so the hour and 15 minute wait wasn't surprising. When it was delivered, however, I was presented with a conundrum - I filled out my check for the order price reported to me from the website, plus tip. Problem was, the bill the pizza guy brought to me was 5 bucks more - and was also missing my breadsticks. He says to call the manager and they'll hook me up, so I go ahead.

The manager informs me that online ordering NEVER works right - some items don't get on the order, and the price is always wrong.

They problem is, it has been since they launched it here, apparently.. Yet it is still live, without any warning that it doesn't work properly.

See a problem?

I sure do.

-WFL