In your life what experience, product, service is just horrible? What is frustrating? What do you wish someone did better?
Some ideas: The DMV, Internet Speeds/Connectivity, ISP Service, etc.
Ask HN: Things that suck?
1–10 of 102 posts
Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?
#2I completely agree with your DMV comment. I'd love it for someone to take a good look at DMVs across the country, and see what works and what doesn't. Can things be digitized that haven't? Can processes be split based on time (efficient, quick tasks vs. longer discussions)?
I fear going to the DMV, but why should this be?
Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?
#3There are so many! Most of them are actually very unsexy too in industries most people don't think about. I think one of the best product development strategies for technologists and founders is to get jobs in companies that have little to do with programming and see what kind of fundamental problems there are that could be solved with technology.
Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?
#4I completely agree with your DMV comment. I'd love it for someone to take a good look at DMVs across the country, and see what works and what doesn't. Can things be digitized that haven't? Can processes be split based on time (efficient, quick tasks vs. longer discussions)? I fear going to the DMV, but why should this be?
I mostly fear the resentful attitude and poor treatment I receive from employees there.
I'm rarely treated like a person, and I'm not sure I've ever seen a DMV employee smile.
The DMV where I currently live, however, has eliminated wait times to basically nil, and that's the complaint I hear most often.
Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?
#5Having to connect to Facebook to get the user relationships. I would love something like Mozilla Persona but where you specify what connections to share.
Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?
#6Skype. Everyone has it and it's so bad. Random freezes of the conversation or the window, call drops (Teamspeak has almost none), can't disable alerts for file transfers in a group chat, the search doesn't work properly (can't find words that are there) in a long chat log. I could go on.
I have used many chat clients in my life, but I have never seen such a bad implementation before. It is a mystery to me why everyone uses it, thus forcing me to use it too.
Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?
#7I completely agree with your DMV comment. I'd love it for someone to take a good look at DMVs across the country, and see what works and what doesn't. Can things be digitized that haven't? Can processes be split based on time (efficient, quick tasks vs. longer discussions)? I fear going to the DMV, but why should this be?
I mostly fear the resentful attitude and poor treatment I receive from employees there. I'm rarely treated like a person, and I'm not sure I've ever seen a DMV employee smile. The DMV where I currently live, however, has eliminated wait times to basically nil, and that's the complaint I hear most often.
I recently moved to a new state for the first time, and I have a complaint about the DMV here: they move too quick. Well, actually the real complaint is the amount of paperwork. It was about five minutes from the time I got the paperwork to get a new driver's license to the time I was called up. I just didn't have the paperwork done. So I was standing at the counter filling it out, slowing down those behind me.
The biggest thing that would help, in my experience, is designing a DMV website that accurately points you to the right paperwork and lets you at least fill it out online or print it out at home to fill out on your own time. Having to go there and do paperwork just takes too much time.
The wait is bad. But even if there's no wait, the paperwork makes sure there will be some delay.
Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?
#8Driving. I want to be able to look out the windows or work or whatever I want to do.
Power. I'm so tired of my devices running out of juice. Road trips and festivals etc become much less fun when I have to continually worry about how to charge my phone or laptop.
Craigslist: They shut down services like padmapper but continue to give us a totally shit interface to work with. Finding a place to live, in particular, is a horrific experience.
Vehicle maintenance: I don't want to think about when to change my oil, or when I can take it to the shop, or anything. I'd like to just pay someone who comes to my house and deals with it as-needed.
Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?
#9Driving. I want to be able to look out the windows or work or whatever I want to do.
Power. I'm so tired of my devices running out of juice. Road trips and festivals etc become much less fun when I have to continually worry about how to charge my phone or laptop.
Craigslist: They shut down services like padmapper but continue to give us a totally shit interface to work with. Finding a place to live, in particular, is a horrific experience.
Vehicle maintenance: I don't want to think about when to change my oil, or when I can take it to the shop, or anything. I'd like to just pay someone who comes to my house and deals with it as-needed.
Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?
#10I've never had a problem at the DMV in CA when I lived there. It was one of my better experiences with the government. The USPS is great too. Even my experience with the IRS has been great - they saved me many thousands of dollars by pointing out that I put some income under the wrong category.
My current frustration is cablecom.ch here where I live in Switzerland. They have two completely different billing systems for their cable tv and for their internet. I didn't realize it but you have to pay for cable tv even if you don't have a television in order to get internet (125 mbit down, 10mbit up). Because I thought that they were billing me incorrectly I fought with them until it almost went to collections before someone explained the situation.
I'm about to move to Zurich where I'll have gigabit internet through swisscom (telecom), so screw cablecom and their screwy billing system.