August 23rd, 2007
Losing Subscribers
Future Publishing has recently launched BikeRadar, switching existing members from the likes of it’s MBUK forums.
It’s obviously been an interesting exercise in transferring user data from one forum to the other but fucking them both up.
I came up against the mother of login barriers when I tried to register at BikeRadar.
First of all I couldn’t create a BikeRadar account because apparently the username and email I chose are already in use. I get no hint that they’re in use from my MBUK account - I have to make that association myself because both forums happen to be from Future publishing.
Then I couldn’t remember my login to MBUK. No problem I think, I’ll do a password reset. So I go to the MBUK site and do the reset. That tells me it works and directs me to the BikeRadar forums. Yay. Fill in my details in the login box and here we gooooooh no.
I now get a login fail.
What is really stupid is that the username/password combo I’ve just reset doesn’t work on MBUK either. So now I can’t login to any of the Future forums.
Emailing the address (forums@bikeradar.com) they give for tech support comes back with “I’m on holiday”.
Well, if that’s as helpful as they can be, fuck ‘em.
If they want to screw up a perfectly usable user account they just lost this subscriber. I just emailed ‘em asking them to remove all my details from whatever Future databases I’m on.
A new, higher, login barrier that loses folk who’ve already climbed over your first one is good going.
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August 23rd, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Yeah, it’s a pile of shit. I had to put cp on the end of my username before it would let me in. I haven’t been back since launch day though.
August 23rd, 2007 at 4:36 pm
The MBUK and BR forums are unconnected, so resetting on the MBUK forum won’t do anything, and the reason for not being able to log into MBUK is because I switched everyone off.
I think the reason your username is ‘in use’ on BR is for some reason all the dicks on BR forum complained that their post counts were Zero when it launched, and now showing how much of their life they waste on the internet, so they took the numbers from the old forums and dumped them into the new forum, and I’m going to assume, created a bunch of “ghost” usernames.
You could always use a different username.
August 23rd, 2007 at 6:31 pm
“You could always use a different username.”
No I can’t. Don’t think I didn’t try that. I did. The registration form complained that the email address I supplied was already in use. So I’d need a different username and access to second email. Now that’s pretty trivial I admit, but there are so many places to go on the internet that if you make it even that difficult to register with your website, then , sorry, but you’ve lost me.
August 24th, 2007 at 7:54 am
I just used a different email address.
August 24th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Ahh different email, missed that.
It was daft of them to move the accounts half heartedly over to the new system.
September 29th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Matt,
A majority of the regulars have left BR and we have set up home on:
www.ukmb.org.uk
www.ukmb.net