C.Jun 4, 2025

Just ran into another case of this...

Reputable online seller of <things> in Canada, medium-sized, one of maybe half a dozen options at the national level.

Go to buy <object> for several hundred dollars. Fine.

Whether I try to create an account, or checkout as guest, it wants my phone number. Fine, credit card companies want that as an additional line of defence against fraud.

However... before you can continue to the next step, you have to "click to receive a verification code" that you need to enter to complete the form.

And it must be trying to send that code by SMS/text, because I'm not getting it. My phone is a landline; there's no way to text it. They don't try email or sending the code by robot-voice to the phone number, either.

How Do I Capitalism?

#HowDoICapitalism #capitalism #retail #clueless #SMS #text #verification #VerificationCode

Show threadC.

> Unfortunately, our verification process only supports sending codes via text
> message, and we do not currently offer voice call or email options for verification.
>
> If you are unable to receive text messages on your landline, we recommend
> visiting one of our physical stores to complete your purchase.

I'm in Saskatchewan. The nearest store is in Vancouver, more than 1700km away.

Thanks, canadacomputers.com ! Great job!

#CanadaComputers #Canada #retail #computers #SaleFail #fail

Jun 5, 2025 at 9:00pmWeb
Show threadBunnyMamaJun 5, 2025

@cazabon

Do you think if you called the nice people at the Vancouver store they could place the order on your behalf and then send the order directly to you?

Or… Vancouver may have a “back door” phone number that would connect you to a real person that might really want to make a sale.

Show threadC.Jun 5, 2025

@BunnyMama

No, they probably wouldn't. Their merchant agreement probably doesn't allow for credit cards taken by phone, as that's a higher-risk transaction (and their systems probably aren't set up for it).

I ordered from someone else. It's just dumb that companies don't consider things like this when setting up their systems and processes.

Show threadBunnyMamaJun 5, 2025

@cazabon

Life is crazy :(

Show threadEdwin G. Jun 6, 2025

@cazabon Good grief. They do not like capitalism clearly.

I can’t even come up with a way to SMS to a landline… maybe using VoIP, but that’s also tricky… 😥

Show threadC.Jun 6, 2025

@EdwinG

I've run into this with a number of businesses. I'm also with you that as far as I know, there's no way to text a "regular" landline.

The stupid part of this is that this problem is both solvable *and* detectable in advance. I've written integrations with the big communications providers, that you use to let your application/website send texts - there is a mostly-reliable way to query "can this number receive texts?" before you try to send a text, and they generally also give you the option to send a robot-voice message, so you can fall back to that.

Without being too much Old Man Yells At Cloud, I'm pretty much in agreement with others that say that these kinds of fails are the result of young / inexperienced designers or developers not considering anything outside of their personal experience - most of them have never used a phone that couldn't send and receive texts. They don't even contemplate the possibility of a user of their system not being in exactly the same circumstances as themselves. This kind of oversight should be caught by project management, but ... 🤷

#OldManYellsAtCloud #phone #landline #ancient #WebDev #designer #comms #SMS #API #management

Show threadEdwin G. Jun 6, 2025

@cazabon
> there is a mostly-reliable way to query "can this number receive texts?"

For my personal knowledge, how would one do that?

Show threadC.Jun 6, 2025

@EdwinG

IIRC, it's part of the comms providers' APIs, the same API you use to send the texts or whatever other comms services you use.

It's sometimes a call that just tells you "yes" or "no" (more accurately "probably" or "no"), but other services return more information about the "line type" - mobile, landline, special services, toll-free, paging, etc.

Whatever API you use to send the texts should also be capable of returning an error code if the number you supply is known not to be textable.

I haven't used Azure's Communications Services API, but as an example their "Number Lookup Features" includes "Number capability check":
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/communication-services/concepts/numbers/number-lookup-concept#number-lookup-features

Most providers should offer an equivalent; it's a pretty basic requirement of making SMS useful.

Number Lookup API concepts in Azure Communication Services - An Azure Communication Services concept document

Learn about Communication Services Number Lookup API concepts.

Show threadEdwin G. Jun 6, 2025
@cazabon Interesting… in that case, why don’t they‼