This happened because... (a conversation with customer support)

I have an account with a credit card attached that offers loyalty points, but since I don't really do much purchasing using this card I've not really bothered with it - until I got a points statement recently and realised that over time the points can add up, and they also can disappear if you don't use them.

So I decided to try and find my logon account details for these rewards and see what my points could get me.

Not much, really, considering how much I'd spent using this card over the last two years.

Oh well, I thought I'd have a look anyway, especially since the site also offered a Points/Pay system that seems to allow you to pay the remainder when you don't have enough points and there was small home theatre system I thought looked nice that I could get with my points and a little cash.

The Points/Pay option was indicated by the following text just above the Add to Cart button on EVERY product page:

"Don't have enough points? You can use your credit card to pay for the remainder."

So I click on the "Add to Cart" button.

But it didn't work. There was no option for Points/Pay in the cart, even though I have been told on the previous page that I can do this.

Writing to the support email for the site, I got back the following reply:

"Unfortunately you need to have 70 percent of the products points to be able to use the Points/Pay option."

To which I returned the following:

"Fair enough, there is a condition that wasn't met, however there was NO indication WHAT this condition was. One page says I can do something and the next tells me I can't - with no indications why not. I could not find any information on the site on the 70% points rule - it was not in the FAQ or the Terms and Conditions.

BTW, as a user I was looking for a way of setting a points + pay level such as that which is used on my bank's rewards site and assumed that it may be offered once you got to the checkout. They provide this; You don't.

Good user interface design helps your customers by providing timely useful information. In this case the your Rewards site has failed."

In the end they failed to provide relevant information - telling me I can do something and then stopping me AFTER I'd made a purchase decision does not give me a good purchasing experience on this site, and also takes away from normally good relationship with the issuer of the card.

In the end it has meant that I have wasted about 30 mins of my time trying to shop on this site, and now my complaint has aded to the card issuer's support costs - all through bad user interaction task design that really shouldn't have gone live.