

Oracle takes $240M for a website, and then fails to build the website - wslh
http://www.smashcompany.com/business/oracle-takes-240-million-for-a-website-and-then-fails-to-build-the-website

======
lutusp
The headline is very misleading. If Oracle had just not built the Website,
defaulted on the contract, the legal issues would be much simpler. But Oracle
agreed to build a Website, then did a terrible job of it. Meanwhile, the state
of Oregon believed they were about to go online, so they spent a lot of money
on advertising to alert and prepare the public. Then people tried to use the
site and couldn't. Taking the money and running would have been less trouble
for everyone involved.

There are any number of similar horror stories on the Web, many of them
involving governmental agencies with which we must interact. The US post
office Web site is perfectly terrible, and there's no one home. One example --
they have an autopay scheme, one of those features where you give your credit
card number and your periodic bills are automatically paid. But someone forgot
to include a location for the CVV code in the credit card form, the credit
card issuers won't process transactions without the code, as a result of which
the autopay scheme doesn't work. Each post office customer has to find this
out for himself. And reporting the bug is pointless -- I reported it five
years ago and not one character in the Web page has changed.

Some companies are so incompetent at Web site building that they've simply
given up and require you to call them on the telephone to transact business or
pay a bill. I must periodically update my credit card information, so I have a
hot list of companies that I have an autopay arrangement with. First I log on
to their Web sites -- about 2/3 of the companies accept an online update, the
remaining 1/3 either have a nonfunctional Website that they think is working
(like the USPS), or they just don't have a way to update payment information
online, so they list a phone number to call.

When you see a terribly designed Website, you naturally enough wonder how
secure the overall operation is, given the incompetence reflected in the front
end -- which is by far the easiest part.

~~~
_delirium
The magnitude of Oracle's incompetence here is really surprising to me, though
maybe it shouldn't be. I don't see any real excuse here. Yes, I can believe
that in any Enterprise procurement project (which is almost all of what Oracle
does), there are conflicting and changing requirements, multiple bosses, the
usual mess, and government projects are no exception. But that's not an excuse
for building a website that literally doesn't work on a basic technical level.
It should respond to requests, display some stuff, and accept what people
submit through forms, even if nothing else works. A small-time consulting shop
can build a website meeting those requirements!

The client or requirements mess can be a legitimate excuse for why your
website doesn't really serve the intended use-case, or is confusing, or fails
to integrate with an important component, etc., etc. But delivering something
that doesn't even run?!

