I bookmarked this story when you first wrote it as a reminder to go through it later in the year. I just tried to sign up, and you're not kidding about that UX tax. Not just that, but technical problems. Damn thing is 404'ing on jQuery and not showing validation errors. For some reason a + isn't allowed in an email. The password field is silently cropping length at 16 characters. I finally figure it out and submit the final page, and I get a generic "TreasuryDirect is unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and ask that you try again later." Went through the whole process again in a different browser, just in case, and same result.
I don't know if the annual limit is by calendar year, but I was hoping to get it done before EOY. I'll try again tomorrow, and see if I can contact them if it's still happening.
One of those attempt apparently succeeded because I received an email with an account number. Logging in with that drops me at one of the worst UX decisions I think I've witnessed. The only way to enter the password is through a javascript virtual keyboard. Their help page claims this is for security, but that means you can't paste in from a password manager. Luckily it's only a readonly attribute on the password box that you can easily delete in browser dev tools.
But holy crap that was bad. Much worse than I was expecting. Got in and ordered.
Thanks, Tim, for letting me know this exists, and warning me what was to come.
It is hilariously bad! Glad you figured it out. I accidentally entered the wrong bank account number and it led to me being unable to deposit money for months while I submitted a paper form to change my bank account number.
If it wasn't a .gov site, I'd swear it was a scam. Asking for bank account and routing information during account creation seems like a big red flag.
Of course the first thing I did after I logged in the first time was use my browser's back button, which logged me out completely and had to mess with the password again. The first time I did use their virtual keyboard to click in my random 16 characters, but I wasn't about to do it a second time.
I've been a mostly web developer for two decades, and I'm having a hard time thinking of ways I could have made the process worse.
I bookmarked this story when you first wrote it as a reminder to go through it later in the year. I just tried to sign up, and you're not kidding about that UX tax. Not just that, but technical problems. Damn thing is 404'ing on jQuery and not showing validation errors. For some reason a + isn't allowed in an email. The password field is silently cropping length at 16 characters. I finally figure it out and submit the final page, and I get a generic "TreasuryDirect is unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and ask that you try again later." Went through the whole process again in a different browser, just in case, and same result.
I don't know if the annual limit is by calendar year, but I was hoping to get it done before EOY. I'll try again tomorrow, and see if I can contact them if it's still happening.
One of those attempt apparently succeeded because I received an email with an account number. Logging in with that drops me at one of the worst UX decisions I think I've witnessed. The only way to enter the password is through a javascript virtual keyboard. Their help page claims this is for security, but that means you can't paste in from a password manager. Luckily it's only a readonly attribute on the password box that you can easily delete in browser dev tools.
But holy crap that was bad. Much worse than I was expecting. Got in and ordered.
Thanks, Tim, for letting me know this exists, and warning me what was to come.
It is hilariously bad! Glad you figured it out. I accidentally entered the wrong bank account number and it led to me being unable to deposit money for months while I submitted a paper form to change my bank account number.
If it wasn't a .gov site, I'd swear it was a scam. Asking for bank account and routing information during account creation seems like a big red flag.
Of course the first thing I did after I logged in the first time was use my browser's back button, which logged me out completely and had to mess with the password again. The first time I did use their virtual keyboard to click in my random 16 characters, but I wasn't about to do it a second time.
I've been a mostly web developer for two decades, and I'm having a hard time thinking of ways I could have made the process worse.