As someone who reasonably regularly has to claim expenses for business travel it never ceases to amaze me quite how inept some companies (for whom people like me make up a large percentage of their business) are at the simplest of things.
I regularly book cars with Avis. This is done through their website directly, and paid in advance. I can't, however, claim this payment at the time as it's a "pre-paid voucher" rather than "car hire"
Later, this "pre-paid voucher" settles the car hire account and, in theory, I should get an Invoice (which they can't give me at the time, but 24 hours after the hire)
(for brevity I'm going to resist the temptation of cataloguing everything else they got wrong this time, and concentrate solely on the ineptitude of their website)
Retrieving an Invoice.
This should be simple, login to avis.co.uk, select Download Invoice, right... er, no.
Under my Past Rentals, the following is shown. Note, I've not redacted anything, it's genuinely shown with no reference number or drop-off location!
You would expect that clicking "Download Invoice" would, perhaps take you to a PDF of an Invoice... no.
(actually Download Rental Agreement doesn't work either)
Ok, 'Requesting' an Invoice
Clicking that download link takes you, instead, to this page;
This is a very crudely embedded link into their internal backend system at https://edocs1.avis-billing.com/asa/index.html (take the /asa off of that and you'll be presented with what I can only assume is the login page for their internal billing system)
This requires one of three things;
- Rental Agreement Number
- Customer (Wizard) Number
- Reservation Number
None of which are on the previous list that linked me to this page
Also, "Wizard" is clearly a reference to an internal thing, there is no excuse for it to be used in public instructions.
Rental Agreement Number
Using my Rental Agreement Number (which is indeed on the paperwork I had for the car) yields no results... even if you follow the instructions (yes, instructions) provided;
The customer should never have to worry about the nuances of your internal prefixes... but ok, lets try with an E in front..
Nope, that doesn't work either.
I've also tried the reservation number (which it insists on reformatting, but still gives no results) and my Wizard number, which also doesn't work.
How not to do UX
Basically, this should be simple ... click "Download Invoice" get a PDF. I've built systems that do exactly that, and run online stores that all have a "Download PDF Invoice" link... and I have a budget of about 50p to do it.
How one of the world's largest car hire companies can't get this right I have no idea...
... and no Invoice either.