Now and then, a lousy visitor experience sends me on a rant. Yesterday, I attempted to pay my Verizon phone bill online. I ultimately succeeded, no thanks to Verizon.

A website should be user friendly.

Things should be easy and obvious.

Apparently Verizon has other priorities.

First of all, if you go to Verizon.net, you are invited to log-in. This does NOT allow access to bill payment. You have two different logins, one for account, another for email administration. This one only allows handling of your email.

I never have found the login for bill payment from their main site. I had to do a Google search on "Verizon bill payment" to find it! You have to go to www22.verizon.com. The login is then hidden amongst a number of text links.

If you click on "login" rather than "pay my bill", you're take to a screen where it is again difficult even to find the "pay my bill" link, hidden in the middle of a list of minor functions.

In logging in, I was told current billing information wasn't available. Presumably that meant I couldn't pay the bill right now. On a chance, I clicked on "pay bill" anyway (once I finally found it) and discovered that the reason current billing information wasn't available was because before it would display it, it was going to make me choose a secret question.

I then had to validate my login by email, not just by clicking on a link but entering a 3 digit code and reentering login and password information.

Finally I get to bills payment, where it displays not the current amount due but amount as of the last billing date THEN warns you if you are now paying a different amount than you owed at that time (but describes it as "amount due").

I believe the Bush administration could have used this as an effective "enhanced interrogation technique."