Why is Fido's website and app so horrendously awful?

[SoKeta]

It seriously blows my mind how many times things go wrong with this bloody website, not to mention the app!
For the amount of money we're paying, you would think they could hire a couple people who actually know what they're doing to run the site.

Every single time I try to log in I get an error. Every single time I try to navigate the site on my phone it never loads. Every single time I try to use the app it stops working.

To any Fido reps reading this, please tell SOMEONE to get together about this issue. It's been recurring for YEARS, it's entirely unprofessional and frankly embarrassing. 

[therefore]

The UX on the website is simply awesome. It is the most frustring POS on the internet. Every single time I have to use it, I end up cursing at the screen. My cat was initially quite confused, but now he understands (he sees all the dogs all over the site). 

[thinkbound]

Man, i cannot agree more.  Fido website has to be one of the worst.  Almost as bad as Telus.  While Telus is bad with their payment section and billing payments that never work, at least Telus website loads.  Fido.ca has so many problems loading.

If a developer is asking what can be done better, how about this:

This site can’t be reached

fido.ca took too long to respond.

Adding more hosting capacity to handle load maybe?  It's 2023 and there are elastic cloud hosting available.  I still cannot log in and update my credit card to pay my bill so what is the point of the website?

[thinkbound]

Also you website does not load without the "www".  you have to add "www".  So htaccess or some other issue domain not resolving.  Looking to see if i can even go anywhere at this point.  I hope Fido improves please.

[FidoAnthony]

Hey @thinkbound 

I've just checked, and our website works with both www. and without it. Do you get an error message when trying to access the page without www.?

[thinkbound]

site finally worked for me somehow yesterday where I put my card info in and all went well. When the website loads I think it's solid experience compared to competitors.  I'll come back if I see anything happen again when I try 

[Diniss]

It is 2023 and the site is still bad. It takes me several days of trying just to pay my bill online. Its quite terrible.

[FidoAnthony]

Hey @Diniss,

That's not what we want to hear. What's going on with the website exactly?

Any feedback is appreciated!

[Diniss]

Once I click make a payment the wesbite freezes and then it crashes. The same thing happens on the mobile app. This happens on different browsers and devices. 

[FidoNajat]

Hey @Diniss ! Were you able to get the help you needed since your post? If not, feel free to contact us through one of our channels so we do some troubleshooting with you. 

[DaedalusWren]

I just tried several times to upgrade my plan through the website and the app to no avail. Always some lame message that oops, something went wrong, problem on their end, bla, bla, bla, try again later or contact us. So much for convenience and see of use. I can't even get the app to send me my authorization code to log in. Enter my number and press send, and tou guessed it, it fails with another lame and useless pop-up. Frustrated and looking for another provider. 

[FidoSaira]

Hey @DaedalusWren,

That doesn't sound right!

Did you try a different browser? I would also suggest clearing cookies and cache of your browser as well to see if that helps.

As for the authorization code, there should be an option saying ''I don't have a Fido number''. Have you tried it? If so, what happens then?

Can you also confirm the app's version you have as well as your device model?

We'll take it from there.

[corinque]

My credit card expired and it was impossible to update it via the website. "Oops something went wrong" was the very descriptive and helpful error message I was getting. Thankfully you can update your payment information over the phone, but guess what - if it's over the phone a $10 charge applies! Preposterous!

This is plain and simple a money grab, as there is NO alternative to updating my credit card information.

The Fido website has been a complete disaster for years (and borderline unusable since they launched "new" version about 5-6 years ago) but now it's completely unusable. I sometimes ask myself why I haven't moved to a different provider by now...

[FidoPhilippe]

Hey @corinque! Welcome to the community.

I'm sad to read that you have been unable to update your credit card information through our site. I'll be happy to help you with that. I'll need a bit of information though:

Which web browser are you using and  are you using a PC or phone to do this?

Have you tried to clear the cache and cookie on the browser or use an alternative browser?

Also, have you tried our app to update your credit card information?

You can also use our Interactive Voice Response System via 6-1-1 on your Fido phone or 1-888-481-3436 and press * for our self-service menu. This service is free.

Let us know.

[renalilawrence]

It's a little mind blowing how bad the site and app are. My boyfriend and I both like our phone service but have never been able to do anything online. No matter what we do or how many times we log in (both totally seperate accounts) the site never recognizes that we're logged in. So I can't even do simple things like update my address or make changes to my account. It just makes me log in again. Also it always shows that I owe 0 dollars so I'm forced to get a stupid paper bill every month. Would love to just be digtal but I can't see what I owe.

[FidoAmanda]

Hey @renalilawrence!

Let us know if testing a different browser and/or clearing your cache and cookies changed anything.

The Community would love an update!

[FidoAmanda]

Hey renalilawrence! 

Welcome to the Community!

It's unfortunate to see that you've both been having difficulty navigating My Account. 

Does the same thing happen when you try logging in from another browser as well? Have you tried clearing your cache and cookies on the browser you're currently using when logging in? 

Let us know. The more details you can provide us the better!

[TetraVaal]

I admit I had the exact same thought today while trying to access the site on mobile. I wanted to see the page where there's all the different phone models, so I tapped on the link and the little "loading spinner" on iOS was spinning and spinning endlessly and after a while.... nothing. I tried 2-3 times and gave up. Seems like the site is bloated.

Why can't Fido optimize their site? It's not like there's a shortage of competant web devs in Canada. 

[redfox05]

Senior Web Dev here too. Wow, I agree with the above. Code quality is very poor and seems like little if no QA has been done on the site.

Searching for it in google gives you the global.pageTitle as a title, which is a fail, and theres plenty of other variables shown in plain sight until they are processed. Looks like its AngularJS, so they should really make more use of the ng-cloak featires. And deeplinks/page refreshes are handled badly, as well as the poor social login. I've used janrain before, but only on small personal projects, and a long time ago. Cmon fido, im sure you can shell out for a better solution here. Its poorly implemented.

Im working full time, so not looking for extra work, but as I am also a Fido customer, I would 'almost' be happy to join some Beta volunteer team to at least test SOME of the epic fails that might appear before they are released to production.

I'm glad to be able to rant to others who feel the same, as I've mentioned many issues to Fido Facebook Messenger, and they seem to be happy with receiving the feedback, but they don't get how serious these issues are/they dont seem to be improving.

What will it take before they start taking this seriously? They should be grateful we are even bringing it up. Their own staff should have done it before us!

[BLUE2017]

Fido staff is sitting at the smaller end here, I guess. There are hints in the source code (like "rogersecomm"), that the Fido webpages are part of the ROGERS mother company and even possibly done, rather half-hearted, by a contractor.

The important word here is "half-hearted", like having no spirit in doing that website. It's technically (under the hood) the worst website I ever saw so far. I visit that website always with developer tools activated in Chromium webbrowser, to watch for things turning into the better. The design (the theme) is okay, I'm kinda used to it, but there's still some room for improvement as well.

But simply serving well seems not to be the goal of the site anyways, look at this:

* A "ping" connection to www.restive.io is done without using transport layer security, hence the browser is complaining about "mixed-content", as a result that call is blocked. Well, I guess it's a tracker.

* The login management is processed by a Florida based company (Janrain, [1]). Fancy, to have all the login credentials stored, extensive user behavioral tracking data produced and everything processed in the US.

* Another US based tracker, assets.adobedtm.com, is used to load code snippets. If you block that node, the page is not showing any data in your account management anymore.

* The next tracker is qualtrics.com, blockable.

* The next tracker is doubleclick.net, blockable.

* The next tracker is everesttech.net (Adobe), blockable.

* The next tracker is demdex.net (Adobe), blockable.

* The next tracker is stracking.rogers.com, blockable.

* The next tracker is sb.scorecardresearch.com, blockable.

* The next tracker is www.googleadservices.com, blockable.

* The next tracker is www.google-analytics.com, blockable.

* The next tracker is addthis.com, blockable.

* The next tracker is optimizely.com, blockable.

* Twitter and Facebook, of course, blockable.

There are some cloudfront connections as well, whatever they do. No time to dissect that right now.

So, don't wonder about loading times and quirks.

My personal conclusion is: That website is not about serving you in the way you expect it as a paying Fido customer, it's more about serving odd third parties down the line and a whole bunch of them.

Simple strategy: Put something of use into the web and track visitors like hell. It's the same concept you have with free smartphone apps.

Serious (and paid!) service providers should _never_ sell away their customers, to make more revenue behind their backs or let others play with your data.

It's so sad, I'm quite disappointed. Not to speak about the potential security implications, made possible by this (Huh? Login processing done by a foreign corp?).

PS: Somebody should check their app, if it is a user profiling data monger as well.

[1] http://www.janrain.com/about/

[GwenBeauregard]

Sir or Madame,

The only reason that FIDO's website is such a dog is that nobody thought of training the dogs to write proper code and to come up with a site design that is:

a) User friendly.

b) Designed for people and not dogs.

c) Because, possibly, Rogers' the parent Company

    and why throw good money after bad.

d) Well that's where we stop. "D" is a good mark given the alternative "F".

I loathe and despise trying to navigage this website. WOOF!