The first was some First Great Western sleeper tickets to get me to London for a client meeting. I spent quite some time choosing the tickets (it’s a complex business anyway) then working through the checkout process. At the end, I’m pretty sure I briefly saw the Verified by Visa thing appear in a frame only to vanish to be replaced by the page hosting the frame in the frame. How recursive. I got angry then started all over again (yep, my basket was empty) with another card (one with which I’ve always managed to duck around the Verified by Visa thing by carefully clicking the tiny ‘No thanks’ button).

The second purchase was my exciting new Android phone from T-Mobile. Another lengthy checkout process (since it involves a credit check etc.) only to be presented by Verified by Visa. Everything actually appeared to go through this time, although I got no acknowledgement email from T-Mobile. Later that day, they contacted me to say the card verification on the purchase had failed. I phoned them and a nice chap took my details again and pushed everything through. I got the impression that failure at the Verified by Visa step was not uncommon.

I’m clearly not alone in my hatred for it. Plus, it seems as though it fails massively in its attempts to add any security anyway.

So what can we do? As consumers, we need to moan and whine to to the e-commerce businesses we buy from. And they need to moan and whine to the 3D Secure providers to sort out their system and provide better, bullet (and user) proof e-commerce integration. I’ve never had to implement it, but I’m  willing to bet that it’s a complete nightmare, with poor documentation and very little support so e-commerce developers rush to fit (using nasty hacky javascript and frame solutions) and forget.

It’s no good spending time and money improving e-commerce to increase sales if a third party payment system mucks it all up for users at the end.

The new site integrates the Contented content management system with a bespoke eCommerce and stock management module. With over 2000 products available to buy, the first orders are already landing – check it out for yourself…