I mentioned on here a couple of weeks ago that I’d tried to do a registration with NUS for this year’s student card, since I was confirmed at that time on M257 (confirmed now on T211 as well). I’d received an email at the end of the last NUS ‘year’ inviting me to register through a special link which already had my details pre-filled – there’s a special code in the URL that takes you to that specific page. Anyway, trying to register through that, I put in all the details such as new photo, PI number etc and when I went to ‘confirm’, was given an error message that “No suitable card found to order” which I thought must be because the course hasn’t yet ‘officially’ started, though I’d paid for it, so thought I’d try again in a couple of weeks when the course website opened and the tutor groups start to be allocated etc. As far as I’m concerned I am now a current student since I have the books here with me, have installed the software and started working on the introductory NetBeans stuff – and not to mention now being £280 poorer for the privilege!
Quite poor interaction design also in my opinion since it requires you to go through all the process such as home address, photo etc BEFORE telling you the card isn’t available. Whatever availability is determined by, they should ask for that information first and give a suitable error message before you go through all the rest of the process!
Trying again today I still received the same error message so tried using the normal “non special” sign up that requires all the details to be put in again. Success there… put in the details, uploaded a photo etc and then went on to the credit card payment screen, everything fine! So I can only conclude from this that one of the following has happened:
1. the ‘special’ and standard application process validates the card availability at a different stage ie once you’ve already applied vs during the process
2. some sort of programming error etc on the special link, or some other random occurrence
Already I’ve received a PDF “mock up” of the card (which I think is intended to be a temporary card in itself – however knowing what a lot of sales assistant types are like (and I can say that as I was one once myself… many years ago!) I think a lot of them would refuse a paper copy of a student card) and some text in the covering email stating that “Because we have already checked that you really are a student, your card will be sent to your home address as soon as it’s ready.” Obviously this is just standard text but seems hopeful that the process will have completed successfully.
Maybe I’m just a bit over sensitive about these things (especially if it’s just a programming error as I know how easily these can occur – made plenty of them myself!) but frankly I did find it quite insulting to be told that “no card is available to order” when I’ve paid all that money for studies over the last 9 years and due to oddities in the system I am already losing out due to assumptions made by the card scheme over the nature of the academic year, which already means “proper” students are gaining compared to OU students on particular timings of presentations. Especially since there’s now less of a ‘gap’ between proper students and OU students in terms of hours worked alongside study, age/life stage of students etc, I don’t think this is justified. But to be told that after all those years and all that money that (effectively) I’ve illegitimately applied for a card is quite galling, for goodness’ sake it’s only a discount card anyway, not like I’ve fraudulently applied for a credit card or loan or anything! So I’m relieved that this seems to be just some sort of technical error and not actually a judgement on my legitimacy as a student. But I’ll believe it when I have the actual physical thing!
