Web Site Story
in Olympus E-System , Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Just for fun I thought I'd register my E-1 with Olympus. Seems like a good idea, doesn't it ? Of course you'll only know you can do if you've managed to find a link in the twisted maze of web sites that Olympus has managed to publish so far.
Starting from what appears to be supposed to be the main site now, you can follow a registration link (at the top right), which brings up a form which some genius has decided should be implemented in Flash (and is served from a Japanese domain). This has 9 steps (screens). When you get to screen 2, if you're in Europe or the US, you'll find that you can't select your country. You click on "other countries", and, hey presto, you're dumped here. You select your country, and depending on the selection, fun things happen. If you select Switzerland, you end up in the olympus-pro.com world, rather than e-system.com, but you can't actually register your product. You can however sign up for a newsletter, which apparently is in German. Olympus realise that Belgium, for example, is multilingual, but in Switzerland they haven't noticed yet. Never mind. If you choose "United Kingdom" instead (going back first, not from the drop-down, that takes you somewhere else..) then hey presto you can register your equipment, using an HTML form, and choose any damn country you want. Progress! And it tells you "because we know what you have, we can inform you about the new firmware updates you require". Well I'll believe that when I see it. However you do get an email response thanking you for your application to the Olympus E-membership programmes, which you may well not be aware you'd submitted.
Has anybody got bored enough to work out if there is any logic behind all this ? I assume that http://www.olympus-esystem.com/dea/ is the main site, but really I'm far from sure - http://www.olympus-esystem.com has a different design and doesn't appear to link to /dea, whatever "dea" stands for, and Europe links all end up at http://www.olympus-pro.com.
I'm baffled.
Starting from what appears to be supposed to be the main site now, you can follow a registration link (at the top right), which brings up a form which some genius has decided should be implemented in Flash (and is served from a Japanese domain). This has 9 steps (screens). When you get to screen 2, if you're in Europe or the US, you'll find that you can't select your country. You click on "other countries", and, hey presto, you're dumped here. You select your country, and depending on the selection, fun things happen. If you select Switzerland, you end up in the olympus-pro.com world, rather than e-system.com, but you can't actually register your product. You can however sign up for a newsletter, which apparently is in German. Olympus realise that Belgium, for example, is multilingual, but in Switzerland they haven't noticed yet. Never mind. If you choose "United Kingdom" instead (going back first, not from the drop-down, that takes you somewhere else..) then hey presto you can register your equipment, using an HTML form, and choose any damn country you want. Progress! And it tells you "because we know what you have, we can inform you about the new firmware updates you require". Well I'll believe that when I see it. However you do get an email response thanking you for your application to the Olympus E-membership programmes, which you may well not be aware you'd submitted.
Has anybody got bored enough to work out if there is any logic behind all this ? I assume that http://www.olympus-esystem.com/dea/ is the main site, but really I'm far from sure - http://www.olympus-esystem.com has a different design and doesn't appear to link to /dea, whatever "dea" stands for, and Europe links all end up at http://www.olympus-pro.com.
I'm baffled.
2 comments
nick davis January 28, 2004 - 1:11However the US based web site seems to have a lot more product information than any of the European "based" sites!!!!
keep up the log...its interesting reading
regards
Nick
2 comments
Marc R January 30, 2004 - 1:18Olympus have got a long way to go in terms of customer support. I bought my camera in the US and moved to the UK before I registered it. One cannot register a camera in the UK if is bought abroad and one cannot register the camera in the US if you dont have an address there. Bit of a quandary?
Anyway keep up the good work on this BLOG.