Grand Usability fails

Belgacom is the leading ISP & Telecoms company of Belgium, and Belgacom’s Single-Sign-On system is one of the worst I’ve ever seen – (especially if we take into account it’s an Internet Service Provider).

I forgot my password the other day so naturally tried to use the “Forgot Password” link under the login form. I entered a username (not in an username@domain format) and I was forwarded to a lovely page that informing me I did something wrong:

When I finally figured out (somehow) I should put a username@domain format, I faced another challenge: Figuring out the password character restrictions.

The message was asking me to choose an 8-character password, of which at least 1 character should be a number. Easy ha? Not really. After spending some time trying passwords, I figured you basically shouldn’t put more than one number in order for your new password to be valid. True story.