Hi ‘Shop Smallers’. Now we all love AMEX' 'Shop Small' (SS), but we all also know that it has one major flaw: the fact that ‘the map’ sucks so severely, in so many ways. It’s actually so bad that it goes a large way to defeating the purpose of any given place opting to be part of SS, i.e. that peeps will be able to easily find out if a place is part of SS, then go and shop there if they are. The fact is that is currently not the case, because the map is so dysfunctional.
So I’m going to send AMEX an email (politely) stating the above, and include specific examples. The aim of the communication, rather than simply telling them their map is shite, will be to provide specifics so that they know exactly what needs fixing. I will describe my main problems with the map below in the terms I will use in the email. I was wondering if anyone else had any specific gripe/s about the map they would also like me to include in the email. Preferably, with specific examples, either of what happens when it clearly shouldn’t, or doesn’t happen when it clearly should, etc. Some of the things I’ll be mentioning are:
A. The main problem I personally have with the map is that its ‘search’ function serially fails to locate places that are clearly on the list. Perhaps the simplest example is if you try to search for all the IGA’s on the list, anywhere in Australia. So, in the ‘Search by name’ box naturally you type ‘IGA’, and you leave the ‘Search by location’ box blank. The result is ‘Sorry! We did not find any matching places’. Changing the location to ‘Australia’ does not change anything; still the search yields ‘no matches’. Yet we all know there are some participating IGAs on the list. Changing the search to ‘Victoria, Australia’ yields no matches.
BUT, if you search for ‘IGA’ in the search-by-name box with ‘Balwyn, Victoria, Australia’ in the location box, the search engine miraculously finds ‘IGA FRIENDLY GROCER, 255 BELMORE ROAD , BALWYN NORTH VICTORIA 3104’.
Clearly that place should have been located in all the previously described searches with more general locations specified, but it was not.
B. Another example is if you want to find all the places on the list that are in a given shopping centre. That is seemingly not possible, due to the defective ‘map search’ function. It is not possible to do a search with ‘Northland, Victoria, Australia’ in the location box and nothing in the search-by-name box, presumably because ‘northland’ is not recognised as an actual location (what happens if you try this is that the location searched automatically changes to ‘Northland Drive, Sale, Victoria, Australia’). Fair enough. BUT, even doing a search with ‘Northland’ in the search-by-name box and ‘Victoria, Australia’ in the location box, yields nothing. Searching with ‘Preston, Victoria, Australia’ in the location box does yield five results: presumably the only participating places that have the word ‘Northland’ in their actual name. But the fact is there are many more than five places in the Northland shopping centre that are participating in SS, but they don’t show up on the ‘map’, nor can they be verified as participants via the search-map feature of the website. Because it fails to locate them via either method. There should be a way to determine exactly which of the outlets in any large shopping centre in Australia are participants, regardless of whether they actually feature the name of the shopping centre in the official name of their business. Currently there is simply no way to do this.
C. It is very difficult to remove the current location/render the ‘location’ field blank. It can be done via a clunky work-around, but there is no obvious ‘button’ for doing it. Usually what happens if you try to leave it blank, is that either your current location is ‘auto-inserted’, or the last location you searched is auto-reinserted. This should be fixed.
D. There are no proper instructions on how to use the map. I strongly suspect that this is because it is so unusable! For example, the whole ‘balloons vs. little black circles/dots vs. little blue dots’ thing is not explained anywhere. It took a savvy OzBer (thanks bluesky) to contact AMEX and ask what the different symbols actually meant, and kindly report it back to us, before it was possible to have any idea what the different symbols mean. And in fact it is STILL not completely clear, because AMEX’ advice is somewhat ambiguous/unclear.
So that’s what I plan to include in my email about the deficiencies of the ‘map feature’ of the whole SS endeavor so far. Don’t worry, it will not be a rude email, and I will be sure to begin it by saying how grateful many AMEX users are for the periodic SS promotions, and how much we value them and the businesses that participate (etc.). The sole purpose of the email will be to provide potentially useful information/feedback for the attention of their ‘IT’ department, so that they can improve the SS ‘map’ feature of their website, which I think we almost unanimously agree is remains extremely suckworthy, despite having been in place for years.
If there’s any particular issue/deficiency with the map function that I have not covered above that you would like me to allude to in my email to AMEX, please describe it below (preferably in conjunction with a specific example), and I will include it in the email to AMEX, so they can set about fixing the problem.
The best part is, when you are finally able to find the shop, there is NO AMEX sign on the counter. :-)