Ticketmaster

trex

While trying to buy concert tickets on ticketmaster.com, I used 1Password to automatically fill credit card information. I thought I'd save some time by doing this since you only have a certain amount of time to fill out this information before your order expires. I don't know if it's more of a problem with Ticketmaster or 1Password, but the operation was totally botched. Information in an invisible gift card section was partially filled in, blocking the order from being submitted, and by the time I realized this, I ran out of time. I'm incredibly bummed I lost some extremely hard-to-get tickets for a band I'm not sure I'll get another opportunity to see. I'm definitely going to always enter information manually for time-sensitive situations from now on. Again, I don't know if it's more of a problem with Ticketmaster or 1Password.

AGAlumB

@trex: I can't tell you how sorry I am. I've been there myself. You were just trying to use 1Password to help streamline the checkout process, and it let you down. :(

The good news is that we at AgileBits feel your pain, as we experience similar issues with form filling on specific sites, so we're working hard to improve this every day. The bad news is that I wasn't actually able to reproduce this problem at the TicketMaster site.

I tested this myself. And while not all identity and credit card details filled successfully, I was able to add the few that were missing (state and expiration) to successfully submit the form. Thanks to the 'your credit card will be charged' warning under the Submit button I was able to change some digits in my credit card information before submission to avoid purchasing "Disney on Ice" tickets for this afternoon, though. Whew.

Based on your description, I was actually expecting the filling issues to be similar to Fandango. I use that site all the time and have been similarly been bitten by the dreaded hidden--payment-field-being-filled-which-conflicts-with-the-payment-you're-actually-trying-to-use issue, which has prevented me from successfully completing the transaction before the timer expired. Not fun.

The problem in these situations is that the same names are being used for multiple (sometimes hidden) fields, and 1Password just doesn't have any way of telling the difference between them -- fields such as 'card number', 'name', or email. I'm suspect most of us have experienced 1Password filling our email address into a form multiple times, sometimes in unexpected ways, based on the field types ('email', 'email', 'email', and -- you guessed it -- 'email'). Unfortunately, until we're able to come up with a way for 1Password to 'outsmart' poorly-designed webforms (without becoming too smart for its own good and making things worse in some cases) this will likely continue to be a problem.

One thing you can do now though is try to 'streamline' your credit card and identity items themselves. Since often particular webforms will be problematic just for names, for instance, having just the credit card number and expiration in an item will have 1Password only fill that information; or conversely, keeping the bare-minimum information in an identity. 1Password will try to fill all information from the item when you tell it to, and sometimes this can cause issues in forms with hidden fields or multiple fields with the same name or type.

In the end, it is definitely a website issue at the core, but there is certainly more we can do to improve 1Password to handle these situations better in the future, at least to avoid mishaps wherever possible. I am collecting some information on this to see if it can help our development team improve 1Password going forward. And while I sincerely hope that you get another chance to see that band in the future, I also want you to know how much I appreciate you giving 1Password another chance after it let you down this time -- and for sharing your experience with us so we can make it a better experience for you and the rest of our awesome customers in the future. Thank you.

P.S: If possible, I'd also like to get some additional information from you regarding the OS and 1Password (also browser and extension, if applicable) versions you were having the issue with, since that might account for the different behaviour I saw when I tested this (OS X 10.10.3, 1Password 5.3, extension 4.4.0.5 beta in Chrome 42.0.2311.90, which I used because, well...Flash).

ref: OPX-960

trex

Thanks for your response. Yes, I understand how a poorly designed web form can lead to this situation. I was on my work computer which is restricted to running Mavericks (OS X/Safari/1Password/extension versions: 10.9.5/7.1.5/4.4.3/4.3.1) whereas my home computer can run Yosemite (OS X/Safari/1Password/extension versions: 10.10.3/8.0.5/5.3/4.3.1).

I suppose copying/pasting each field is the best work-around. My only other idea for your development team is to perhaps have a modifier key that fills in information for only the currently selected field. It's more work, but it guarantees that your information is only being filled in where you want it.

Meek

Hi @trex,

I'm also really sorry to hear about the trouble filling a credit card on Ticketmaster!

I also was not able to reproduce the issue of an invisible gift card field being filled in, however I can confirm that certain fields (namely select fields) are not being filled in properly. The issue here is that they are not using true html select fields - they have custom UI elements that are simulating the behaviour of a select field, and at the moment 1Password doesn't know how to fill those. This is something we'd love to support in the future, but I'm not sure when or even if we will be able to.

Since you were using Mavericks, the filling algorithms used in that version of 1Password are significantly outdated - credit card filling has been greatly improved in the latest version on Yosemite. I'd be curious to see if you can reproduce the issue of filling an invisible gift card field in the latest version of 1Password as this shouldn't be happening anymore.

Interesting idea with the option of filling only the selected field - thanks for the suggestion! :)

AGAlumB

@trex: Ah, yes. That would make sense, and a account for the results I had being slightly better (although still room for improvement).

Specific to the Ticketmaster fields I did have trouble with, we found that they are using custom dropdown menus instead of standard HTML widgets, which is why 1Password can't do anything with them.

Accessibility is important to us, not only because a web using open standards makes it easier to support alternate input, output, and interaction methods, but also because we are often able to leverage accessibility features to empower 1Password.

We will see if there is a way to get 1Password to work around these situations in the future. But in the mean time I sincerely hope that Ticketmaster and others improve accessibility by supporting existing standards and those yet to come. Not to pick on Ticketmaster too much, but as awful as your recent purchase experience was, I'd really hate to be on the other end of a screenreader trying to navigate that website (and many others)!

I also think the single-field filling concept might be worth pursuing, and perhaps accessibility APIs could help in that regard. Cheers! :)

trex

I really appreciate the thorough responses! Thanks.

Meek

You're most welcome @trex - we really appreciate your help with tracking this one down! :)