Aurigny in "don't care about customers" and "extremely bad at IT" shockers

I have documented several times the worsening trend for companies to discard customer login information and force account resets, usually by an emailed link.  This is often accompanied by gaslighting the customer into thinking the customer themselves has forgotten their password.  The customer may also be required to lie in order to reset their password, for example by incorrectly stating that they have "forgotten" their password.

Having worked in various IT departments, it is not hard to imagine the incompetence and chaos surrounding "decisions" to discard whole databases of customer authentication data, and force everyone to reset their passwords.  It is not so much a "decision" as a drool by an intermediate-level mammal down its own chin, accompanied by jumping up and down and grunting.

It started out quite mysteriously, unable to book a ticket, because unable to log in, indicated simply with "Error / Login Failed":

Already, there is a sign of what is to come, with "I forgot my password" being the only option other than "Login".  There is also the option of trying it without an account, and spending the time to enter all of one's usual info, for the umpteenth time.  This time, which, remember, amounts to a part of a human life, is exactly the same time that was supposed to be saved by having accounts in the first place.

I initially tried calling Aurigny, but just got an engaged tone, several times in a row.

I investigated further by trying to sign in from the front page:

"Sign In Error / Sign in failed", but also some of bigger message, obscured for the moment by my browser, but:

The text says "Following an update to our systems on 17th July, it is now necessary for you to reset your password in order to re-gain access to your account.  Once this step is complete, you will be able to use your profile to book flights and redeem points".  Translation: "Following an extreme-incompetence event on 17th July by Aurigny's extremely incompetent IT staff, we now require you to lie about having forgotten your password, in order to recover from this quite unnecessary state created by our incompetent customer-facing IT staff".

Note they didn't make their action text "reset your password" do anything, so the poor customer has to guess that the way to achieve "reset your password" is to tell a fib and click on "Forgotten password?" below.  This gives:

The message is "Password Reset / If an account exists, an email will be sent to the registered email address".  Never let a programmer (including software "engineer"s, "developer"s, etc) write a user-facing interface element, including any message.  Not knowing whether or not "an account exists" according to their thing, I sit back and wait, for an email which may or may not be winging its way to me, to enable an entirely unnecessary account reset, so that I can buy a ticket and travel on Sunday.  

An hour later, no reset email has come.  Aurigny's phone line is still engaged.  I have already booked my onward flight from LGW.  But perhaps I will abandon that and just fly privately.

You might think that the category "airline_unable_to_sell_flight_tickets" might, anomalously, temporarily contain one or so item.  But when it's airline after airline, and whinge after whinge has to be tagged with "airline_unable_to_sell_flight_tickets", it is time to look for common factors.

Update: The phone line is no longer just giving an engaged tone.  I am now in a big phone queue instead!

next: <https://wibblement.blogspot.com/2023/09/aurigny-latest-general-shitfrastructure.html>.