I’m grateful for our postal service brands, but one of them just can’t deliver digitally.

This national carrier lets you register with a username instead of an email address. 

Since I couldn’t remember my username, I chose the option ‘Forgot my username’ and requested that it be sent to my email address. 

However, I was told that my email address didn’t exist in the system.

That’s impossible because:

1. I’m still getting frequent emails from them, and
2. I’m not allowed to register for a new account with that email address

The simple fact is that my email address exists in the system. But by having the username as their preferred way to log in, they’ve created a needless complexity that’s taking us back to the days of pigeons.

Of course, legacy systems will take ages to transform to seamless systems. 

But we need to insist on smartness in our methods and keep the user at the center of our planning.