The Form Added the Dashes, Then Rejected the Phone Number
Booking a haircut should be simple. First, the form has to win an argument with your phone number.
Booking a haircut should involve choosing a time and supplying a head. Instead, an online form may ask for your phone number, add parentheses and a dash to make it look nice, and then announce that the number is invalid.
It was a valid number when you typed it. The form dressed it up and immediately objected to the outfit.
So you try removing the dash. The form puts it back. You remove the parentheses. Those come back too. This is less like filling out a form and more like correcting someone who keeps interrupting to make the same mistake.
Maybe it wants the country code. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe your phone helpfully filled in a space you can't see unless you tap into the field and start investigating. There are ten digits in a phone number, but somehow this has become a formatting dispute with a machine that won't tell you its rules.
The error message is never much help. “Please enter a valid phone number.” Sure. Happy to. Would the valid version be the one with punctuation, the one without punctuation, or the one your form keeps manufacturing against my wishes?
I understand why a place taking appointments might want a number. They need to reach people if something changes. Fine. But if the website insists on arranging those digits itself, it should probably recognize the result. That seems like a reasonable minimum standard for a box.
And the form doesn't just disagree quietly. It waits until you've chosen a time, entered the rest of your information, and pressed the button. Only then does the phone number become a matter requiring your immediate attention. The haircut can wait. We have a dash to discuss.
Eventually you find a version the box accepts. You may not know what changed. Perhaps you removed a space. Perhaps you typed the exact same number slowly enough to earn its respect.
Then the appointment goes through, and somewhere in the confirmation is the phone number you entered in the first place. Parentheses. Dash. Everything.
Apparently it was valid after all. It just needed to hear it from itself.
The conversation
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