You must enter a valid Telephone Number

This is an odd problem that crops up every couple of months. We get customers who can't seem to get past the checkout screen because they keep getting told "You must enter a valid Telephone Number" - but they always insist that they HAVE typed their phone number in correctly.

I've always put it down to customer error, and usually take their order over the phone, but I must admit, it tends to happen more frequently than I would expect.

Has anyone else hit this problem?

I wondered if the message was coming up incorrectly - i.e. maybe something else has been entered wrong, but the error message is misleading? Invalid email address maybe? postcode?

Andy Rigby
www.christianbits.co.uk

Nobby, thanks for this. I think you are probably right. I've done some tests, and it looks like the delivery phone number is allowed to be blank, but obviously the payment address phone number cannot be blank.

My guess is that they are leaving the payment phone number blank.

I think the problem is, that by the time the customer clicks on the "Pay by card" button, the screen has scrolled up quite a long way, so the payment phone number box is no longer visible. The customer only sees the delivery phone number box, which is still visible, and has a phone number in it. So they think they've entered the phone number, and can't understand why they cannot continue.

SUPPORT are there any user interface improvements to be made here? Would it be better to have 2 separate error messages, one for delivery address phone number invalid, and one for payment address phone number invalid?

Or (even nicer) could the screen be clever enough to position the cursor back into the phone number box that it is complaining about?

Andy Rigby
www.christianbits.co.uk