I’ve had three relatively bizarre interactions with online e-commerce systems in the past couple of weeks, and it makes me wonder whether corporate databases are far more screwed up than I thought they were.

The first problem occurred about a week ago, after I had ordered a luscious new 30-inch display monitor from the Apple computer store. After placing the order, I got an email message confirming the order; and then, a day or two later, another email message confirming that the monitor had been shipped. The second email message even provided a Fedex tracking number, so I could watch its progress from pickup location, to the Fedex hub in Memphis, to a receiving dock at Newark airport, to a truck heading for Manhattan, to … a nasty message indicating that the package had been refused when the Fedex delivery person brought it to my building?

Huh? Why would that happen? When I checked the details, I found that Fedex had attempted to deliver it to an obsolete address — an apartment building just 8 blocks from where I now live, but one that I moved out of about 8 months ago. Ironically, I placed a different (small) order from the Apple store the day after I ordered the monitor, and another (small) order the day after I ordered the monitor. These orders, like several others I’ve placed over the past 8 months, were sent correctly to my current address, and were received with no problem.

I called the Apple customer service phone number to find out had happened; and while the customer-service representative was polite, helpful, and quite happy to correct the error, she had no explanation for the error. The only thing that occurred to me was the orders preceding and following the mis-directed order were relatively small: a $59 wireless keyboard, and a $59 airplane power adaptor; the monitor, on the other hand, was significantly more expensive. So perhaps the Apple order-entry system sentmy large order to a different subsystem for credit-card authorization, while the small orders sailed through smoothly. But in any case, I’ve got tangible evidence that, buried within its corporate database, Apple still carries, and occasionally attempts to use, a shipping address that should have been retired or deleted months ago.

But at least that address was only 8 months old; a week later, American Express managed to cough up some information that has been obsolete for nearly 20 years. I was in San Francisco attending the Web 2.0 Summit (see my earlier blogs to confirm that I’m not just imagining things here) when I got a voice-mail message from the Amex fraud-alert system. Oh, great, I thought. They’re going to ask how I could have charged something in New York on Monday morning, and then something in San Francisco on Monday afternoon. But the fraud alert turned out to be valid: someone unknown had attempted to use my Amex credit card number to buy a large tankful of gas (“Do you own an SUV?” the Amex representative asked politely) at a gas station a thousand miles away from New York City. I may have been in NYC in the morning, and San Francisco in the afternoon, but I never got any closer than 35,000 feet above the gas station in Des Moines where the fraudulent transaction occurred.

So the Amex representative and I agreed that we should definitely cancel the card, and he went through the usual steps to have a new card sent to me by overnight mail. Sure enough, the card arrived today, with my name spelled correctly (you would be amazed how many different ways “Yourdon” can be misspelled), and with the correct street address … but with a corporate identity that has not been in use since 1987. If it had only been on the shipping label, I might not even have noticed it; but it was embossed prominently on the credit card itself, which probably would have caused endless problems if I had tried to use the card. When I got the customer service representative on the phone, he was every bit as polite, helpful, and concerned as the Apple representative, and I’ve been told that I should receive a corrected card tomorrow. But he had no explanation for (and no interest in) the bizarre behavior of his company’s computer system.

And there was one last episode, though at least this one has a plausible explanation. About a week ago, I ordered some inkjet printer cartridges from Hewlett Packard’s online store. The order was received and processed, but a couple days later, I got a polite email message informing me that my order had been declined, because the credit company had rejected the charge. It was only this evening that I finally got around to calling the toll-free customer service number to find out what had gone wrong; after my experiences with Apple and Amex, I had no idea what to expect.

After asking a few basic questions, the HP customer service representative was able to pull up the details of my order, and confirmed — aha! — that the billing address on my order was the same 8-month-old address that had caused my problems with Apple; when that obsolete billing address was sent to my credit card company for authorization, the credit card system recognized that the obsolete address didn’t match my current address. But once again, it raises the obvious question: how could HP’s system still have my old address, when I had successfully ordered other items in the past couple months, and received them successfully at my new address?

In response to that question, the HP customer service representative said, “Well, hold on a minute. Let me see if you have any other user profiles in the system …”, whereupon a quick search revealed that I had at least two different “profiles” in their system, one with the old address, and one with the current address. The primary identification (or “key”) for these profiles is not my name or Social Security number, but rather my email address. As far as the customer service representative could tell, HP is only aware of one email address for me — which makes me wonder how their system could have two different customer records with the same primary key. As it turns out, I do occasionally provide an alternative email address if I encounter an uncooperative e-commerce system … so it’s possible that I created my own problem with HP’s computers, without even realizing it. But the customer service representative could find any obvious evidence to confirm it.; and frankly, he didn’t really care very much … just as the Apple and Amex representative were basically uninterested in discovering the root cause of the problem.

Dealing with all three of these problems cost me no money, and actually took less time than it took to write this blog entry; so I really don’t have any major complaints. But it’s disconcerting that Apple’s e-commerce system occasionally feels like sending stuff to an address that I left 8 months ago; and it’s downright spooky that Amex occasionally wants to associate my name with a corporate identity that disappeared nearly 20 years ago. As for HP: I ordered enough printer cartridges to last several months, and all I can do is hope that I’ll be able to remember to check the billing and shipping address carefully when I next place an order. It’s enough to make me wonder whether I’d be better off buying things the old-fashioned way, by going into a store, picking out the stuff that I want, and handing hard, cold cash to a surly cashier.

Meanwhile, I still don’t have my luscious new 30-inch display monitor, and it’s driving me nuts…