I’m on the phone with a bank. I have two credit card accounts with them. I’ve got one of them registered for on line banking and bill paying. The other one needs to be paid. Today.

There’s no way that I can see on the web site to register the other one, at least with the same user name.

I call the help number. I have to call three times, each time repeating my sixteen digit credit card number, each time having them verify all of my vital information, each time telling me that they can’t help but that they’ll transfer me to someone who can. The first two times, this results in a long hold period, and then a dial tone as the line is dropped.

The third time is the charm.

I talk to the young woman on the other end, and explain that I’d like to pay both of my cards on line. She says she’ll have to go talk to someone else.

She comes back in a few minutes, and informs me that we can register my other card, but first we have to cancel the first one.

???

“I don’t want to cancel the one that I’ve already successfully registered. I want to have them both registered.”

She says, “That’s the only way to do it.” She says this as though it’s perfectly reasonable. As though no one in their right mind would want to be able to make an on-line payment of their bills on more than one card, or would mind continually cancelling and reregistering the credit cards twice a month in order to do so.

I finally persuade her that this is not exactly a customer-friendly policy, and she goes off to talk to them again.

This is yet to be resolved, but I’m simply amazed at how stultifyingly dumb the designers of some on-line commerce sites can be.