Many little things like that add up and impact people's business, family and personal lives in crazy harmful ways.
At some point you're "locked-in", you hate it but if you leave your business may go bankrupt.
What a sad way keep "users" - by fear and keeping them too busy to try other ways :(

Often it's just a simple choice - this feature or that feature, but leading to completely different results.
e.g. if you miss a very strict delivery window by 1hr, should you be banned from search results and lose lots of $$$? You could use a different range (1day?) or give buyers a choice.

I'm sure it's not easy to design good products and there will be errors, things that will lead to unexpected results, etc.
But why do we waste people's talents, time, and potential to create systems that make everybody miserable?

Funny story (not sure if true) is that they opened their own shop with packaging.
But they couldn't meet their own crazy requirements, so their own algorithms banned their store.
I can't fathom how is it any good for sellers, customers or even the platform/marketplace itself.

So many little frictions all over the place is the norm, and the more complicated your "business" the more you realize how much most software sucks.
And my business is really tiny and simple, relatively speaking.

Another one, I just spent 15 minutes tracking an invoice I received by mail in the online system. Turns out they have separated "archived/past invoices" from "upcoming invoices". But the catch is it is based on the due payment date, not when it was issued (I care about the latter because taxes).

Funny, that I then bear all the consequences of any mistakes and one of them was the fact that I've just had to submit tax corrections for 2 whole years and pay a lot of money for preparing that by the specialists.
Yet, I can't even see the stupid setting until it actually generates invoices...

In the meantime, I have another problem with another invoicing system and configuration that is wrong according to my accountants, but I was told by the CEO of the company that "I'm not their target user", so my needs are not that important to them, and I should not be able to control the settings.

In the meantime if you also find your current system for managing international contracts, payments, etc painful, then I can wholeheartedly recommend Deel
Maybe they're better ones out there, but as far this is the only one I used that just works and has good human support.
deel.com/referrals/We...

Only when I use a good, useful product like this, do I realize how bad many others are and how much friction and stress they have caused me, especially B2B ones :)
I'm thinking it'd be good to write about a few good and bad examples from the perspective of a user.
Would it be interesting?

The system is not perfect, I have some challenges in other areas, UX is not ideal, but I think they beautifully resolved the key problems I've had with other platforms (invoicing compliant with our crazy local regulations and money transfers).
That caused me so much pain and stress in the past.

1. Why you don't want your national currency?! Why use have currency accounts in Poland?!
2. Why don't you want our predatory currency exchange rates?!
3. It's outragous, impossible expectation to know in advance what amount will arive in your bank account and roughly when.
Yet they just do it.

I have a feeling you'd love "Chaos: Making a New Science" by James Gleick as much as I did. Strongly recommended :)

"I started my inquiry with the probl I wanted to solve. " - sounds like a cliche, but I believe this is one many innovations and great products are born. Maybe it can't be common for various reasons (efficiency, established methods, metrics, etc.) but I'm always surprised that it's so rare :)

I wonder why people feel such a strong need to classify the work and make you feel bad if it doesn't fit any existing boxes neatly. Many paradigm-shifting ideas were born by connecting ideas across disciplines. I read a book about Chaos theory recently, and this one is just one of many examples.

I agree. At least where we should be heading at some point of "professional maturity". I think many people though stop at blaming the user instead of trying to understand and guide, because it's just really hard and frustrating work :) And the payoff is not immediate or obvious.

Yeah, exactly. So not doing it explains why so much software totally sucks, especially B2B.
Every job looks so easy... until you actually do it and understand what it really looks like ;) Then those "users never know what they want" and "always complain" turn out to not be true ;)

For some, it may be a horror, for others, maybe some calm after months or years of hearing "AI taking your job" nonsense ;)

Doctorow - if somebody has much bigger wallet than you, then voting with your wallet doesn't look like such a smart idea; some things can be only changed by policy and hoping to influence them by individual actions and choices is doomed to fail.