Today I want to provide you with an example of poor User Experience, not from some platform that no one uses, but from X, which cost Elon Musk $40 billion and is now one of the most widely used social networks in the world. Despite having a team dedicated to enhancing user experience every day, they sometimes fail to do so.

I absolutely need to get verified

You all know that on X, there are accounts with a blue checkmark. These are verified accounts that pay for a premium plan, which includes other services. Having the blue checkmark isn't essential, but it definitely provides users with an additional piece of trust toy our account.

These days, I absolutely need to check out DigikoCrypto, an account for a decentralized service that will be launched on October 1st. There are investors, people who believe in the project, and followers who track updates daily. Based on what they see and feel, they will decide on October 1st whether to invest in this project or not, with a market capitalization around $500,000.

It's really important for my team that DigikoCrypto at least gets the blue checkmark. There's also the gold one, but that would be a different conversation.

Ok, so let's add a phone number to get verified

To be verified, you need to add a phone number to your account. This process is simple and quick, in theory. I go to account settings:

In Your Account, I go to Account Information:

Asking the password again (😂)

Asking to add your number:

Asking to validate it

Sending a message to a +44 number (around 0.25€ 😂)

Waiting the damn time (2-3 minutes, not 15 sec)

Getting this screen for the 1000 time

Let's ask some help to the Help Center

I can't add my phone number to my account in any way, and most importantly, there's no information about the type of error. Having a service issue or not receiving my message? It could be anything, and I have no way of knowing.

Who better than customer support to help me? So, I visit X's Help Center and make a shocking discovery: there's no way to contact anyone who can resolve my issue.

The Help Center is currently structured like this: we provide you with all the possible information to solve your problem, and only in some cases do we give you the option to fill out a form to be contacted by customer support.

My problem doesn't fall into these cases. There are things like privacy, copyright, account hacks, but if you look at the phone number issue, there's no form.

I have already tried to contact customer support using topics that were somewhat similar, and my case was simply closed.

Moreover, the information on how to add a phone number is so outdated that it refers to the old method of verifying a phone number, where you receive a message rather than sending it to this +44 number with all the related issues.

A Terrible User Experience

The first problem is that you don't provide an alternative way to verify the phone number, after deliberately reversing the process just for cost-saving reasons. Before, I would receive the confirmation message and it always arrived, as it does with all other services. Now, I have to send the message, pay for this operation, and if it fails, pay again and again until I realize it will never work. If you had provided an alternative method in case of a failed attempt, perhaps you could have solved the issue.

Then comes the Help Center, where I seek assistance, and I find myself in a maze overwhelmed with informations, and the only stuff I need isn't even there because it hasn't been updated. I expect, as a user, to be able to contact someone because you haven't provided the tools for me to manage on my own, but you've decided to remove this option for simple cost reasons.

I've tried everything, even consulting X and Reddit where there are thousands of other users with the same problem, and after 7 days, I'm still unable to do it despite trying everything. I've spent 17 euros on SMS so far trying to verify my phone number, and I still haven't got it done.

How I solved the problem

Yes, at one point, I solved the problem, and believe me, it was after way too much time (and money spent on SMS).

How did I do it? I don’t know. Or rather, I can only tell you that I tried 5 different phone numbers and only the fifth one worked immediately, while the others kept failing the verification process.

Why? Honestly, I don’t know. You have to consider that maybe your provider doesn’t send SMS to international numbers because you have no remaining credit or due to some configuration issue. And even if they do send them, it doesn’t mean they’ll be received for some unknown reason.

So, the solution is to try different numbers until one is finally accepted by X based on no logical criteria.

Good luck, and believe me, I understand you!