Upgrades to web sites

Is it OK for a web site to be upgraded and lose your existing data, such that you have to re-register?

Appears that First Great Western (part of the First Group) - have not only altered the website to make it 'better' - but broken it for existing users.

However, maybe it is just me Anyone else had difficulties?

Today, I was trying, for the second time to buy tickets, couldn't remember the password, after the update made me change it, and the password saved in the browser was not the 'right' one anymore.

Clicked the reset password, and waited for the email, and waited, and waited some more. Clicked the reset password again, still waiting.

Gave up waiting created a new account with a new email address and re-registered, as that was quicker than waiting to change the password on the existing account. Well done FGW!

So maybe I it is possible to write a small app that spends its life registering new customers on the FGW site? Well they appear quite willing to make the process of buying a ticket really, really hard for existing customers, so maybe it is possible to make their servers database fill up with large numbers of registered users who fail to use the system. I wonder if that is a slow denial of service attack, that is probably illegal.

Hmm, I guess that might tick some box in the management hierarchy to say that the new Website is working well and is much more usable (no) than the previous one, as look at all the new registered users!

However, that would be a foolish thing to do and I could not countenance that at all, but I am not at all happy with it.

The worst thing is when you confirm your order, it does not give you a break down on the tickets you have purchased, just the total, so I cannot double check that I bought the correct (non-refundable) tickets at the point that I actually buy them, way to go FGW.