I recently attempted to take an online defensive driving class in an attempt to lower my car insurance. I don’t pay a ton of money for insurance, but having a discount seems worth the cost to enroll in the course.
It didn’t go so well.
One of the first steps was to call in and repeat a sequence of numbers so they could recognize my voice and confirm it was me as I ran through each of the units. I repeated the numbers and began my lessons.
Each page within the lesson has a timer, which is the minimum amount of time you can spend before moving on to the next page. The idea being that the user will read the content instead of jumping to the tests and completing the whole class in a few minutes.
I read each page and clicked through, scored 10 out of 10 on the first exam. Not exactly rocket science.
As I continued through each unit I was prompted occasionally to dial the number on screen and confirm it was still me by repeating a sequence of numbers. Unfortunately, each time I called, the voice recognition software didn’t recognize me. I failed twice and as a result, I had to start the course again.
By this point I was frustrated with the amount of time dedicated and the lack of consistency from the phone system. I thought I could bring myself to start again, but it just hasn’t happened. I have heard similar stories of frustration, but I also know there have been plenty of drivers to successfully complete such courses.
I would love to see a better system for such courses in the future. Repeating the sequences just confirms a consistent caller, not that the caller is the person receiving credit for the course. They may as well use Facebook authentication as their log in mechanism.