Bad but unavoidable websites

I asked this over at stackoverflow, but was kicked to this site instead: -

What are some websites that are really bad (at performance, design, usability etc) that you would rather not use, but are compelled to because of necessity or lack of alternatives?

Post each example as a separate answer. I think we can use this to find out what is the most commonly hated "bad but unavoidable website".

From web app chefsmart

• Wizards of the Coast's DCI site for Magic the Gathering

  Might have been good once upon a time, but just feels outdated and is incredibly hard to navigate.

  From Covar

• LinkedIn

  Badly designed interface, and slooooow!

  Brian Knoblauch : Hmmm, maybe it's your Internet connection. It's always fast for me.

  warren : really? I think the interface makes a lot of sense, and it's rarely (if ever) slow for me

  neilfein : An update of Chrome has partially fixed the speed issue; see [this question](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/5609/how-can-i-speed-up-linkedin-on-the-client-end/5622) for (slightly) more information. I still think the interface is pretty terrible.
  From neilfein

• Facebook

  Design keeps changing (not necessarily for the best), but it's very useful for keeping contact with some friends and it's quite helpful in organizing events.

  Michael Haren : I think Facebook is pretty elegant, actually, and very fast

  GoodEnough : @Michael Configuring Facebook (especially privacy settings) has been a nightmare for a long time. It looks nice, but it's not a good example of good usability in my opinion.

  Sruly : @michael What facebook have you been using? Must not be the same one I use!

  Bobby Jack : If this doesn't win I'll be amazed given that it's completely unavoidable and utterly bad. It used to be quite a good example of a simple, usable site but it's now got so big and complicated that it's just painful. Just try to explain to someone the difference between a user, a 'Page', a group, posting a status, posting something on your wall, posting something on something else's wall, ... you'll go insane. Twitter is an excellent example of taking one thing and doing it very simply, but facebook is just a big, ugly, kitchen-sink that's trying to take over the world, goddammit!

  Wayne Werner : Facebook used to be good, until they tried to be MySpace.

  Kubi : facebook keeps it simple and stupid which is good.
  From GoodEnough

• Centerpoint Energy

  It's the site for my Gas company. It's basically the most terrible website on the face of the planet - trying to figure out how to pay my bill once a month was insane.

  Then I remembered I get free bill pay from my bank, so I don't touch their site any more. Centerpoint was bad enough that I actually complained.

  Vortico : Do you have a link? Not everyone uses this.

  Wayne Werner : Link done. four
  From Wayne Werner

• GoDaddy.com

  Very slooooooooooooooow... (but good deals though)

  Wayne Werner : Better deals with smaller providers... and probably just as likely to get a date with the hot GoDaddy girls.

  lostInTransit : I agree, godaddy's interface sucks but sure has some of the best deals.

  warren : I am completely away from that site now (unless I buy a domain form someone who uses godaddy) - I use pairnic
  From

• Twitter

  The bad thing about is that it's down couple of times a day. You can avoid it by using some other micro-blogging site, but twitter is simply No.1 in micro-blogging.

  From Supowski

• The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is the worst site I have ever used. It's very confusing.

  But necessary (mostly for parents).

  From Michael Haren

• My Banking Website.

  Slow, and crash often. Crash in the sense that the page will fail to load, and then I have to login again.

  Bobby Jack : I think you can probably widen this one - try replacing "My" with "Any" :-)

  Wayne Werner : Especially now that there's some dumb law in the US that pretends that having a picture on the bank website or a security phrase or an extra password (read security question) is actually going to help. Annoying and useless! (A man in the middle attack will take any script kiddie worth his botnet less than a day to throw together.)

  Darryl Hein : Time to switch banks...or move to Canada. Most of them are awesome up here. Check out http://www.tdcanadatrust.com/

  gbroiles : The security pictures won't help stop a man-in-the-middle attack but they might help versus a totally fake version of the bank's website, where the bad guy doesn't even bother to copy the bank's website in realtime but just makes a static workalike copy to collect username/password pairs from the unsuspecting.
  From Ngu Soon Hui

• Court Register of Companies

  One in the line of government sites that has no accessibility, nor design, nor elegance but you have to visit it often to find various information needed to sustain a company in Croatia.

  Awful.

  From rebus

• Network Solutions

  I find the new network solutions site to be terrible.. takes forever to find and then subsequently change DNS settings plus they've invented their own nomenclature for everything just to make it even more difficult.

  From Thechoyce

• joker.com
  sourceforge.net
  oracle.com

  Wayne Werner : should be 1 per answer - I agree about sourceforge. They used to be fairly clean but now it's just kludge.

  thunderror : +1 for sourceforge! They definitely need to improve.
  From Alex DeLarge

• Maumelle Parks and Rec

  Because apparently it's still 1990.

  ricebowl : Terrible, yes; but unavoidable?

  warren : wow... a web page from 1990? Someone should write Mr Berners-Lee
  From Wayne Werner

• My company's intranet.

  Right out of the late 90s - IE only.

  From chris

• My online banking site (which will remain nameless).

  But why do the majority of online banking sites suck so much?

  Jakub : being a Canadian, my TD online banking is superb, my US equivalent is not even close to the same level. Not sure why US banks don't have great security/gui/functionality for web accessibility?

  Jon Hadley : @Jakub What's that got to to with being Canadian? ;)

  Benjol : Probably not the same bank, but the same answer unfortunately. I wonder if the fact that I seriously consider changing banks solely because of this means that I'm a hopeless geek...

  Jon Hadley : @Benjol - Ditto! Thinking of moving just because they don't have any export options.

  Smandoli : The monthly printed report on my checking account is very badly done. So much so that the web site, though poor, seems a great improvement. How, do many bank apps have a color scheme this bad? https://enterprise2.openbank.com/fi60056/retail/individualLogon

  Chris S : HSBC doesn't suck

  Brian Knoblauch : Ugh, my bank's online system is very full featured, easy to use, and almost unusably SLOOOOOOW. I can watch it download all 90 jpgs on every page flip. Not sure WHY there are 90 jpgs on every single page...
  From Jon Hadley

• www.irctc.co.in

  Why -- Indispensable for anyone traveling by train in India. It is badly designed (which could have been forgiven since it is a govt website), but its gravest sin is that it crawls under user load and transactions fail frequently. That cannot be forgiven, but I have to return to the site whenever I need tickets :(

  From agribankercoder

• Board Game Geek

  http://boardgamegeek.com/

  It could be soooo much better.

  From Liggy

• all Singapore government websites are suck (only support IE6). But i have to use them everyday :( http://vinova.sg

  Ngu Soon Hui : Government websites generally suck
  From dinhhai

• Craigslist.com

  When it comes to selling/buying locally, it's still the best site.

  George Marian : I can't help but disagree. The site is simple and straight forward. What about it is bad? (It sure doesn't look very pretty, but is it that bad?)

  Jin : I'm not talking about the visual, I can live with that. I often travel between VA and NC. So I'd like to search the same items in both places. The way the site is set up, I have to click different state, choose vicinity then type in the same item multiple times.

  warren : @Jin - you can also do a google search to craigslist thusly: "what-you-want site:raleigh.craigslist.com site:richmond.craigslist.com"

  Jin : @warren great tip!
  From Jin

• ANGEL Learning Management Suite

  I'm having to take several online courses using this system and it has turned out to be hands down the worst web application I've ever been subjected to. Random things pop up, nested scroll bars seem to be used as a design element and the instructors have no clue how to use it. A real disaster payed for by Washington state taxpayers!

  For examples of the brilliance that don't require logging in, click the "More info..." link near the login box or check out the lovely PDA icon in the bottom left.

  From Hélène Martin

• who ever said craigslist, I d not agree. One of the most simple sites with easy to use. Excellent site.

  ricebowl : This would be a comment (not an answer), surely?
  From vinay

• The German Federal Labour Office. I had to use it a lot in the past and I really came to hate it. It disregards a ton of web standards (for instance broken "back" button). It was even featured on TDWTF. I feel sorry for the poor souls that are forced to visit this site on a daily basis.

  From mafutrct

• Any UK local government site, here's a sample

  • http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/

  • http://www.brent.gov.uk/

  • http://www.norwich.gov.uk/

  They look like they're designed by someone who has just picked up Frontpage.

  From Chris S

• Tumblr

  It is a great application but it's one of the slowest application to administer. If you email a post or picture it can take hours for this post to show-up. Blog template selection is very limited.

  I can't believe someone like Gary Vaynerchuk uses it for his personal website.

  From citadelgrad