Sometimes the truth is not enough

I want computers (and web pages, and people, come to think of it) to be truthful.

That is, when I sign on to my credit card web page, I want it to give me an accurate and truthful list of transactions. I want to see the numbers for my account, not someone else's, and I want current information. And yes, I recognize that some information is not available in real time.

But in addition to truth, I want useful information. And sometimes the exact truth is not enough to be useful.

Case in point: a large bank's "find a branch" web page. I have accounts with said large bank (OK, the bank is Chase) and I can handle most transactions on-line. But not all transactions. For some, I need a branch office.

Now, I live outside of Chase's operating area. The history of my account explains this oddity. I opened the account with a bank called "Wingspan", which was Bank One's foray into online banking. After a few years, Bank One realized that online banking was banking and folded the operation into its regular operation. A few years later, Chase bought Bank One. Voila! I am a Chase customer.

So having a transaction that requires a visit to a branch, I decide to use Chase's web site to find a branch. I call up the page, type in my ZIP Code, and the result page says the following:

"There are no branches within thirty miles of you. If you change your criteria, you may get different results."

I will ignore the "change your criteria" statement, since all I can provide is a ZIP Code. Let's look at the first statement: "There are no branches within thirty miles of you." (The phrasing may be somewhat inexact, but that is the gist of the message.)

I'm sure that this is a true statement. I have no doubt that all of Chase's branche offices are further than thirty miles.

But the statement is not useful. It gives me no indication of where I can find a branch office, close to me or not. It leaves me to guess.

Now, I think I understand how this came to be. Chase designed the "find a branch" web page to report a subset of its branches, not the entire list. And that makes sense. I don't need to see the entire list, just the close ones. And Chase picked thirty miles as a cut-off for the meaning of "close". So a person in "Chase territory" gets a manageable list of perhaps a dozen branches. This behavior is useful.

But when the result list is empty, the behavior is not useful. It leaves me in the cold, with no "lead", nothing to follow, no clue about a branch location.

Truthful, but not useful.