My Claude Sign-Up Story
Is Claude the Worst Gen AI Tool?
Today, I want to see how different gen AI tools work with the same prompt and write an article on that. This should have been a very straightforward experiment, but turned in to an unpleasant user experience.
The culprit? Claude.
While tools like ChatGPT made signing up a breeze, Claude had me jumping through hoops and not the fun kind. Here is how it went with my unfortunate attempt to sign up with Claude.
The Sign-Up Saga Begins
First, I decided to take the Google sign-in route — a simple enough choice, right? Wrong. After linking my account, I landed on a page asking for my phone number and birth date. Easy peasy, or so I thought.
Then, I hit the first roadblock: the birth date format.
As someone used to the dd/mm/yyyy format, I didn’t even notice that Claude wanted me to use mm/dd/yyyy. It wasn’t until I accidentally entered a “month” greater than 12 that I realized something was off. Did the website kindly notify me of the error? Nope. It just wiped my input clean, leaving me to scratch my head in confusion. After carefully rereading the form, I finally caught my mistake and moved on.
Verification Code? Not So Fast
At this point, I thought the worst was behind me. I was wrong. After submitting my birth date and receiving the verification text, I entered the code confidently — only to be greeted by this gem:
“This phone number has been used too many times.”
Cue the frustration. Reminded me I did try to sign up with Claude in the past and failed.
A second error message followed, cheerfully informing me, “Code verification failed. Try again.” I tried again. And again. A quick search revealed that I wasn’t alone — others had also faced the same experience. It felt like Claude’s engineers were playing an elaborate prank on all of us. Or may be they just don’t care enough to find some competent front end developers.
Lessons in User Experience
The irony of this whole ordeal? Claude is an advanced generative AI tool, yet its sign-up process feels like a relic from the past. When even the basics of form validation and user-friendly design are missing, it’s hard not to question the priorities of the team behind the tool.
ChatGPT, by comparison, was a breeze to get started with. Within minutes, I had my account ready and was already testing its capabilities. It’s a stark reminder that no matter how sophisticated your product is, a bad entry point can turn users away.
Dear Claude, We Need to Talk
Generative AI has immense potential, but it’s only as good as the people who can access it. If Claude wants to win over more users, fixing the sign-up process should be a top priority. Clearer instructions, better error messages, and a smoother verification system would be a great start.
Until then, I guess I’ll stick with tools that don’t make me feel like I’m solving a puzzle just to log in.
