HOWTO: Retrieve your Radio Userland serial number if you've lost it.

Christopher reminded me that I haven't mentioned that I found my Radio Userland serial number, so I now have a fully-functional, perfectly legal Radio website running right now. Note that this was 31 days after first sending Userland's customer service email address a request for this very information. 31 days and no response. None. Zero, zilch, nada. None. And how helpful were they on Monday when I finally found it. Well, notice what I said there: I finally found it. I still haven't heard word one from them. Here's a mini-HOWTO.... HOWTO: Retrieve your Radio Userland serial number if you've lost it. (Long form)

1. Get the credit card you ordered RU with. You'll need the last 5 digits.
2. Remember which of your email addresses you gave them.
3. Go to this URL: http://radio.userland.com/store
4. Look down at the bottom of the page. Carefully, it's in small type. It says: "If you need to retrieve your serial number, click here."
5. Click the little thing that says "click here"
6. You will be presented with a six-step list, which again will tell you to click here.
7. Click the Customer Service link.
8. Click the little magnifying glass icon. That means search. (As if I use a magnifying glass to search for things.)
9. The new page asks you to enter your order number and your password. Ugh! I, of course, don't recall entering any password.
10. Look at the bottom of the screen where it says: Also You Can Search for Your Order by Customer number or Email address.
    

    If you don't mind, I'll interrupt the saga here to ask a question. What are you more likely to remember:

    • your order number and your password,
    • your customer number and your password, or
    • your email address and the last 5 digits of your credit card?

    All who picked email address and credit card number, go to the head of the class. Now for extra credit, answer me this. If you were designing a system that you wanted people to use successfully and with minimal trouble, which of the three choices above would you make the default (the one people saw immediately)?

    Time's up. Yes, you would choose the email address choice. Go to the head of the class. Digital River, on the other hand, which designed this system will need to stay after school to clean the erasers.

    OK, we're in the home stretch.
11. Enter your email address and those last 5 digits. Click the FIND button.
12. You will be wisked immediately to the page that tells you important things like when you bought RU8, your address, your customer number, your order number (important because you may wish to use the other login options sometime later. Oh, yeah, you don't have a password. Dang). Oh and kinda crunched up in the corner is the magic number. The serial number.

    

    Phew.
13. Now you'll want to go to your Radio Serial Number page. Radio has to be running, BTW.

Less entertaining, perhaps, but quicker is the short form: HOWTO: Retrieve your Radio Userland serial number if you've lost it. (Short form)

1. Get that credit card and remember your email address, there will be a quiz
2. Click here.
3. Quiz time: enter email address and last 5 digits of the credit card.
4. Click FIND.
5. Copy the Radio serial number from the bottom corner.
6. Click here.
7. Paste your serial number and click Submit.

This is also available on my EditThisPage blog.