Bureaucracies and web registration

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FDA now requires that we re-register our facility online only. First, you have to create a username and password to get into their system. The password is 8-24 characters, has to have both letters and numbers AND an oddball symbol, like one of the shift critters above the numbers on the keyboard (#$%^&, etc.).

Did that for my company. Diligently wrote down the username and password so that others might be able to get into the system. Logged back into the system using the new username and password (Ghu forbid they should just let you in immediately after creating the account). Tried to do our annual registration. "No registration exists." Huh? Wha? We've had the registration for ten years! Clicked on the other links. Same response. Going through the "register a new facility" would get us a whole new registration number.

No amount of searching on the online re-registration system gets me past this. If you search the registration lists, you can find our 2007 registration very easily. But it doesn't exist, according to this other area of the website. A posting on the site also says to expect delays in responses to e-mail inquiries of up to ten days. Joy.

After wasting an hour on this, and composing an e-mail to ask for help, "#$%^&" is the most polite of my feelings. There's probably one keystroke out of place so that the internal search engine can't find us, but this is not only aggravating, it's potentially damaging to us. Customers, old or potential, are always asking for our registration. WTF am I supposed to tell them?