Password Must Contain a Hieroglyph and the Blood of a Firstborn

I'm trying to buy some socks online. I try to create an account. 'Password must be 12 characters, include an uppercase letter, a number, a special character, a non-repeating sequence, and the answer to a riddle.'

Then I type it in, and it says 'Password cannot contain parts of your email address.' Fine. I make up a completely nonsensical string of characters. 'Password has been used before.' How?!

So I reset it. 'New password cannot be the same as the old password.' But you just told me I got the old password wrong! I swear these systems are just designed to make us give up and buy socks locally.