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When I started having this problem logging into a certain credit card co.'s website beginning with about Firefox 105.0.2 on Fedora 38, I was told by their appar

When I started having this problem logging into a certain credit card co.'s website beginning with about Firefox 105.0.2 on Fedora 38, I was told by their apparently outsourced customer service that I had to use Chrome, which I don't have installed there and couldn't try. Yeah, they wanted me to use LogMeIn so they could fix the problem, too. Right. Firefox on Android was still working, though, loathe as I am to put passwords of any significance on my phone. Doesn't directly address your question, which I'd like to know the answer to as well.

tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
[flagged]
- edmundsauto 3y ago
  Why would they load balance based on user agent? I can’t think of a scenario where that was a reasonable solution.
  - waithuh 3y ago
    Maybe back when standarts where on shaky ground and different versions of the same content was made? I too cant see the performance advantage of it. Deprioritizing less mainstream browsers to mess with the nerds?
    - edmundsauto 3y ago
      Ahhh yes I remember those days... if you wanted to use advanced IE-only features, send to one codebase, if you wanted broader compatability, send to another. Similar to how mobile websites used to work. Thanks for the ideas! Any other hypotheses?
- danShumway 3y ago
  > Completely reasonable and expected response from customer support Absolutely not, it is not reasonable or expected that a credit card company launch a website that doesn't work with Firefox. > Back in the day, my university would load balance based on the browser being used. What on earth?
  - petre 3y ago
    So cancel your credit card with them? They have a reason field on the cancellation form.
    - danShumway 3y ago
      If my own bank/credit card blocked Firefox I would cancel with them. I'm pointing out that this isn't really normal or justifiable. To your specific point about just moving elsewhere, complaining in public about bad industry practices is part of Capitalism and part of how consumers regulate the free market. "Take your business elsewhere instead of complaining" has never really been how this has worked; businesses don't get to opt out of being shamed just because they have a cancellation form, and they shouldn't have any expectation that users will or should be quiet about their bad business practices. The free market is not a replacement for criticism within social spaces; the free market works alongside that criticism and is reinforced by that criticism. Public complaining is an essential part of how consumers within a free market coordinate with each other and educate each other about abusive corporate behavior, and it serves as an additional mechanism alongside boycotts and cancellations to help punish bad actors in the market.
      - petre 3y ago
        > I'm pointing out that this isn't really normal or justifiable. Oh well, what can you do? Vote with your wallet. Tell everyone on HN and Reddit. I agree. But at a certain point it wastes too much of my energy, so I'll basically just cancel cand tell them I can not use their service because reasons, very disappointed, bye.
acomjean 3y ago
Brings me back. My company "upgraded" the time entry system at the beginning of this century.. Issue, our whole dev team was on unix (hpux, Solaris) and used firefox, which didn't work anymore (IE only). They solution to have 3 separate terminals we would "cytrix" into an NT machine to do our time machine on Internet Explorer... Sigh
prussian 3y ago
PayPal's "secure browser" effectively becomes broken by Firefox's first part isolation. that took some time to figure out. In terms of being blocked by CloudFront (not cloudflare),I actually got a website to fix their policies by just emailing their tech support and showing that simple user-agent changes bypasses their policy anyhow.

tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago

[flagged]

edmundsauto 3y ago
Why would they load balance based on user agent? I can’t think of a scenario where that was a reasonable solution.
- waithuh 3y ago
  Maybe back when standarts where on shaky ground and different versions of the same content was made? I too cant see the performance advantage of it. Deprioritizing less mainstream browsers to mess with the nerds?
  - edmundsauto 3y ago
    Ahhh yes I remember those days... if you wanted to use advanced IE-only features, send to one codebase, if you wanted broader compatability, send to another. Similar to how mobile websites used to work. Thanks for the ideas! Any other hypotheses?
danShumway 3y ago
> Completely reasonable and expected response from customer support Absolutely not, it is not reasonable or expected that a credit card company launch a website that doesn't work with Firefox. > Back in the day, my university would load balance based on the browser being used. What on earth?
- petre 3y ago
  So cancel your credit card with them? They have a reason field on the cancellation form.
  - danShumway 3y ago
    If my own bank/credit card blocked Firefox I would cancel with them. I'm pointing out that this isn't really normal or justifiable. To your specific point about just moving elsewhere, complaining in public about bad industry practices is part of Capitalism and part of how consumers regulate the free market. "Take your business elsewhere instead of complaining" has never really been how this has worked; businesses don't get to opt out of being shamed just because they have a cancellation form, and they shouldn't have any expectation that users will or should be quiet about their bad business practices. The free market is not a replacement for criticism within social spaces; the free market works alongside that criticism and is reinforced by that criticism. Public complaining is an essential part of how consumers within a free market coordinate with each other and educate each other about abusive corporate behavior, and it serves as an additional mechanism alongside boycotts and cancellations to help punish bad actors in the market.
    - petre 3y ago
      > I'm pointing out that this isn't really normal or justifiable. Oh well, what can you do? Vote with your wallet. Tell everyone on HN and Reddit. I agree. But at a certain point it wastes too much of my energy, so I'll basically just cancel cand tell them I can not use their service because reasons, very disappointed, bye.

acomjean 3y ago

Brings me back. My company "upgraded" the time entry system at the beginning of this century.. Issue, our whole dev team was on unix (hpux, Solaris) and used firefox, which didn't work anymore (IE only). They solution to have 3 separate terminals we would "cytrix" into an NT machine to do our time machine on Internet Explorer... Sigh

prussian 3y ago

PayPal's "secure browser" effectively becomes broken by Firefox's first part isolation. that took some time to figure out. In terms of being blocked by CloudFront (not cloudflare),I actually got a website to fix their policies by just emailing their tech support and showing that simple user-agent changes bypasses their policy anyhow.