So I'm paying my Chase bill on line, and I log in with Firefox, as usual. It takes me to my account page, but any attempted link from that page (e.g., to actually pay the bill) yields a timeout error indicating that the page has gone too long without activity. Which is nonsense, because I only just logged in. After wasting a long time getting through to someone in tech support on the phone, she asks me who my ISP is.

Me: What difference does it make who my ISP is?

Her: We need to know to diagnose this.

Me: [scratching head] Ummm...OK. It's Bell South.

Her: So what browser do they use?

Me: ?? What browser do they use? They don't use a browser. They're an ISP. I use a browser.

Her: When you log in to Bell South, what browser do they make you use?

Me: Log in to Bell South? With a browser? Why would I do that?

Her: How do you log in?

Me: I don't log in. I have a permanent connection. It's called DSL. It's called broadband. You should try it, I hear it's all the rage.

Her: Well, do you use a browser?

Me: [long silence, as steam slowly starts to waft out of my ears] Why yes, yes, I do use a browser, funny you should ask. Someone told me once it's how one accesses stuff on the World Wide Web. I find it handy, occasionally.

Her: What browser do you use?

Me: I usually use Mozilla. Why didn't you ask me that in the first place, instead of giving me the third degree about my ISP and how I log into it, which is a subject as far removed from the problem, as far as I can see, as the price of beef jerky in Tibet?

Her: I've never heard of that browser. Do you have Internet Explorer?

Me: Yes, I do. I tend to avoid using it, unless someone is sufficiently user hostile as to create a web site that doesn't use standard HTML. Should I try that?

Her: Yes, go ahead, I'll wait.

Of course, it works fine with IE. I issue a complaint.

Me: I've been paying bills for years with a Mozilla browser. You seem to have broken your site, since I can no longer do so.

Her: Oh, we don't support any browsers other than IE and Netscape.

At this point, I've wasted enough time on this, thank her, and hang up.

Sounds like the customer support person who told me that, since the marking lines for my phone line ended in the middle of my backyard, that's as far as they must be run. Because, apparently, my phone line is run wirelessly from the middle of my yard to the phone company's box on the other side of the alley...

You know, I'm as much for bashing stupid "tech support" people as the next guy, but somehow I doubt that this particular line of attack is going to yield a solution to whatever the problem is.

Even on my Mac I use Mozilla for a lot, and occasionally I get this problem. I understand not officially supporting any number of browsers - testing against all possible variations is annoying, and a lot of places don't want to spend the money.

But in general, many of these places violate the 'principle of least astonishment' - a program should NEVER 'die' or fail to work as expected without a message. Putting in code to test for acceptable browser id strings with an 'else display visual rasberry' isn't that difficult.

Since the problems are usually minor, a better solution would be to display "We don't support your browser; understanding you do this at your own risk, would you like to try anyway?"

So let me see, it's ok for YOUR website to be restrictive about browsers, but Chase must make their secure login be compatible with whatever anyone wants to use? Sorry, as much as I can't stand Chase, I'm on their side on this one. I use Firefox, but there are some websites that only work with IE, and I'm not enough of a religious fanatic about OS's and browsers to want to become as uselessly arrogant as you seem to be. I thought we all knew there are a series of dumb questions that get asked by tech support, aimed at the vast majority of people, and they work (in fact, if you read your own transcript,and had been a tad more understanding of what the call center is used to dealing with, it would have fixed your problem after the first or second question). You make good points most of the time, but this time, you got what you deserved.

My web site is restrictive with browsers? How so?

So, you're saying that it's asking too much for a web site to be compliant with established HTML standards?

And I'm sorry, but I can't imagine why someone would decide to ask what browser my ISP uses to log in, when that has nothing to do with using a web site, and few ISPs require browsers in order to log in (or these days, even require a login except when setting up the service initially). It's a nutty series of question, applicable to I have no idea who.

The first question should be, "What browser are you using?" If they are so clueless as to not know the answer to that, then you might go into the twenty-questions idiot mode. To do it right out of the box is senseless.

I once had a similar problem logging on to my bank's site with Mozilla or Firefox on Linux. Dealings with customer service (via email; I won't wait 30 minutes on hold) produced the typical useless results. I found a mailto link for the guys that run the site and pinged them. They had a bit of a clue and actually fixed things. Be happy for small victories.

Your typical customer service agent shouldn't be expected to resolve quasi-technical issues like "My browser doesn't work at your site". Their bosses should tell them to forward those calls somewhere else. That's not going to happen, of course, as long as most customer service units are rated on how many people they "assist" each day. Translated, that means they're incentivized to get you off the phone as fast as possible.

I like mindlessly bashing Microsoft as much as the next guy, but there are genuine security problems here with IE. IMHO, IE is too insecure for banking, credit cards, or anything else that you want to keep secret or private. Actually, IE is probably too insecure to run on such a system except in the special case when one is installing Microsoft software. That is, if you use your system for anything serious, then don't use IE for any sort of web browsing.

Mozilla and its open source variants appear to me to be more secure than IE. If you run into a site that requires IE, try Opera, I have found it to be a good replacement for IE. It doesn't always emulate IE completely, but it probably will work.

Incidentally, it appears to me that Chase hasn't thought through the implications of a web site that uses IE-only features. I think it's only a matter of time till someone comes up with malware that can install itself through a loophole in IE and log bank transactions. What is Chase's liability under such circumstances?

Hmm... That is seriously annoying, and for some reason bank sites are prone to that.

One fix is to use a Firefox extention called "User-Agent switcher" which can allow Firefox to fool the site by telling the site that it is IE. Often these sites are poorly coded, and will work fine if your browser pretends to be IE.

Also, the solution to the idiot support staff who've not hear of Mozilla and/or Firefox is to tell them that you are using "the latest version of Netscape" (Netscape 6, 7 and 8 are just rebranded versions of mozilla) That usually gives them something they can understand (read: look up on their script)

Finally, sites like this should _not_ be IE only. There are people like me, who do not _own_ a computer capable of running IE (Note that I'm not counting the Mac version of IE, as it's a) very old, and b) not really the same as windows IE. Firefox usually works better on IE-ish websites than Mac-IE does) Firefox has around 9% of the general market, plus a higher percentage of heavy net users, and that is growing at around 1% a _month_. Plus IE is terribly insecure. I develop webapps (used in-house at a large company) for a living, and the standard reply for weird browser issues interfering with our apps is "use Firefox" , as those issues are almost always related to IE spyware/virus problems.

This isn't an issue of being an OS zealot, this is simply called "meeting the needs of your customer" .
A bank with any sense would not design their driveway so 10% of their customer's cars can't get through, they shouldn't do the same on their website.

Well, I hate tech support in general, especially when ignorant ones like that act like they're the ones that know everything and YOU'RE the idiot.

What's really annoying is tech support at work. You have a problem, and you know how to fix it, but you have to go through the tech organization and talk to several clueless people before the guy that knows what to do is assigned to fix your problem. That, and it's like pulling teeth to get admin privs...

If I was a tech support guy, I would always assume that, given that you are calling tech support in the first place, the caller is an ignorant technoweenie, and would assume such until the caller proves otherwise.

Just imagine all the stupid peope calling in that these guys have to deal with...

Certainly agree with the above (nice reading) comments. I, too, have sat back and growled at the inept techs that I have dealt with in trying to find the reason if there is one, that Chase does not use Firefox - and this is all of a sudden - I have used the same browser for credit card payments for years and had no problem, but the old saying is: a new broom sweeps clean. Well,I am irritated to the point that I am entertaining the thought that another bank could service my credit cards, I am going to inquire if this can be done without moving a mountain.