From the web evangelism surrealism department

Thursday, 17. November 2005, 18:56:51

Phone call to AOL support person:

- A page on your site does not work in my browser, it constantly re-loads

(AOL person types in dictated URL. Argh, why is there no E-mail support...)

- It works fine here

- Well, that's presumably because you use IE. This error in the page does not happen in IE. The script detects that you are not using IE and sends you to this page, in other words causes a reload if you ARE on this page already..

- The MyMobile site will only work with IE.

- But this page is MEANT FOR non-IE users. It contains information that is inaccessible to the people you actually want to see it, because of an error in your script.

- Well, we have decided to target Internet Explorer so if you use another browser..

Rest of discussion snipped..

He finally promised to "file a ticket". The error still there months later...

Imagine staying up late to catch U.S. working hours, queueing in an expensive overseas phone call, spending ten minutes of your life trying to persuade someone that something is a problem - to try to make them fix a ridiculous page saying "please use a different browser".... Take my word for it, web evangelism can be pure surrealism.

And I still don't have useful contacts at AOL

The definition of "useful" being someone I could call to argue that Opera shouldn't be sent to that page in the first place.

var arguments; in function body ignored in IE and FireFoxSony Australia Milonic menu un-licensed

Comments

Damn AOL. Crappy company has crappy site and crappy browser. But here in US so many users just used to use AOL. AOL for them is internet. Damn one more time.

By FataL, # 17. November 2005, 21:52:34

When Sprint.com redid their site, it didn't work properly in Opera. I was on the phone with them for about a half an hour (after after being transfered multiple times) trying to explain to them that there are other browsers out there, they just don't get it.

By danigoldman, # 17. November 2005, 22:28:30

Maybe if you visit their site with IE they will give you some contact info?
:-)

By lsaplai, # 17. November 2005, 22:58:06

It's a bug in their site... I just opened it in a new window (tab), switched back and forgot about it... their fault if it eats their traffic

By wrtlprnft, # 18. November 2005, 03:14:45

Broken sites should be worked around with UA spoofing and user JS. If they don't fix it, then someone else should.

I think there should be some place to share user JS for specific broken sites on my.opera.com, like there is already a place to share skins and keyboard setups.

By feldgendler, # 18. November 2005, 04:55:49

Originally posted by danigoldman:

When Sprint.com redid their site, it didn't work properly in Opera. I was on the phone with them for about a half an hour (after after being transfered multiple times) trying to explain to them that there are other browsers out there, they just don't get it.

We can only hope their pages will be terribly broken in IE7.

By scipio, # 18. November 2005, 08:45:21

@feldgendler? Just look there: http://userjs.org/ .

Greetings,

janbar.[img]http://janbar18.w.interia.pl/Rozowy/usmiechh.gif

By janbar, # 18. November 2005, 22:22:35

miscoded