Following on from http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2006/02/18/paypal-and-firefox/ – I sent a helpdesk request to paypal a good few hours before that blog entry and, at the time of writing, still havent had any reply from paypal. This is a shame as I was hoping to be able to put their side of the argument in, but never mind.In a nutshell, I have been trying to log on to Paypal pretty much every few hours since Friday (yesterday) and, as I use FireFox as the browser of choice, each time I have been presented with a major problem. It seems that they have some sort of “browser sniffer” and it is getting the wrong idea about Fire Fox (or at least my version of it).

Each time I go to the site I have been presented with a screen that looks like the image (shown) which really makes me suspect they have the wrong idea about browser detection. (The small image here leads to a larger one – 91kb – which shows the details better 🙂 ). Now if this was someones hope page about their cat or interest in cross stitch this wouldnt be a major problem. However, paypal is an international brand which is trying to take over the “micropayment” world and position itself (as part of ebay) as an integral part of people’s lives. To make things worse, Paypal is a company which only exists on the internet! You would think it would have a better understanding of what is and isnt “right.”
How hard can it be to get a b****y decently designed website which actually works accross different browers and operating systems. I dread to think how bad things for users of screenreaders or text platforms must find the site.

One telling point is when I tried to get a message to the help desk. First off they have a “help” system where you have to select a category and subcategory before you can ask your question. At best this would be mental but they obviously have a strict idea of what questions can and cant be asked. There is no “other” box so if, like me, your question is not something they have anticipated (which is normally the case in helpdesk questions – if they can anticipate it, deal with it before it is asked!) its a nightmare.

In the end I got a close as possible and tried to send a message to the help desk. As is common they ask a lot of questions (who is your ISP, what is your OS etc) but again here we see a sign of the blinkered approach. The options for what is your browser were IE, AOL, Netscape, WebTV and Other. Shocking

I suspect the existence of Fire Fox has escaped the mind of whatever fool Paypal have paid to design their backend systems. The sad thing is, I bet they feel really clever at their “High tech” browser sniffer. The morons.