Insurance companies suck!

[elfs]

I am so tempted to mail this to my former "benefits provider:"

Attention, "corporate service provider" schmucks! The following notice on your website is not only a sign of incompetence, assholiness, and a general lack of concern for your customer's well-being, at this point it indicates an almost dysfunctional malevolence on your part:

This site has been optimized for use with Microsoft Internet Explorer browser version 5.5 or higher.
Please check with the Microsoft Website at www.microsoft.com for a browser upgrade.

No, I won't check with Microsoft, as nobody in my house is running a Microsoft-based OS. It's all Macintosh and Linux here, guys. 22% of the home user market is now non-MS. You are failing one-fifth of your market. Your website doesn't work at all with Firefox, looks horrible in Safari, and boots users out the first time some MS-only exploit fails. Get yourself a better collection of designers and developers.

Hell, hire me.

Comments

[jenk]

Another tester was ranting about a financial institution that refused to support anything but IE 6 or 7.

Her: "Uh, Macintosh?"
PTB: "There's Mac IE."
Her: "Which is IE 5."
PTB: "Uh...."

OTOH, my company built a major intranet site (including access to benefits info) for a major, major internet company. We included compat testing for Mac and Windows IE, Firefox, Safari (this was pre-Chrome) and included a note that we can do Linux but it'll cost more. The client insisted we strip it down to IE because it's internal and they didn't want to pay that much. They also insisted we use some freeware components that only work in IE to save money.

Two days after launch: "The site doesn't work in Firefox!" *headdesk*

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Her: "Uh, Macintosh?"
PTB: "There's Mac IE."
Her: "Which is IE 5."
PTB: "Uh...."

To which I'd also add, "and Microsoft doesn't even support it anymore, not since 2005."

[jenk]

Ayup.

[norikos-author.livejournal.com]

>Two days after launch: "The site doesn't work in Firefox!" *headdesk*

The first thing that popped into my head on seeing this was a quote from a bank commercial a few years back: "There'll be a small fee for that."

After all, now they're asking for something outside of the agreed-upon scope....

[jenk]

Indeed. Of course, they also paid for time we spent on a conference call walking the client committee through the contract with all the strikethroughs through "redevelop XYZ component to be non-IE-specific" and "test in Firefox and Safari on Windows and Mac" and so forth.

We ended up doing some *partial fixes* which cost more than they'd "saved" on the original plan. But that all went into the maintenance budget, so the original was "under budget".

Oh...and this client was NOT Microsoft. ;)

[funos.livejournal.com]

If there's a way to say it more diplomatically, I'd say hell yes, make a pitch at them!

[featheredfrog.livejournal.com]

You tried Opera with a MSIE ID-String?

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Yep! I won't use IE anything except in the most urgent of cases. And checking my health insurance is not remotely close enough to make me use it.

[mundens.livejournal.com]

Do it!

I usually do this, though without the "hire me" bit, often I get apologetic emails, and promises that they are working to fix it.

In this case...

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

...I see no reason not to tack on the 'Hire Me' bit. What's the worst that can happen? They say yes? :-)

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

Heck, write then a nicer letter saying you discovered some problems with their website and that you'd be happy to make corrections for them. Offer them a consult or a temp-to-hire kinda thing so they can see how good you are if they don't want to commit to a direct hire.

Ya never know...