I’ve pointed out some flaws on Verizon Wireless’ web site before, and I recently found yet another example of a flaw on the Verizon Wireless web site that could have been prevented with proper browser testing.
I visited the Verizon Wireless web site to log into my account and pay my bill online. I clicked on the “My Account” tab at the top of the Verizon Wireless homepage and got a page with the following login box:
After typing the User Name and Password into the corresponding fields, I received the following screen:
As you can imagine, this caused some confusion. Did I enter my information incorrectly? Is the feature not working currently? I had questions and picked up the phone to call customer support.
The customer service representative told me that the login was only compatible with Internet Explorer, and since I was using Firefox, I would have to switch to Internet Explorer.
Of course, this error on the Verizon Wireless web site could have been prevented with a few hours of browser testing. Here are my findings:
| Browser/Version/Platform | Result |
|---|---|
| IE 6, Windows (~46% of people online) | Success after about a 7 second wait. |
| IE 7, Windows (~20% of people online) | Success after about a 2 second wait. |
| Firefox 2.0, Mac and Windows (~18% of people online) | Failure; After clicking Login button, I get the “account temporarily unavailable” page. |
| Safari 2.0, Mac (~2% of people online) | Failure; After clicking Login button, screen is refreshed. User Name and Password fields are blank, I was not logged in and there are no visible signs of success or failure. |
As you can see, 20% of web site users are likely to fail at logging into their Verizon Wireless account when using the form on the “My Account” page.
Fact: Not testing your web site on Safari and Firefox may cause failure for 20% of your customers.
According to Compete.com, VerizonWirless.com receives about 10.9 million visitors per month. While there’s no way to know what percentage of these visitors log into their Verizon Wireless accounts, let’s say for the sake of argument that 10% of site visitors log into their account (or attempt to).
In this case, that’s 1.9 million people per month attempting to log into their accounts. According to web browser usage statistics, that means that 380,000, or 20% of 1.9 million, fail at logging into their accounts each month.
Imagine the savings Verizon Wireless could realize at their call center if they properly tested this application and took the time to make it usable on the most common browsers.
October 14th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Bill Rowell says:
Rick,
I saw the same thing earlier this week when looking at phone upgrade options and I just closed the browser and said forget it. I had decided it’d be more productive to just go to the store down the street.
-Bill
October 14th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Catherine says:
Thank you for this post. I recently purchased a Mac, and was unable to log into Myaccount and after 10 minutes searching their website for a listing of which browsers they supported, I gave up after not finding anything. It was only after I found your posting that I confirmed my suspicions. How ridiculous that anyone with a Mac (not to mention 20% of potential customers) is unable to used Verizon’s webpage.
November 5th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Frustrated verizon customer says:
I finally found the “IE Tab” extension for Firefox that will allow Verizon’s website to work within FF. Just right click on the page and select “View in IE tab” and it will work like a charm!
http://ietab.mozdev.org/
November 21st, 2007 at 10:04 am
Frustrated says:
Unfortunately, “IE Tab” only works with Firefox on Windows, and essentially bypasses the point of using Firefox in the first place.
Verizon has still not fixed this as of November 21, 2007, and now that I’m running 64-bit Linux I am NOT going back to Windows and therefore can’t access their site from my main machine from which I conduct business.
So, the bottom line is that if Verizon doesn’t fix it, this customer of six years is bailing out. No, pressing #PMT on my keypad is not an acceptable alternative. Verizon, are you listening?
November 29th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
liafail says:
I have this same problemn with Opera; masking as IE does not work.
I have used Opera to access my account for a few years with no problem; this failure to allow Opera is recent, possibly a web site upgrade wherein bugs are introduced? Or purposely supporting MS?
January 5th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Annoyed says:
Thanks for the nice write up.
The least they could do is be honest and say non-IE browsers are not supported and their plan for support in the future. Redirecting to the last version of the site would be optimal.
I didn’t realize their was no FF support until today when I tried to login again, assuming the last failure was temporary like it said. This affected the VZ bottom line since last time I was trying to switch phones, and I was forced to call customer service instead. That’s just plain stupid on their part.
February 9th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Christie Maness says:
I am using Internet Explorer 7.0.6 with Windows Vista and I can not get into my account either! It simply refreshes the screen and then it closes my browser!!!!!!!!!
March 10th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Doug says:
All the Verizon TV commercials tell me that I have the largest network behind me. Instead of spending all that money to blow smoke up my butt, I wish they would use some to restore service for FF users.
I have been a customer for eight years and have decided to terminate my service as soon as my contract expires.
Everyone needs to call Verizon and have your account deleted (user name/password). Also request to be notified when FF is working again.
If that 20 % acted maybe, just maybe Verizon will act.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Tritech says:
As an avid computer user and pro-Linux enthusiast, I am disgusted that my online account access has been broken for over half a year. This is inexcusable and I am spreading the word. I’ll get Verizon’s director of public relations on the phone if I have to, but I’m fed up and won’t put up with their choice to lock me into Microsoft’s software. If Vista is any indication, Microsoft, is going to go the way of the dinosaur because they have completely lost touch with their customers, and apparently the cuckoo vapors have hit Verizon’s web programming team too.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:19 am
Tritech says:
Verizon just lost a customer. I moved to SunCom and my phone bill is halved–and that comes with MORE features and nearly equal network coverage to Verizon. I know, because I’ve been using the crap out of it and it’s working great. Verizon’s network coverage isn’t enough for me to justify Firefox incompatibility and the extremely high prices of their service plans, so I gave them the boot. At least I don’t have to worry about “My Account being temporarily unavailable” anymore, eh?
August 16th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Chris says:
2 frustrating issues with Verizon. I’m a new USB data card customer and am very pleased with the card/coverage itself. However, when registering for online access to my bill, I was unable to do so from my Mac using Firefox or Safari — had to go to a PC running IE to do that. The second issue was that the only way they can get you your temporary website password is to send a text to your Verizon phone — problem is I don’t have a Verizon phone and the data card for the Mac does not accept text messages. So, I now need to wait for my temporary password via US Mail — frustrating…
September 12th, 2008 at 9:56 am
cSoul says:
Yep, still broken. Verizon’s Customer Service Rep didn’t recognize the login server, tried to tell me I had a phishing site redirect in Firefox. Time to get with the times guys!
October 6th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
LI_Mom says:
I’m another customer who got that idiotic “temporarily unavailable” error message for MONTHS & like others, I gave up in disgust & headed to the store to pay my bill.
I finally called today & found out it wasn’t really some ‘temporary’ problem…. Verizon just can’t be bothered to make their site available to users of the most popular browser.
When I move there’s no way I would ever consider switching from Optimum to FIOS since it’s obvious VZW is totally out of touch with how people browse the internet.
October 15th, 2008 at 2:59 am
Mindy says:
I thank you very very much for pointing this out. I was going crazy, thinking my computer was garage, when its just Verizon being stupid and not supporting Firefox… (Which I must add, is THE BEST BROWSER!)
Anyways, I guess I’ll make an exception and use IE…
October 28th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Ripley says:
My Verizon website fails with the K-Meleon browser as well. I use this one ’cause I’m temporarily stuck with a low-memory laptop, and K-Meleon does a nice job in the face of such limitations. Verizon, on the other hand, can’t seem to adapt to change. Weird: No other site with a login has given me a bit of trouble. Apparently, Verizon CAN’T hear me now.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
jafo says:
I wish you would run your vzw tests again, I have only been able to avoid that message one time this year, the first time I tried with a clean IE7. Otherwise, no joy with either FF or IE – I do not have the resources to sleuth this bs, and there’s very little information on this floating around
February 26th, 2009 at 1:32 am
John Brier says:
wow. I didn’t realize this was a firefox issue. I thought they were just down. I have had this issue in the past and I would just try again another day. Most recently I had it after I was emailed my bill on February 1st. I went to pay the bill online like normal and got the error over and over. I put off trying again because I kept getting the error. (I use firefox exclusively in Linux and in Windows the few times I’m in windows). Well, I forgot to pay my bill on time because of this and my phone is now disabled as of today (February 25th). I still get the error in firefox even today. I guess I’ll have to boot to windows to fix this. Very annoying. At least an error indicating the issue is with the browser, not that the service is down would be better than this disinformation.
February 27th, 2009 at 10:42 am
John Brier says:
^Correction on the above: The phone was not disabled because I didn’t pay my bill on time. I have an enV and it actually just stopped working (“service required”). I called Verizon and they said the phone was not disabled because I didn’t pay my bill on time. I ended up paying it shortly after I posted the above comment here. The phone is over a year old and it needs to be serviced. The website not working in Firefox for over a year is still annoying though. It’s definitely intermittent, though. Sometimes it works wonderfully and sometimes it doesn’t work all night. I have no idea why that would be.
March 10th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Wayne says:
get the “user agent switcher” extension for firefox and switch to “netscape 4.8 XP”
Seems to work on linux in spite of verizon
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Annoyed says:
I’m amazed that this has been going on for years, considering that the CSR I just spoke with told me “they’re working on it!”. Doesn’t sound to me like they care one iota! Not only would browser testing have addressed this long ago, but more customer-friendly error messages would be appropriate [I've only had a Mac since Sept. 08]. That of course presumes that Verizon would be upfront about the problem with customers and direct customers to call customer service. Instead they’ll let us waste our time. I’ve been a VWireless customer for almost 10 years and have just dropped my landlines and chose not to get FIOS. My loyalty to VW is seriously eroding…. Verizon needs to spend less on advertising and invest in customer service and website support.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:24 am
John Stanfield says:
It still doesn’t work. I’m using FireFox on openSUSE, so there’s no way I can log in with IE. I’ll just call 611 since Verizon has found it to be less costly to deal with non-IE users on the phone than provide them with a web site that works. Someone must’ve pooped in Verizon’s think tank.