Frustrating experience reporting bugs on major companies websites as a developer
by cupcake-unicorn | 2026-03-12 20:34:38+00:00
This has happened to me twice in the past month. First, a major banking website has a problem linking to Fidelity Full view and Rocket Money. Once the callback hits the bank's website there is a generic error saying that there's a problem with the bank/my account and to call the bank to resolve it.

After a year of hoping this would resolve I escalated it to executive customer service twice, stating that I was a technical user, giving the full URL and screenshot clearly showing the text. Again, this was not an error message on the linker's side (and it happened with two different third parties) it was on the bank's side, and I stressed I was a technical user and to escalate to the technical team. They closed this request twice saying "They couldn't find anything" and the only option would be for me to go in to a branch, show them this error on my laptop and escalate it again for them to believe me. What??

Again, a few days ago, on a major e commerce site, my order disappears and is replaced by a broken "Placeholder" header. Tried to contact normal customer support, first they say, "oh we'll refund you". No..I don't want a broken order in my order history. Then tier two customer support says, "Have you tried turning your wifi on and off again". Finally I do reach out to executive customer support and I get someone who says "We don't support Firefox" (?!?!), and to clear my cache and try again in Chrome. They say "I was really hoping this was a browser issue but it sounds like this is a bug" and it was finally escalated. I get that these are non technical support people and they are rightfully trying to gatekeep access to the backend team for things that are most likely user error, and that they have a fixed list of steps to try, but I do not understand the thought process that leads to someone thinking that "clearing my cache", "using a different browser" or "rebooting my router" would lead to an ecommerce site suddenly no longer serving "Placeholder" for the title of an order instead of the order details?

Is there a "cheat code" to get around this? I thought stressing that I'm a software engineer/technical user, that this is a bug on the website that needs to go to the technical team and it's still often not taken seriously. Thankfully in the second case it was escalated (fingers crossed it won't be like the bank issue where they say they found no issue...) but I think that higher tier support members and executive customer support members should be trained to understand things a bit better so certain people can skip through the process. Specifically saying things like "We don't support Firefox" when most likely their notes say to use Chrome to rule out issues instead and the lack of understanding of basic technology (by what means would the word "Placeholder" be displayed on an order and how could this be user error other than me editing the dom?) really make me think this could be done better.

I used to think executive customer support was the cheat code but I guess not. I am thinking a lot about the quote by Charles Babbage "On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." I guess there has always been this disconnect in people who are not technical users.

Thankfully these bugs have never been very serious but I brace myself thinking that one day a bug will stop me from using my account and nothing can be done about it even contacting executive customer service, like in the banking issue where the "investigation found nothing". I'm doubting that was even forwarded to the back end team.