1998455 - dmv.ca.gov chat bot recommends to use a different browser

Status: NEW

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect, P2)

Description

[Martin Balfanz [:mbalfanz]]

dmv.ca.gov recommends users of their chat-bot to use a different browser when asking for an agent.

STR:

• visit https://dmv.ca.gov/portal/chat-bot
• type in agent
• observe

Note: According to their own support pages, Firefox is a recommended browser https://qr.dmv.ca.gov/portal/customer-service/report-an-issue-or-complaint/dmv-technical-support/

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screenshot

I can reproduce. The full text of the message is:

We are currently offering live chat as an option. For the best experience, please use Chrome, Edge, or Safari. Your chat transcript will be recorded. Our average wait time to speak with an agent is 10 minutes. Would you like to wait?

Here's a screenshot.

Also, for what it's worth, they show this exact same message when I test in Chrome as well.

Comment 2

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(Looks like this "Miles" DMV chatbot has been available since at least 2019 per this article (written in 2021, and mentioning an earlier review two years prior); though I'm not sure if this specific browser-recommendation message dates back that far or not.)

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

I'm dropping webcompat:needs-diagnosis, since there's nothing to diagnose here; the bad-result is just a blanket message that the site displays unconditionally to all users (regardless of the user's browser), with a for-best-experience list of browsers, which happens to not include Firefox.

I don't think that's strong evidence that there's anything broken in Firefox that needs diagnosing. If someone wants to stress-test the chatbot and happens to find Firefox-specific issues that need diagnosing, we can add back needs-diagnosis and take a look.