I’ve been running into major sites lately that either break entirely when using Safari or Firefox, or don’t make any attempt at all to work.

Tonight while trying to redeem some credit card points for my travel to Austin in March, I met up with a dead end on the Wellsfargo Rewards site. It’s really discouraging to have issues when you need to book the travel before the good flight options dry up, and you’re locked into their system. Looking at their Javascript errors suggested they never tested the application on Firefox and were content to ship the application with bad code that only Internet Explorer obeys.

Perhaps the most offensive lack of support is found at Gap.com where they expressly prohibit Safari users to go anywhere on the site. This is disgusting – it takes very little effort to make Safari work and in fact, if you support Firefox, Safari should work brilliantly. Flat out prohibiting an excellent and widely used browser used by what is likely a healthy slice of potential customers stinks of extreme stupidity. Not surprisingly the same level of stupidity is fostered on BananaRepublic.com and OldNavy.com.

While I’m stuck with having to either call Wellsfargo and redeem my points over the phone or firing up a PC with Internet Explorer, with The Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy I have a pretty effective remedy to the problem. It’s a revelation into my standards to find out that sweat shop labor and cheap disposable clothing isn’t enough to get me to stop shopping – messing with my online experience is what really gets me to hammer the nail into that coffin.