The dumbest user agent based browser detection mechanism I ever encountered was one that a major grocery store chain had in place on their website. At the time, I was running Linux on a desktop computer which had an ARMv7 processor.
I visited their website and was, like in a lot of cases where they assume ARMv7 means I must be using a mobile device, redirected to the mobile site.
That's not the stupid part, though (just annoying). These guys took it one step further and had their mobile website decide that I was in fact not on mobile, and then they proceeded to throw me into a redirect loop between the desktop and mobile site. Talk about messing up with browser detection.
I wrote an e-mail to report the issue to the people in charge of the site, and you know what they tell me? Oh, "we forwarded your message to our web developers but they said that this doesn't happen". Wow, ok, "this doesn't happen". Guess I must be hallucinating, then? Well, jokes on them 'cause if they hire people who break their website so that I can't check the opening hours, guess where I'll be shopping? Not at their store, that's for sure.
I visited their website and was, like in a lot of cases where they assume ARMv7 means I must be using a mobile device, redirected to the mobile site.
That's not the stupid part, though (just annoying). These guys took it one step further and had their mobile website decide that I was in fact not on mobile, and then they proceeded to throw me into a redirect loop between the desktop and mobile site. Talk about messing up with browser detection.
I wrote an e-mail to report the issue to the people in charge of the site, and you know what they tell me? Oh, "we forwarded your message to our web developers but they said that this doesn't happen". Wow, ok, "this doesn't happen". Guess I must be hallucinating, then? Well, jokes on them 'cause if they hire people who break their website so that I can't check the opening hours, guess where I'll be shopping? Not at their store, that's for sure.