“Oh… then clear your cache then delete all of your cookies and it will be fine.” How about ‘no, I don’t think I will’ for a reply?

Not for anything, but the whole purpose of cookies is to store little snippets of information on your local box. Now that the wave of paranoia about cookies and “personal information” has passed – and rightfully so seeing as the – there are all sorts of nice things that web sites do for you, based on the information you’re stored in the cookies. For example, passwords that you might use once a quarter – those are stored for you, as part of the cookie. Often used numbers or forum information also might be pre-populated… this very web site will store your Name, Email addy, and URL, if you ask it to and that’s stored, where? In a cookie.

So why is it that IT departments or CSRs are so avant-garde about asking you to sacrifice all of your stored information just because they can’t figure out why their web site isn’t working? Doesn’t it make more sense to say “Oh, go remove this cookie from your PC” or even “any cookie with HiImUrDomain in it”? Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s pretty freakin’ ballsy to ask someone to wipe out their “note pad of information” just because they don’t know their own site.

1996 called: they want their support steps back.