LinkedIn or locked out?

I don't talk smack about other sites, companies, or people here simply because it's bad form and like my mom (and every other mother on the planet) says, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all..." but a recent email conversation with the support team at LinkedIn has inspired me to break my code of silence just this once.

A little background: I've had a profile at LinkedIn for about a year, but never paid it very much attention. As a general rule I don't like social networking sites where panties and profanity are predominant profile attributes, which is the same reason I finally ditched my old MySpace account. But LinkedIn promised to be different; a business-networking based model, sans underwear and swearing; and when a major client requested my presence on the site I could not refuse. Since I work only on referral now anyway, it seemed like a great way to enhance and reinforce that decision while building up potential clientele. But even so, my profile languished with only the minimal attention it took to set it up, I never even made it public. And until recently that was fine with me. But in the past few weeks I've received further invitations from other clients and their colleagues which meant it was time to update the profile and send a few invites of my own.

Two weeks ago I logged in to my account and tried to accept an invitation. It sent me to the sign in page and then forwarded me to the main page of my profile. I decided to try to edit my details and was again asked to log in and then sent to the main page. This went on for a good fifteen mintues; me trying to edit this and that or accept or send a handful of invitations and each and every time I ended up with a log in request and a redirect back to the main page.

I checked my cookies, checked their FAQ. Nada. Everything seemed fine. So I sent them a support request asking what was up, was I doing something wrong? Were my cookies oxygen deprived, or what? Is it because I stayed on IE6 (so we could septuple check our designs and code against all possible browsers?)
No reply.

A week ago I tried again to log in with the intention of going through my laundry list of updates and messages but the same exact things happened again. Frustrating to say the least. So I sent in another support ticket noting that it was my second request and could someone please help me.

I received the following reply:
Hi Tess,
Thank you for contacting Linkedin Customer Support. We do apologize for the looping authentication issue and any inconveniences that this may be causing you. We are aware of the issue and are diligently working on a permanent resolution for it. In the mean time we have found that the overwhelming majority of Linkedin members that are experiencing this issue have found temporary relief by using the Firefox browser to access their Linkedin accounts. Please try this and let us know if it helps you. If not please let us know so that we can further assist you in regaining full functionality to your account. If you have any further questions please feel free to contact us. Thank you for using Linkedin."

This really made me laugh for a number of reasons: first, as a website designer I tried to imagine telling my clients or their users, "Oh, can't use the site? Have you downloaded this other browser yet? Give that a shot and let me know how it goes!" or "Gosh, are you still on IE6?? Sorry, we don't code for that browser anymore."
Second, I can't even fathom a site I've got my name behind, my design on and running on Hamid's code going lax with such a major useage issue for such a loooong period of time. It's insane to think of saying to a client, "We're aware of the problem but we're really having a hard time figuring out how to fix it for you these past two weeks, please leave a message..."
And third, what is this pushing Firefox on me? Are LinkedIn and Firefox mutually exclusive now? Are we going to have sites that not only state "Looks better in X resolution." but "Does not function unless you're on X browser."?

We code up the kazoo to make sure people of all browsers, JavaScript enabled or not, Mac or Windows or otherwise, etc. can use our sites, our client sites, and all the gadgets and clickable things that live on those URLs. I may not be the most brilliant designer on the planet but I know darn well that if an 'overwhelming majority' of anyone can't effectively use my site then my site isn't worth the .txt doc it's written on.

So I waited a while. Now, it's been two weeks since my first email. Today I received a notice from LinkedIn letting me know I had X number of messages awaiting my reply and wouldn't I like to log in and take care of them? I guessed they must have resolved the endless looping issue and were letting all of the poor overwhelming majority who had experienced this problem (but hadn't taken their blazing advice to download and install a whole 'nother browser) know that they could utilize their accounts again. No dice. Same problem

I.just.don't.get.it.

I had to shoot back the following question to their support people, along with a little personal philosophy on what 'usability' actually means, how I understand that no code is infallible, and I get that I'm not a major driving force at the site with my little meager profile and >10 contacts but that that was the whole point of trying to get in there in the first place: "Am I LinkedIn or locked out?"

UPDATE: Since posting this, LinkedIn has written back and it seems they really are a bit stuck. I feel sorry for them. That sucks. A friend also pointed out that since we *have* Firefox (and every other browser known to mankind) installed on the other laptop already it shouldn't be such a big deal for me to log in from there to handle my account...ah well, it was worth a whine anyway. The post has also made me increasingly popular on the site, with numerous new link requests coming in over the past few days (many from people I don't know). Ok already, I'll move the two whole feet it takes me to get to the other computer and log in from there. But still...