Firefox 4 hangs when accessing the "Verified By Visa" capability used by many UK online retailers including Tesco & The National Lottery; is this a known problem?
I recently upgraded to Firefox 4 from version 3 and have experienced a problem when trying to purchase online using my Visa debit card. UK stores and services are using the "Verified By Visa" system to double-check the validity of credit and debit cards and this capability is called by many stores at the end of their online payment process. Firefox 4 does not seem able to handle this capability and 'hangs' once data has been entered into the "Verified By Visa" window and sent to the server. This means that the transaction cannot be completed and funds cannot be transferred from Visa to the retailer/service provider. I have experienced this 'hanging' problem with both Tesco online groceries and with the UK National Lottery online site. Is this a known problem? I had no trouble using this service on these sites with the previous version of Firefox (3.6.8) but the error is solid in Version 4 of Firefox. Anyone else having this problem or know how to fix it? NB. I have reverted to the previous version of Firefox temporarily, so the troubleshooting information attached will be of little relevance to this question.
All Replies (10)
Was having the same problem on the National Lottery website and their "Help" section amounts to an 0845 number, so I did a bit of rummaging online and found a solution. I had Third Party cookies disabled , so I ticked the box to Accept them(under Tools>Options>Privacy), restarted FF, added funds and the "Verified by Visa" process works properly. I'll just turn it on & off as needed, as I prefer not to accept third party cookies normally. Hope this helps someone else in the same position - very frustrating, especially when my VbyVisa statement recorded the failed transactions, even though neither my lottery account or my bank account showed any sign of them.
Modified by gggghhhh
Thanks to gggghhhh for their contribution, but I'm afraid it doesn't solve my particular problem. You see, having reverted to the earlier Firefox version 3.6.17, I am able to access and use the Verified By Visa facility, despite also having Third Party Cookies switched off. Version 3 does not hang as does version 4. Could I please request gggghhhh to post here exactly which version of Firefox 4 you are using? Perhaps there is a Version 4 release in which this apparent bug has been solved.
Modified by timberesford
I've had this problem and posted without success on here before.
I'll try the Third party cookies - thanks gggghhhh - but feel it's a vital bug that needs fixing.
yes i had the same issue on BOOTS.com try several times and no luck. is there any fix for this?
Had the same problem on the National Lottery site this evening when I went to try and top-up funds. Do Mozilla ever respond to these posts ? Anyway thanks for letting me know I am not alone and how to get around it. I hate the 'Verified by Visa' system it seems to go wrong a lot and a few months ago they managed to lose the details of thousands of users aarrrrgh !!!
To change third party cookies status had to look up help page here http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Disabling%20third%20party%20cookies?s=disabling+third+party&as=s
Reverted FF to version 3.6.17 but still having the problem on National Lottery top-ups but it works fine on Internet Explorer grrrrr!
National Lottery are still investigating this problem which I reported on 16th May 2011
Modified by trevor432990
I had the same problem and found this with some googling. Just wanted to say that changing the options to accept third party cookies worked, even though I never needed to do so before upgrading to Firefox 4. Thanks to gggghhhh for sharing :)
This has been bothering me as I disabled third-party cookies to stop my facebook pic appearing on every website I visit. According to Visa, these cookies are a system requirement and need to be enabled. I haven't tested this yet but I'm thinking that if you leave the third party cookies option unchecked, click on the Exceptions button and add visa.com(exact URL may differ depending on region) to the list and click allow, that should let visa set it's cookies without needing you to allow all of them, or needing to change settings each time.
Had same problem since upgrading Firefox therefore thought it was the browser. Couriously a few sites work ok but most fail at the final stage when date entered into the Visa Verify box (just when you don't want it!). Following the posts here have switched to allow Third Party Cookies. System has worked fine ever since! I wonder why Visa publish any help on this, it seems a common problem.
Had the same problem on and off for ages with National Lottery site. Seemed more prevalent on laptop than desktop and usually disappeared later in the day but now lasted for two days so far. NL Help said use I.E. because of compatibility problems with Firefox, did so and it worked. Thing is I'm blocking third party cookies in both browsers so what now?
I reported this issue on the day Firefox 4 was released, but a bug report still hasn't been created. The problem is that, with 3rd party cookies disabled, cookies are not included in a request to an iframe even if the iframe URL is on the same host as the parent frame – ie even if it isn't being served by a 3rd party.
This issue affects a lot more than just Verified by Visa. I've had to tell many of our 100,000+ webmail users to switch to Google Chrome because of a problem with a Roundcube plugin caused by this same bug.