Why is the Community logon so flaky?

[royabrown2]

About one time in three, I go to log in, and the progress bar flashes across the top of my iPad screen, and nothing else happens.

If I leave it for several hours, it then may or may not right itself.

If I use a different browser, it usually works.

But if I want to check out the Community straight away, on my preferred browser, I have to go Settings/Safari/Advanced/Website Data, let it populate, and then Search for ‘Sony’, and delete some or all of the entries presented.

After which, the ineffective progress bar no longer happens, but I get an alternative logon, have to accept cookies again (which isn’t surprising) but often it goes to 2FA via an email passcode (which is).

Can somebody please fix this, or tell me how to avoid it, or at least tell me the minimum number of Sony website data entries I need to delete, and which ones, to be able to log in once more with the least extraneous steps?

[TheMaze]

Hey @royabrown2 

Did you try clearing the caches of your preferred browser?

Clearing the caches and cookies usually helps with these issues.

[royabrown2]

@TheMaze 

That’s what the procedure described in my first posting does, except that it pinpoints Sony entries rather than throwing the baby, of every other site I use in an optimised way, out with the bathwater of whatever Sony decides to hold in the cache that prevents me going forward.

But yes, I know that clearing these things down helps.

However, I think it’s for Sony to look at exactly what they are cacheing that is preventing a logon, or maybe just to add some logic that says ”Look, this person tried to log on, has pressed the right button to log on, has generated no error condition, but winds up not logged on. So let’s allow him to log on, instead of being in this Schrödinger’s cat situation where he is both logged on (the only reason to ignore a logon request) and yet not logged on (as he can’t proceed on the Community).”

We aren’t talking about the odd cache lockup here that happens from time to time on any browser. We are talking about a one in four, maybe even one in three, chance that an attempted logon to the Sony Community will fail.

That’s too frequent 😢

[royabrown2]

@TheMaze 

The mere presence of a zero-byte sony-europe.com cookie in the website data of Safari on this iPad Pro is enough to prevent me signing in the the Community; the progress bar travels along the top when I try to sign in, but with zero effect.

If I delete that single cookie, leaving seven other ‘Sony’ cookies, some with data and some zero-byte, intact, I can instantly sign in.

I’ve just done this, but it’s a nonsense that I have to, and it’s something that I think Sony need to rectify.

[EMS_MO72]

Hey @royabrown2 

What about if you try to log in from another device?

[royabrown2]

@EMS_MO72 

Thanks for trying to help.

It will be fine on Safari on either of my two other iPads until it ‘poisons’ the cache on that too.

And as above, I can switch to the Chrome browser on the same iPad, after the Safari cache has been ‘poisoned’, and just carry straight on.

But I have qualified this issue above within an inch of its life; I have described and named the zero-byte file that is the culprit here, sony-europe.com. If it’s present, my login fails. If I delete it, my login succeeds.

Sony should be able to work with this information to find the fault and fix it, so I don’t have to keep jumping through hoops just to get on here to (mostly) help your poor beknighted customers 😢

[SatoruGojo]

That seems a pit off, did you try it on a PC? Does it still have the same issues ? @royabrown2 

[royabrown2]

@SatoruGojo 

No, I haven’t tried it on a PC; it might work or it might not.

But a PC wouldn’t be my optimum device for the way I work; too bulky, too cranky, even a small laptop.

Much as a mobile phone wouldn’t be either; eminently portable, but just too small and fiddly.

So a tablet is my sweet spot, and where I need the logon to Sony to be reliable.

Is anybody within Sony investigating why the mere presence of the zero-byte sony-europe.com prevents me logging in on one of the most standard, and standardised, tablets in existence, an Apple iPad?

It’s not even a Khoros problem, as I am helping on two other Khoros-based Communities, not Sony, and this issue of not being able to log on just never happens 😢

[royabrown2]

And sometimes it does this instead, just for the hell of it:-

sony-europe.com was up to 1.2Mb here; coincidence?

[royabrown2]

After behaving itself for months, the Sony sign-in blew up again - needed the cache cleared, gave ‘too many redirects’ when I tried to post, needed the cache cleared again, said I was signing in from a new device (I wasn’t), offered to send me a code, no code arrived and I had to ask again.

And finally, I’m in. But these people can no more build a decent website than they can build a decent TV.