"balancing the servers," good one, never heard it before...
as for the compatibility issue: that's a choice you make up front, there is no excuse. they have a database, so they need to go find the software company that makes a webpage out of that that is compatible with all browsers. Of course you can choose a company that will only guarantee MSIE compatability, but that's YOUR choice and not the fault of the company. I doubt the others were that much more expensive.