Forcing SupportAssist to Manually Install Drivers?

TL;DR: Can no longer manually install drivers from Dell Drivers and Downloads webpage on Dell PCs without SupportAssist being installed first - uninstalling SupportAssist makes the driver list break once again.

I was working with an end user that has a Latitude 7340 laptop that needed a Wi-Fi driver update, so following the procedure mentioned above, I went to the website to download the Wi-Fi driver for the specific service tag, except I was greeted with a spinning blue circle for much longer than it normally takes when opening the list. Of course, the typical technician thought process is to swap browsers or try a private browser, check network connection, restart, but nothing was working. However, when I tried my smartphone, the webpage - including the driver list loaded like it normally does...weird.

I try another Dell Latitude (7330) and was getting the same result. I kept the page open on the 7330 just to try and time it while the other Latitude hopped on a chat with Dell, asking if their website was down. After 15, 20, 30+ minutes pass on the 7330 with no luck, I check all the boxes with the Dell support rep that there is no issue with anti-virus software, network, or VPN. The rep eventually had me boot up the 7330 in Safe Mode w/ Networking - still got the spinning blue circle of death, but the rep assuring me that the website was up and reachable. To confirm this, I also went ahead and tried loading the site on a 4th and 5th device - my personal iPad and our office testing MacBook Air. Oddly still, both loaded the driver list just fine. I ended up downloading the driver I needed to a flash drive from the MacBook in case it never loaded on the Dell laptops.

While this was going on, my coworker came in and started testing everything I was testing on his own machine (another Latitude in the 7000 series) after I briefed him on what was going on and everything we'd done so far. He also got the spinning blue circle of death, but he noticed that if he searched asset tags for other Dell equipment - such as monitors and printers - the driver list loaded right away. It gave him an idea - for kicks, he went with Dell's "recommended" option and downloaded the .exe. file for SupportAssist. Lo and behold, after installing SupportAssist, he refreshed the driver list page for both the Latitude 7330 I was testing and the 7340 that needed the Wi-Fi driver, and it loaded right away.

I downloaded what I needed and thankfully was able to remove SupportAssist and all the bloatware it came with swiftly, but interestingly...the website stopped working after removing SupportAssist. Something is up for sure, but the Dell rep was insistent our devices were the problem. Is now going to be a thing?