raleighnet.org

On-line banking is a fantastic feature that has really come a long way since I started using it about 8 years ago. I don’t know that writing out checks by hand and mailing them would really take any longer or be too much more cumbersome, but I certainly hate doing it.

I know that even today, there’s a bit of man behind the curtain involved in it. When I started doing it, I would enter the amount of money I wanted to pay, and “somebody” in the bank would write out and mail the check. It was an absurd but expedient way to give the customers the features they wanted. I think that still happens with some of my payees, but I also think they’ve gotten better about it.

Credit Dispute Resolution (at BOA at least) also seems to require a lot of off-line paperwork. I submitted a credit dispute about 5 months ago, and they lost it or never received it. I submitted it again a month later and this time I submitted paper as well. This time they got it, but a few weeks ago, I found they had closed the inquiry (I still don’t fully understand why though it seems to have something to do with not getting yet another piece of paper). This is annoying and frustrating particularly as I continued to rely on the on-line customer service to determine how my inquiry was proceeding, but on-line customer service was totally out of the loop and only able to respond with templates. I guess that’s good for the business if your customers are constantly coming at you with the same frequently asked questions, but it’s a disservice to the customer not to be able to integrate and escalate concerns more dynamically. I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody somewhere in the company knew this and understood this but didn’t have the resources to address it.

So those things I grudgingly accept. It is really surprising in this day and age to see interface problems. My account was locked up when I went to login this morning. I was using Mozilla which suppresses pop-ups, and their error message wanted to be displayed in a pop up. I went through the same cycle 3 or 4 times before brining up IE to see if it was a cookie or browser quirk kind of problem. At that point I got the error message.

What a horrible user experience that is. I know it isn’t possible to support all browsers, but Mozilla is if not common at least not super-fringe. Plus, there is no reason at all to put the error message in a pop up. They were also redirecting in the main browser window. Why the hell didn’t they include some text to explain what the deal was?

They gave me a link to select a new password (they’ll only allow 3 unsuccessful attempts at login as a security measure). This page asked me for my ATM card number and my PIN number. I know that’s one other set of information the bank has that can allow me to prove I’m me, but that seemed like spectacularly bad security. I studied that page for about 4 minutes trying to make sure that it was in fact being served from Bank of America. I’m always unsure of whether the actual URL should be www.bankofamerica.com or www.bankamerica.com. I think they both work, but I’m often a little paranoid that some squatter somewhere would put up a mirror copy of the web site and start harvesting user names and passwords.

Ultimately, I decided not to put in my card and pin number. It felt too much like a scam. I called, and one of the customer service reps was able to reset my login for me. I don’t know. I guess what they were asking for was “safer” then having a new password sent in a clear text e-mail. At least here everything was secured. Given that there are so many scams out there though it seems like a really bad idea to train your people that you might one day need to ask them for that information through some generic web page.