Online Banking Services: Why so much red tape?

cwathen
Posts: 1309
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 17.28

I'm sure Chris, you'd be one of the first people to complain about your bank if they weren't sympathetic to banking fraud and someone stealing from your account
Oh absolutely, my niggle is not with being asked to enter additional information to get onto an online banking service, it's that for no obvious reason, all services such services (all that I know of anyway) require an additional registration and require you to wait for those registration details in the post, when there is enough information allready held on you to remove this process entirely.
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Nick Harvey
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Posts: 4145
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 22.26
Location: Deepest Wiltshire
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'Er indoors and I recieved new credit cards through the post today from that bank that shall be nameless, but might have connections with a very dark coloured horse.

The principal cardholder now has to ring up an 0800 number to authorise the new cards after they've dropped through the letterbox.

You ring up, get all the crap about how you might get recorded for staff training purposes, then have to key in your card number (VERY dangerous over an unencrypted phone line), then the number of letters in your mother's maiden name, then the month and year of your birth.

Not satisfied with all this, you then get put in a queue to talk to some idiot from the sub-continent, who hardly speaks a word of English, who, after you've had to say "pardon" about five times, asks you for "de full name embossed upon de card".

Once you get past this hurdle, he tells you that whilst your card is being authorised, he's going to tell you about a number of special offers currently available from your bank.

When you swear loudly at him and tell him that you're not in the slightest bit interested in his bloody commercials, he then rants on about how to use chip and pin (which we've been using, now, for best part of twelve months) and then reminds you that your new card won't be useable until the "de first of next mont", yet you must sign it NOW for security purposes; and how you must "cut de old card into two SEPARATE halves on de first of next month and den throw it away".

What a bloody waste of time!

More of this might be reported in February's Comment.
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