I’ve had it. Some day, before I die, I am hoping against hope that just one month will see all of my online bill-paying take place smoothly and without my having to spend 30 minutes to an hour negotiating a terrible, non-user friendly system, usually made more frustrating by a well-meaning, polite, but nearly incomprehensible non-English speaker. I just went through one of these nightmare experiences with Merrick Bank, which I am forced to deal with because I use its credit card for certain minor expenses. Almost every month, there is some kind of snafu, forcing me to grit my teeth and call customer service. Here is what happened this time:
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Ethics Alarms 
I feel your pain. I’ve been having a similar situation with my Norton PC Security program. It’s so secure that it must delete every password as soon as I enter it, as it asks me daily to create a new password. Trying to speak with a human is, of course, impossible!
Oh…YOU feel his pain?
Yeah, so do I!
(Joking. I was not copying you; just funny that we both started our comments the same way.)
-Jut
I feel your pain.
I had an account with Alerus for our business that I used infrequently. Well, apparently, it was too infrequent. Every time I logged in, it had to reset my password. Every time, I would have to call customer service. And, every time, I would tell them how horrible their online system was.
Well, recently, clients have been asking if the firm takes Zelle. Our bank does not but Alerus does. So, I decided to set it up. I tried logging in. Did not work. Called customer service. They informed me that I have not logged in since they re-vamped their website. So they walked me through the registration process.
It is actually better! It’s functional, I connected with Zelle (look at me, Gen Z; I’m one of the cool kids again); I linked with my other business accounts. I am able to transfer money between accounts pretty easily.
But, the most important thing: it is easier for clients to give me money.
Unfortunately, there are no Alerus branches near you. But, if you are just looking for a credit card, maybe they can do that.
-Jut
I have never had a lick of trouble with Discover, and use it nearly always. The few times I’ve needed to access customer service, it was seamless, quick, and English adjacent.
Heck, they even followed up the request to ask how they did.
PWS
The fact that any credit card can do this proves that ALL of them can do this, and thus the fact that so many don’t do this proves that they choose not to do this, sacrificing their customers’ time and service for their financial gain, which is unethical.
FYI- I seamlessly applied for Apple Pay. have not ahd an issue.
I have no idea if there’s a USBank near you, but I can tentatively recommend them. They bought the bank I had my first account with, 1st Bank Billings, about 3 decades ago, but I’ve never felt any need to switch. I’ve never had any major issues with their online offerings other. The phone app works well. I haven’t HAD to change my password with them in decades, although it is a reasonably secure one that I use for absolutely nothing else, and is a bit longer than is mandatory. Forced changes combined with forced complexity is a net negative for security.
There are some irritations. Like the unexpected change of interface that I had to adapt to, but that’s the sort of issues I don’t see any reasonable hope of avoiding. I also find it somewhat annoying that the system stops recognizing any device as being one I’ve used before after a little less than a month, making me jump through the hoops again.
OTOH, I’m sufficiently tech savy to navigate most issues and as mentioned haven’t had to deal with whatever annoying password reset mechanisms they use.
Just change the damn bank! Yeah, that’ll work.
I recently needed to follow up something on my vehicle rego. Instead of fighting with the online system, I went to the local DOT office (Queensland, Australia), took a ticket, sat in the waiting area for 25 minutes, and was called up. Naturally, they must check your ID before they will talk to you. Fair enough.
In Queensland, we can have a digital ID App, supplied by the DOT, on our phones.
Paul confidently pulls out his phone, unlocks it and goes to the appropriate location and …. the App has vanished. Much checking, no App.
So, I open the ‘Wallet’ in my phone and pull up the licence in there (40 years in IT, see).
“That’s just a photo; we can’t accept that.”
Now, I try REALLY hard to treat the people in such situations well, because I understand they are as much a victim of the system as I am.
Politely: “This is the DOT; YOU issue the licence; you can see the licence number on this ‘photo’. If you put that licence number into your computer you can see ALL my information, including the same photo – which is a surprisingly good photo – as is on this photo of my licence!”
“Sorry I can’t do that.”
Naturally, I do have an old school licence card. 40 years in IT, see. But not with me because I changed clothes to come here and …… didn’t need the little plastic wallet that I keep critical cards in.
Here’s the kicker. I blamed my phone for dropping the App during one of several updates over the last month. But NO. The DOT updated the App and you have to download the new version. Naturally, when the phone does an update it drops unsupported Apps. DOT didn’t tell anyone!
I realise this is more a rant than a comment, but this situation is now endemic to western civilisation. I was glad to retire because everything you need to do, especially in the IT field, is MUCH harder than it used to be. I accept that security has been, and must be improved, but it’s ridiculous, most of it doesn’t have anything to do with security, doesn’t improve customer service or relations, and doesn’t even save the business time and money, as epitomised by Jacks story!
Much of the problem is Government driven of course, short sighted attempts to cut costs and government spending, that is. But this leads me to one of my most frequently used sayings at the moment: “And half the population wants the government to do EVERYTHING!”
Jack, what IS your browser of choice? I’m going to guess Firefox since you said you won’t use Chrome (I enthusiastically agree!) and as an expert in this field I’m going to suggest you download and install LibreWolf as your backup browser for these sorts of situations.
It’s essentially an alternate version of Firefox, but fully open source and has no big company behind it that’s trying to steal data about you, advertise to you, or cram unwanted AI features down your throat.
Also, I’d recommend adding the uBlock Origin extension and the MalwareBytes extension to block unnecessary parts of web pages added by third parties and actual malicious code, respectively.
If you’d like in-person help with this sort of thing, feel free ask any time.
I’m not a Merrick Bank customer at all, but I do know that a few company’s websites just try a little too hard to be extra snazzy and just create issues for browsers instead.
–Dwayne