Leopard Safari Banks
My question is:
How easy is it for Banks to work with Mac OS X and in particular Safari soon to be version 3? Why do I ask? Well until this year there was no support from my bank for internet banking on OS X. When it arrived it was great. Over several years I would contact their tech support to find out what was happening only to get the bland some time in the future answer.
Now Leopard is on the way with Safari 3 and at the moment the beta version won't work; the login page states the browser version is not supported. Only 1.3 ?2 works. It's not a big deal the other Mac here uses Safari 2 so I can use that.
Today with a bit of spare time and out of curiosity I called the support desk at the bank again to put to them that by the end of the month that I would be upgrading to Leopard and would no other choice than to use Safari 3. It took me a while to make them understand that this was a new Safari before they asked the real tech guys what the story was for the future. After holding for about 2 minutes they cane back to say that the only Safaris that would work were 1.3?2. I asked was there any kind of time frame say a few weeks before it would work. No, end of story, you can only use the older Safaris.
My impression was that they were not interested or that they could not be helpful by either suggesting that they would be working on it soon or, that there are technical difficulties in implementing support for such a new version of a browser. I suggested that with a new version of a system coming out soon with a new browser that they would be on the ball and ready to help customers with the transition. But no; no helpful answers.
Personally I find this a lot with help-desks. They are not very creative in dealing with customers and this often translates as a type of indifferent rudeness. The bank in question is no small bank and is historically connected to NatWest and more recently has been subsumed into HSBC
Are there legitimate reasons why Safari 3 just would not work with a bank online? Is it just a case of the internet bank recognizing Safari 3 if it is on a list of known browsers. Are there potential security risks with a new browser version that makes a bank nervous? Is Safari 3, in particular, dodgy. Does Vista have a different IE version than XP because Vista is supported at the Bank? Is there an MS snobbery among IT heads that lets the OS X suckers wait?
I would love to hear some other views.
How easy is it for Banks to work with Mac OS X and in particular Safari soon to be version 3? Why do I ask? Well until this year there was no support from my bank for internet banking on OS X. When it arrived it was great. Over several years I would contact their tech support to find out what was happening only to get the bland some time in the future answer.
Now Leopard is on the way with Safari 3 and at the moment the beta version won't work; the login page states the browser version is not supported. Only 1.3 ?2 works. It's not a big deal the other Mac here uses Safari 2 so I can use that.
Today with a bit of spare time and out of curiosity I called the support desk at the bank again to put to them that by the end of the month that I would be upgrading to Leopard and would no other choice than to use Safari 3. It took me a while to make them understand that this was a new Safari before they asked the real tech guys what the story was for the future. After holding for about 2 minutes they cane back to say that the only Safaris that would work were 1.3?2. I asked was there any kind of time frame say a few weeks before it would work. No, end of story, you can only use the older Safaris.
My impression was that they were not interested or that they could not be helpful by either suggesting that they would be working on it soon or, that there are technical difficulties in implementing support for such a new version of a browser. I suggested that with a new version of a system coming out soon with a new browser that they would be on the ball and ready to help customers with the transition. But no; no helpful answers.
Personally I find this a lot with help-desks. They are not very creative in dealing with customers and this often translates as a type of indifferent rudeness. The bank in question is no small bank and is historically connected to NatWest and more recently has been subsumed into HSBC
Are there legitimate reasons why Safari 3 just would not work with a bank online? Is it just a case of the internet bank recognizing Safari 3 if it is on a list of known browsers. Are there potential security risks with a new browser version that makes a bank nervous? Is Safari 3, in particular, dodgy. Does Vista have a different IE version than XP because Vista is supported at the Bank? Is there an MS snobbery among IT heads that lets the OS X suckers wait?
I would love to hear some other views.
Comments
The bank maybe only waiting for the full version of safari 3 to be released first to do possibly final testing before allowing it. That is quite understandable as Safari 3 is still in beta at present.
The bank is probably just needlessly blocking any version it hasn't personally tested with, including future versions. You could try enabling the Debug menu in Safari 3 and then toggle your User Agent to Safari 2.
Yea. Now that I think of it I will use the Debug/User Agent. Interesting to see if that works.
As for the needlessly blocking any version it hasn't personally tested with, including future versions, I understand that the bank would be concerned with a new version and should be given time to test it. What is irksome is their unhelpful attitude and disinterest in imparting useful information to customers.
First Direct 'broke' Safari a few months ago, but very quickly put together a fix (it worked fine on Firefox) whilst Capital One didn't work on on Safari 2, but worked immediately I went to Safari 3.
My wife uses Yorkshire Bank and HSBC without any problems with Safari 3.
Regarding the Debug menu, it is worth enabling this and trying a different User Agent if at first you don't succeed. I have encountered a number of commerce sites (and embarrassingly our own work intranet) that tell you your browser is not secure/not supported/too old.
Most of the time this is lazy programming where they are only looking for the IE useragent (normally to fix IE CSS problems!!) Declare yourself as IE and in 9/10 times in my experience the site works fine.