Don’t fix it. Just another old adage that seems to have gone the way of transistor radios, eight-track tapes, and record players.
“So”, I hear you saying, “what has gotten him all worked up today?”
Well I’ll tell you. A few weeks ago it seems my work bank (i.e. the bank I use at work) decided they were going to redo their website to fix it. It seemed like it worked fine but I am sure they had their reasons.
There were just a few problems (in no particular order):
- Problem One: It wasn’t broke so they didn’t need to fix it.
- Problem Two: They didn’t tell anyone they were going to change it (including it seems, their own employees).
- Problem Three: No one knew how to deal with the problems.
Let’s talk about problem one first. The old website was perfectly fine as it was. You could easily find your way around. You could easily search for transactions. Not only could you easily search them, you could also save them and receive an email, say once a week, with certain information on it. You could set it up once and voila, every Monday morning I would know how many automatic deposits I received from one customer. Now, not so much.
Instead of receiving an email every Monday, I now need to sign into the website each Monday AM. I then have to go to the history page and find the right account. I can’t search on the register page where all the transactions are, I have to go to page.
Then I have to search for what I need, including the right account, enter the customer name, and then type in the dates. You would think you could just select: “Last Week” from the pull-down menu, but nope, can’t do that. After you get what you want, you need to do another step to print it. Now it wouldn’t be so bad if you could save it in order to reuse it next week, but sorry, not an option.
Then there is problem two. They didn’t send out any emails saying they were changing it. They didn’t call anyone, they just changed it. Yes, I’m whining. I hear you saying, “Why would you need to know, you’ll see the changes when you go to the website.”
In theory, you would think so, but no, they also removed all sign-on information and passwords. You bring up the website, go to the sign-on screen, put in your credentials, and “Sorry, you are not authorized to access that account. Please call this number.”
This leads us to problem number three. You can’t access your account so you figure I guess I’ll just call the bank and they will know how to fix it. Wrong. The first time I called, a little after 9:00 AM on a Monday. the polite young lady who answered the phone asked me what the problem was. I explained to her what the problem was and she said she would transfer me to someone who would help. Silence. No hold music. No “Your call is important to us.” No “Please leave a message and someone will get back to you.” Nothing. Nada.
I called a second time. This time all I was able to do was go into a phone circle, you know, press 1 if you need this, 1 tells you to press 1 again, returning you to the first place. I guessed I wasn’t the only one having problems.
After several more tries, my boss told me he went to the bank and was able to restore our sign-on credentials.
I signed on. I couldn’t find anything I needed. I just wanted to know about my deposits. Why hadn’t I received my email? I went home.
The next day was bright and sunny, that is of course until I tried to find my way around the new website. I searched and I searched but was unable to find what I needed. I decided to call the bank, surely someone there would know. Remember what happened yesterday? Yup, same thing.
After several more attempts, I was finally able to reach someone. By this time I was ready to constructively criticize the bank and its new and improved website. I said, “Don’t you think you should have told us?” “Well, actually we didn’t know ourselves.” I will give this person credit, she did listen when I explained the problem and she said she would transfer me to the help desk. You guessed it. Silence.
After several more attempts, I finally talked to another live person who told me she would send a message to someone who could help me and they would call me back. And they did. But, they couldn’t help me. It seems they took out the feature I was looking for since it wasn’t part of the new and improved website flow chart.
Now, every Monday I spend ten minutes doing what used to take me less than one. Like I said, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”! And by the way, I see record players are making a comeback.
