Bankers

[j4]

On Friday afternoon I went to the Alliance and Leicester home page, intending to read my online statement like their nagging email had told me to, and was surprised when I got a popup saying "Please be aware that your browser is not supported, therefore this site may not work correctly." Huh? It's Firefox, which I've used happily with A&L internet banking for over a year... ah, but it's Firefox on Linux, which I haven't tried before. And the popup was quite correct about one thing: the front page was sufficiently mangled that I couldn't actually get to the login link.

Over the weekend, using Firefox on a Mac, I navigated (problem-free) to the login page and bookmarked it. Sure enough, if I go direct to that page (https://www.mybank.alliance-leicester.co.uk/index.asp) using Firefox on Linux, it a) doesn't show the popup, and b) works fine. (In fact, I can just turn off CSS on the home page and it works okay, but last thing on Friday afternoon I didn't think of that... duh.)

I am now wondering whether, if I tell them about this, they will stop my workaround working, too. :-/

Comments

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

Don't tell them about the workaround, just complain that clearly their site doesn't conform to the HTML standards and the accessibility legislation.

[brightybot.livejournal.com]

Out of interest have you tried any other browsers on linux? Given that firefox is fairly consistent in it's behaviour across operating systems, I suspect they are using a blanket check for linux and declaring any browser using it to be unsuitable. Nonces.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Oh, good point. Have just tried it with Opera and you're quite right, it does the same thing there. Grrrr.

However, disregarding the popup, the CSS does break on both FF and Opera under Linux... so unless they're deliberately forcing stuff to float over the login box when they spot one of those nasty commie browsers, there's obviously something going on there.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Haha, however, using the EVIL MAGIC of Opera's "lie to this website" function, I can convince it that I'm Internet Explorer, and then it works.

What utter cocking cocks, though.