Citibank: You’re on Notice

26 August 2007

Updated, 29 September 2007: See below…

Citibank: Support free software–by supporting open standards and making your web site accessible–or become dead to me.

Free software users: please take the time to complain loudly but politely when you are prevented from using web sites that “require” Microsoft Windows plus Internet Explorer or Macintosh plus Safari or whatever combination of proprietary operating system plus web browser. Insist that they should support open standards.

I was having trouble this weekend with the login page for bill payments on citicards.com, probably because of their use of Flash. I first complained to my (long suffering) wife about this. I said now I was going to have to write and complain about it, and that it’s a challenge because I don’t want to spend that much time drafting a letter but that I wanted to be reasonable and not sound like…

I let that thought hang for a moment, and she quickly finished it with, “A crackpot?”

I said, “Yeah.”

She said: “Too late.”

(What’s that, dear? I didn’t quite hear you.)

It was clearly time to go Johnny Letter Writer once again.

Here are a couple of things I’ve written to Vanguard and Citibank in response to problems using their web sites. First there was Vanguard earlier in the month. For the most part, Vanguard’s web site is just fine with Ubuntu plus Firefox. I had some problems downloading a PDF statement that uses the Forms Document Format (FDF) extension and sent in a question about that. Their reply wasn’t particularly helpful. My hasty reply to that reply:

Note to Vanguard.com

Hi. Thank you very much for your reply. At the moment I still have access to Windows so I can make do in situations where things don’t work, but I strongly urge you to consider supporting free operating systems like GNU/Linux by offering standard file formats for customer use. Linux use is growing and I think it’s wrong to require proprietary operating systems when all that is needed from Vanguard is to offer standard file formats (including de facto standards like PDF which can be read by free programs). I run virtually all of my finances online and have found all of my provider web sites to be compatible with Linux+Firefox.

I understand that this can’t be changed overnight, but please pass my suggestion along to show that your customers want free and open formats.

Thanks!

I was more patient and understanding there. I have no intention of moving away from Vanguard over this and couldn’t make a credible threat to leave them.

(However, this weekend I discovered that in Windows with the latest Adobe Reader, I could view the PDF/FDF properly, but after saving it I wasn’t then able to view it properly upon re-opening, so I re-complained. This is an unsettling hint of a future where you can’t keep your own copy of your records and data is malleable for the corporation who “owns” it. Anyway, at least I have grounds for complaining if something doesn’t work right on their “required” platform. Give me a PNG or JPG at least!)

I mentioned that my other finance web sites had been compatible, but that isn’t true anymore after this Citibank episode. I was less tolerant with them:

Note to Citibank.com

Hi. Today I had trouble using your web site using the Firefox web browser on the Ubuntu GNU/Linux operating system.

Previously things have worked fine with this combination. I know they aren’t officially supported to use your web site. I think it is outrageous for you to require that people use a proprietary operating system such as Windows or Macintosh and dictate which browser they should use.

All that should matter is that your web site should adhere to open standards so that any web browser on any operating system can use your online services if they likewise support the standard. The further benefit to you in supporting and complying with standards is that you will provide greater accessibility to all your customers. The poor design of your web site likely makes things difficult or impossible for blind people to successfully use your site also, putting you at risk of not complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I use GNU/Linux + Firefox to manage my finances on a variety of web sites including Wells Fargo and Vanguard, and I have not had the frustration I experienced today at citicards.com and citibank.com.

I called in for help with this problem. Your representative was courteous, but she simply stated that Firefox isn’t supported. (Although I found a page that suggested otherwise. Still, that page said only Windows and Macintosh are supported.)

I was eventually able to use your site on Firefox after using Windows and Internet Explorer to update something in my profile. But what if I didn’t have access to a Windows machine? I would have been out of luck.

My card says on the front of it: “Member since 1995.” My records show that I’ve charged [a lot] on your card since 2000. I’d like to keep using Citibank — I’ve been a satisfied customer — but it will be very easy to cancel and use a competing card with a functional web site to avoid this kind of hassle in the future.

Briefly, the problem was with: https://www.citicards.com/cards/wv/home.do. I think it’s the Flash on that page that doesn’t behave well. I’m reluctantly using the Flash plugin for GNU/Linux Firefox, but that also is proprietary — not to mention hostile to the sight-impaired — and shouldn’t be required to use a web site. The page initially resolved but then most of it disappeared until I moved my mouse pointer around to the right place and could enter my login information.

It’s funny that the page has an ambitious strict doc type defined:

DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd”

But the W3C Validator reports 130 errors.

This will be good fodder for my web site on free software. I’ll be happy to follow-up and post any good news I receive from you on your future commitment to web standards and accessibility.

My Citibank card has been great. For a while I got 5% cash back on gas and grocery purchases, although that got bumped down to 2%. (Then and now still get 1% back on all purchases.) I once completely spaced off making the payment and when I called them about it they graciously waived the finance charge for me. But here’s a case where competition and ease of switching will allow me to drop them very quickly if I have continued problems.

I hope they hear from enough people to take note. I think the Americans with Disabilities Act may be a powerful argument in favor of making web sites more standards compliant and accessible.

So far I’ve received this (un)reassuring auto-reply from Citibank:

We regret any inconvenience you may have experienced. We strive to be the best in the business and feedback like yours helps us to improve our service. We will make every effort to serve your future needs in a manner more consistent with your expectations and our standards.

Thank you for taking time to send us your suggestions. Your comments are valuable and will help guide us as we continue to enhance our service. We have forwarded this information to the proper department for further consideration.

Thank you for using our website.

You can count on me to keep you posted on any exciting developments here.

Update, 29 September 2007

I never heard back from Citibank (of course). The page behaved even worse on my next visit. There’s some problem with the way they use Flash on the logon page, and all I see is white on the page, and any right-click gives the flash menu. I called to complain and was almost ready to quit the card completely, but I hesitated because I really didn’t want to deal with canceling it and switching some payments that are made from this card. Plus, I get the cash reward kickback. (At least by raising a stink, the “account specialist” gave me an additional 1% kickback for a few months.)

I had heard about a Flashblock plugin, and decided to give it a try. It works great! It replaces flash areas on the page with a little “play” icon, so you can easily choose which flash objects you want to let run. The Citibank logon page now works fine, and I can even run the problem flash. Since flash is as often as not used for annoying animated advertisements, this add-on also makes my visits to sites like startribune.com more pleasant. You can whitelist sites like Google (e.g. for Analytics) and YouTube where you typically want to use the flash.

Posted by Scott Carpenter on 26 August 2007 at 9:19 pm
filed under free software, obstacles, open standards

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Comments

There are more than a few issues with Firefox and Adobe Flash. The wmode=transparent bug really annoys me. (This bug prevents one from seeing what’s underneath the flash windows, which is annoying since one of the sites I use depends on this feature for drop-down menus.) You can get a list by searching at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org.

Your reaction is appropriate, and I’ve sent more than a few emails like the one you’ve posted to organizations with similar results. When an organization pulls a stunt like this, I fall back to simpler measures. The telephone, text based email, and showing up in person. One might conclude that these are time-wasters, however I’m finding that my service level is improving. The bank tellers know my face. I’m getting to know phone support staff. And when someone inevitably asks why I don’t use the web site, I let them know honestly, but politely, that their web site is unusable.

Half of Europe is using Firefox and about a third of North America. Things will change.

Posted by Mario Stargard on 27 August 2007 at 9:13 am

OK, I admit it. I exaggerated the numbers when I said that half of Europe is using Firefox. Here are the numbers from June:

http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2007/07/firefox-takes-28-market-share-in-europe/

But, my point is still valid. The crackpots have a lot of company. :-)

Posted by Mario Stargard on 27 August 2007 at 11:47 am

Go get ‘em, Tiger! Honestly, though, you are absolutely right and I am encouraged by your activism. It takes all kinds of awareness building to bring about change. If everyone simply adapts to proprietary solutions forced upon them, that is not good. Your wife sounds like your perfect partner, someone who knows you and helps you stay engaged, but grounded. Nice blog, thanks!

Posted by Amy Stephen on 27 August 2007 at 4:35 pm

You’re welcome, Amy, and thanks in return. Glad you enjoyed it!

(Oh, and does she ever keep me grounded.) :-)

Posted by Scott Carpenter on 27 August 2007 at 5:03 pm

Hi, Mario.

(First, apologies for the continuing animosity with which Akismet treats your posts — I just now found them in the moderation queue. I may need to look in to a whitelist workaround since I enjoy your comments and don’t want to discourage you.)

I wonder if that’s the bug I was seeing. I had two separate problems — one, things were invisible in general, and the other was where a menu dropped down but the lower choices were hidden. I couldn’t get to the option I needed.

Even if these companies don’t want to acknowledge GNU/Linux just yet, I think we’d be good in 95% of cases if they just supported Firefox and didn’t rely on IE-specific behavior. (And of course it would be nice if they didn’t make things so heavily Flash-dependent, but I think that’s going to be a harder battle. Might require an intervention and detox program.)

Posted by Scott Carpenter on 27 August 2007 at 5:54 pm

Moving to Freedom: Scott says ENOUGH with Forced Proprietarism …

Scott Carpenter of Moving to Freedom has had it with forced proprietary solutions. Now, he’s a man on a mission. Even his lovely wife can’t stop him and Citibank has been put on notice. You go, Scott!…

Posted by OpenSourceCommunity.org on 27 August 2007 at 6:04 pm

Hi,
I use Firefox+Adblock to disable the flash on citicards.com and all works fine.

Posted by anonymous on 28 August 2007 at 3:10 pm

Thanks for the tip — I’ll give that a try on my next visit there if I have more problems.

Posted by Scott Carpenter on 28 August 2007 at 3:25 pm

I appreciate your sentiment here but if you are going to use ethical software it might be a good idea to change to use an ethical bank. Getting the mega banks to support open standards (while probably good for open standards) is a bit like asking your murderer to use a recyclable gun - IMO. For, what I thought was, a good talk about creating life giving (rather than destructive) economic models I would recommend downloading and listening to this talk by Catherine Austin Fitts - http://www.radio4all.net/pub/archive2/07.01.07/posse@lasoundposse.org/121304catherineaustinfitts.mp3

The award wining UK bank Co-Op Bank and their internet Bank, Smile (”Smile is the only bank to be awarded a British Standards kitemark for information security management.”) offer good rates and a certain level of ethical banking, as well as ethical credit cards.

I notice the there is also an American Co-Op bank. I came across this article, on their site, that talks about ethical banking in the US.

Posted by Ethical Man on 28 August 2007 at 4:35 pm

Hey Scott,

Try Chase Bank, Wells Fargo and/or USBank. They all work flawlessly in Linux + Firefox. Let your money talk! USBank actually has a Linux Fund Visa you can apply for and put some of your purchasing power back into FOSS Projects. http://www.linuxfund.org/

Posted by Kennon on 28 August 2007 at 4:54 pm

Hi, Ethical Man. Thanks for commenting and bringing up another side of this.

Sure, there’s a whole range of things we can try to be more conscientious about, with more or less chance of creating a net positive with the effect of our behavior.

For now — at least with this site — I’m focusing on free software, of which I’m only having mixed success in being pure about.

I’m happier for the most part being blissfully ignorant about the implications of my relationships with most large corporations, treating them as impersonally as they treat me.

Perhaps I’m hoping that advances in software will create a better society with better decisions for the collective and individual good.

Or maybe I’m just a capitalist tool. :-)

Posted by Scott Carpenter on 28 August 2007 at 5:05 pm

Thanks, Kennon. I’m actually using Chase but I’ve already topped off my cash-back reward (kickback!) for this year so switched over to Citibank.

I also use Wells for banking and agree that both their site and Chase’s work great with GNU/Linux + Firefox.

Posted by Scott Carpenter on 28 August 2007 at 5:08 pm

Fair play to you Scott.

The free stuff is a good start.

I like the way “I’m just a capitalist tool.” can be taken in so many different way!

Posted by Ethical Man on 28 August 2007 at 6:05 pm

Forgot to say…

I think one the most interesting things about open source/free software is that it challenges the neoliberal economic model being rolled out around us. I have just read A Brief Histoy of Neoliberalism, by David Harvey. I guess it was with this rather worrying and disturbing stuff rattling about in my head that I felt compelled me to make my first comment.

Posted by Ethical Man on 28 August 2007 at 6:21 pm

It’s fascinating to me the way that free software works. The whole process of making and supporting it. So many people can’t get there minds around it, and can’t see it as a fundamental shift.

And while I’m not sure how we’ll transition to making money in a world of free software, free culture, and free distribution, I know (I think) that things have to change, and we’ll find better ways to promote production rather than artificial scarcity.

Information will be free! And people will still be happy to pay for it, given the proper mechanism.

Thanks again for commenting, and I hope you’ll hang around a bit.

Posted by Scott Carpenter on 28 August 2007 at 7:58 pm

The Flashblock tip works great.

FYI, in case others don’t want to install Flashblock, they can get to the CitiCard login page without flash (at least as of 11/2007) by going to:

https://www.accountonline.com/

Anyway, I really appreciate this post. Thanks Scott.

Posted by Sam on 18 November 2007 at 1:22 am

You’re welcome, Sam, and thanks for visiting and commenting.

Posted by Scott Carpenter on 18 November 2007 at 5:41 am

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