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.