Bank of Ireland Business Online

Gekko

Does anyone know if there are monthly fees (in addition to any transaction fees) for using this service?

It's not clear from their website / online brochure.

Just been ripped off for a GB£ transfer and want to look into cheaper methods.

Will be complaining to my branch on Monday as well in any case!

capefear

Gekko wrote: »

Does anyone know if there are monthly fees (in addition to any transaction fees) for using this service?

It's not clear from their website / online brochure.

Just been ripped off for a GB£ transfer and want to look into cheaper methods.

Will be complaining to my branch on Monday as well in any case!

I think there is of 15 a month fee for online banking.

writhen

Yes - €15 per month for the pleasure/trauma of using BOI Business Online. They have some cheek charging for it....

nirvshand

Recently Bank of Ireland upped their Business transaction fee for each sterling payment from €5.00 to €12.50 (150% RISE APPROVED BY THE REGULATOR!). Just another example to show the government couldn't give a damn about SMEs and stimulating the economy. Funny how these shenanigans seem to coincide with Matthew Elderfield's departure as regulator. Seems the old boys club have regained full control of the banks and who keeps them in check.

Bandara

Can anyone with experience of Ulster Banks online offering comment on it pls?

I have only ever used BOIs one

Thanks

sohappy

Hammertime wrote: »

Can anyone with experience of Ulster Banks online offering comment on it pls?

I have only ever used BOIs one

Thanks

Urgent international payments between 14-19 euro
Standard international payments between 30-50 cent
Quartely fee 5.08 plus transaction fees for business acc

They were doing 3yrs free banking for business customers not sure if still doing it.
You can download full list of all their fees on the site.
Smartphone app works good,

ironclaw

BoI's online service is a joke from the perspective of what browser you can use with it. The only one that works is IE. So forget about using FireFox, Chrome, Opera etc. For that reason alone I wouldn't even consider it. Now its been about 6 months since I used it but if they only support IE I'd be worried about their general outlook on support-ability and security.

Never had an issue with Ulster Bank but I don't use their business online offering. However the personal online system is one of the best in my opinion.

Gekko

sohappy wrote: »

Urgent international payments between 14-19 euro
Standard international payments between 30-50 cent
Quartely fee 5.08 plus transaction fees for business acc

They were doing 3yrs free banking for business customers not sure if still doing it.
You can download full list of all their fees on the site.
Smartphone app works good,

I must look into Ulster Bank in that case.

For the moment I'm trying to register as a customer with a business called CurrencyFair - big savings to be had on foreign exchange transactions and guess what there fee is: between €3 and €7!

To make matters worse, my local BoI charged me a whopping €75 for my last sterling transfer.

When I rang and queried it the response was: "We're very sorry but you were overcharged in this case." It's still €50 though!

It has gone up by about 35% on what they used to charge.

The banks are basically being allowed by the regulator to rob SMEs.

"In communist Russia Ireland, the banks rob you."

Nuttzz

Started using http://transferwise.com/ since the fees on BOL increased, better rate as well

Trojan

Cue rant.

BOI's Business On Line is incredible. Absolutely horrible from a design and usability point of view, and is probably the most frustrating online app I've used, ever.

If you want to make an online transfer, you need to setup your user and authorise them for payments. To do that you create a digital certificate. But wait, there's more... (that should be the BOL tagline)... BOI need to call you on the phone to activate the digital certificate first. And they only do this during office hours. And when they ring you, they do so from a private number, so if you miss the call, well tough luck. And then when you call their BOL support number, after waiting the obligatory 15 minutes on hold, they can't actually handle this request, they need to email the digital cert department to call you back instead - no transfer possible. In fairness, they were quick - they got back to me within 10 minutes after I called support. (I only needed to wait another 7 minutes before the cert was ready.)

But before all that remember setting up the user? Well in order to do that you had to setup a new user group before you setup a user, and assign that. Then log in as the user, and activate the account that you want to use. Before doing that, you needed to authorise the setup of a user group in the audit trail, and then create a user and assign to the user group. Then authorise that. Starting from scratch, doing a simple transfer is hours of work for someone technically competent if they do it outside working hours (surely online banking should be used during office hours!) and I suspect using this service is a nightmare for anyone even mildly technophobic.

After some time you'll find that your digital certificate password needs to be changed. You find this out while you're trying to make a transfer. "No problem," you say, "I'll change it". But wait, there's more! You get a prompt where it has 3 input text boxes labeled "User I.D.:", "Digital Cert password:" and "Confirm Password:". Under "User I.D.:" you can see the bottom 2-3 pixels of some text that's been overwritten by the "User I.D.:" text, and you can't read it. All 3 input text boxes are password entry (the text entered appears as asterixes).

You want to make an international bank transfer to a supplier in the UK. No problem! Go to Payments -> Cross Border -> Third Party Payments. Ok!

Select the a/c from which payments will be made - got it.

Do I wish to include Spot/Forward Contract Details? Errr, what? Let's pick No. Ok - that works.
Select Destination Country - No problem, "G.B.\N.I." looks like the right one.
Select Payment currency - Sterling Pounds - OK
Input Payment amount. 1...0... Oh wait, I needed to pay in Euros. How do I change that? I don't. I reset the whole form.
>angry user<

Copy and paste the long IBAN number in? No chance. You gotta type that mother right in there by yourself.

In fairness to them, it is quite a powerful system with a great audit trail and very granular permissions, once you get past the UI created by four blind ex-IBM 360 assembly programmers who died in 1971. But looking past that UI it is overkill for most small business's needs.

Pay €15/month for it? No chance. I'll be moving the business to a new bank before I'll do that. Which is probably easier than setting up a standing order.

Overkill in terms of features I don't have a problem with, as long as the system is usable for the smaller set that I need. Unfortunately it's a design nightmare, and the work flow to accomplish common, simple tasks is long and tortuous. Not good enough.


Edit: yes, I posted this on LeinsterFans rant thread a while back.

Nuttzz

A friend works in BOI IT and told me that they only ever expected 2-300 customers ever to use BOL and it was designed as such, small businesses would never be interested in it.

There is an upgrade in the works but nothing will happen with it until after SEPA which is Feb 2014.

Gekko

Trojan wrote: »

Cue rant.

BOI's Business On Line is incredible. Absolutely horrible from a design and usability point of view, and is probably the most frustrating online app I've used, ever.

If you want to make an online transfer, you need to setup your user and authorise them for payments. To do that you create a digital certificate. But wait, there's more... (that should be the BOL tagline)... BOI need to call you on the phone to activate the digital certificate first. And they only do this during office hours. And when they ring you, they do so from a private number, so if you miss the call, well tough luck. And then when you call their BOL support number, after waiting the obligatory 15 minutes on hold, they can't actually handle this request, they need to email the digital cert department to call you back instead - no transfer possible. In fairness, they were quick - they got back to me within 10 minutes after I called support. (I only needed to wait another 7 minutes before the cert was ready.)

But before all that remember setting up the user? Well in order to do that you had to setup a new user group before you setup a user, and assign that. Then log in as the user, and activate the account that you want to use. Before doing that, you needed to authorise the setup of a user group in the audit trail, and then create a user and assign to the user group. Then authorise that. Starting from scratch, doing a simple transfer is hours of work for someone technically competent if they do it outside working hours (surely online banking should be used during office hours!) and I suspect using this service is a nightmare for anyone even mildly technophobic.

After some time you'll find that your digital certificate password needs to be changed. You find this out while you're trying to make a transfer. "No problem," you say, "I'll change it". But wait, there's more! You get a prompt where it has 3 input text boxes labeled "User I.D.:", "Digital Cert password:" and "Confirm Password:". Under "User I.D.:" you can see the bottom 2-3 pixels of some text that's been overwritten by the "User I.D.:" text, and you can't read it. All 3 input text boxes are password entry (the text entered appears as asterixes).

You want to make an international bank transfer to a supplier in the UK. No problem! Go to Payments -> Cross Border -> Third Party Payments. Ok!

Select the a/c from which payments will be made - got it.

Do I wish to include Spot/Forward Contract Details? Errr, what? Let's pick No. Ok - that works.
Select Destination Country - No problem, "G.B.\N.I." looks like the right one.
Select Payment currency - Sterling Pounds - OK
Input Payment amount. 1...0... Oh wait, I needed to pay in Euros. How do I change that? I don't. I reset the whole form.
>angry user<

Copy and paste the long IBAN number in? No chance. You gotta type that mother right in there by yourself.

In fairness to them, it is quite a powerful system with a great audit trail and very granular permissions, once you get past the UI created by four blind ex-IBM 360 assembly programmers who died in 1971. But looking past that UI it is overkill for most small business's needs.

Pay €15/month for it? No chance. I'll be moving the business to a new bank before I'll do that. Which is probably easier than setting up a standing order.

Overkill in terms of features I don't have a problem with, as long as the system is usable for the smaller set that I need. Unfortunately it's a design nightmare, and the work flow to accomplish common, simple tasks is long and tortuous. Not good enough.


Edit: yes, I posted this on LeinsterFans rant thread a while back.

Jesus that's horrendous. So glad I never even considered using it!

rainbowdash

Gekko wrote: »

I must look into Ulster Bank in that case.

For the moment I'm trying to register as a customer with a business called CurrencyFair - big savings to be had on foreign exchange transactions and guess what there fee is: between €3 and €7!

To make matters worse, my local BoI charged me a whopping €75 for my last sterling transfer.

When I rang and queried it the response was: "We're very sorry but you were overcharged in this case." It's still €50 though!

It has gone up by about 35% on what they used to charge.

The banks are basically being allowed by the regulator to rob SMEs.

"In communist Russia Ireland, the banks rob you."

Just use transfermate.ie for forex movements, I use them frequently and there is no messing about, very efficient and helpful.

rainbowdash

Nuttzz wrote: »

A friend works in BOI IT and told me that they only ever expected 2-300 customers ever to use BOL and it was designed as such, small businesses would never be interested in it.

There is an upgrade in the works but nothing will happen with it until after SEPA which is Feb 2014.

I asked them could I not just have normal 365 online and they forced me to use this rubbish.

Are there any people on here with limited company accounts and being allowed use normal banking 365?

srsly78

They will not let you use a "normal account" for business purposes. They were unable however to show me any relevant laws pertaining to this, rather insisting that it was bank "policy". One legal complication may be the deposit guarantee, which doesn't apply to businesses - thus necessitating the distinction between business and personal accounts.

Thus the trick is to say nothing about it being a business account! The normal consumer account gives better service (and way less fees) than the business account... The taxman has no problem with vat etc coming out of a personal account.

This will only work for a small business without many transactions tho.

rainbowdash

srsly78 wrote: »

They will not let you use a "normal account" for business purposes. They were unable however to show me any relevant laws pertaining to this, rather insisting that it was bank "policy". One legal complication may be the deposit guarantee, which doesn't apply to businesses - thus necessitating the distinction between business and personal accounts.

Thus the trick is to say nothing about it being a business account! The normal consumer account gives better service (and way less fees) than the business account... The taxman has no problem with vat etc coming out of a personal account.

This will only work for a small business without many transactions tho.

Yes but when it's a limited company then you are kinda caught, can't exactly pretend it's a personal account.

Its not as easy as switching to ulster bank either, sometimes I have clients who will want to pay in cash and they can walk into their nearest bank of Ireland branch and do the deposit into my account. Ulster bank for example have very few actual branches around compared to bank of Ireland.

srsly78

Ahem, I do this with a limited company I have no cash dealings tho. If anyone asks I will just say it's a personal expense account, which is kinda true (director 100% owner).

I had a business account with BoI for 2 years, but once the free-fees honeymoon period ran out the bills were crazy - and the online facilities are woeful as already discussed.

BoI simply do not offer a suitable option for small businesses, so if possible take your business elsewhere imo.

moycullen14

An email to BOI.....

Hi,

Recently registered for your business on-line service. I need to access it on an Apple Mac Boo (macosx 10.7.5). I've tried to bring up the site using Firefox, Chrome, Opera & Safari with no luck.
Do you not support this platform? I use a mac for business & also linux based machines (database server development). I have not used a Windows PC for years - it's completely unsuitable for my line of work.

Please don't tell me that I have to use Internet Explorer to access the system?

Regards


And their response.......

Dear XXXX

I can confirm Business On Line can only be accessed through Internet Explorer. If you try to access Business On Line from any other browser you will receive a message saying loading please wait and it will not progress.

It is stated in the application form that Business On Line can only be accessed through Internet Explorer.

Certain customers who operate Mac have gained access to the website by installing a parallel such as bootcamp - this will assist you operating Internet Explorer. Unfortunately as we do not operate on Mac we cannot assist with the installation of this programme.

I do apologise for any inconvenience caused if you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact me.

And mine.....

Dear XXXX,

Thank your for your prompt response.

Can I ask you to do something for me? Can you forward this email to someone in the organisation that is responsible for IT implementation and strategy?
Now I have no intention of berating you for this outrageous piece of technical backwardness - obviously it's neither your choice or decision - I want whoever it is that makes these decisions to be made aware that as a customer and an experienced IT professional I find the decision to limit support of Business Online to IE, and as a consequence Microsoft Windows, to be backward, insecure and wholly unnecessary.

As you can see from the attached graphic, IE has been rapidly losing market share for years -especially in the mobile space. So while 'insisting' on IE might have been acceptable 5-10 years ago, it no longer is.

To be honest, IE is not the problem. The real problem is that it forces use of Microsoft Windows. Now temporary access to a windows machine is not a problem but by it's nature Business Internet Banking needs to accessed from a secure, accessible machine - therefore I would need a 'dedicated' PC for internet banking. This is not an expense that I am willing to bear.

If ROS (Revenue On Line) is capable of running on multiple platforms/browsers (it, too, is a java/browser based, certificate enabled application), then there is no reason that BOI cannot do the same.


Please let me know when you intend to fix this ridiculous state of affairs. In the meantime, I will NOT be using BOI Business Online,

Sincerely,

XXXX

PS. If an application does not support a particular browser/OS, it should say so. Just hanging indefinitely is, in my professional view, just a sloppy bug. You might think about fixing that, at the very least. If the development was done in house, get your developers to fix it. If it was out-sourced then get them to fix it under the terms of your support contract - if you have one.

ironclaw

Its crazy. Even newer versions of IE won't work with it. A company I work for deliberately has one laptop we don't upgrade IE on as its the only laptop that can access it. The height of stupidity on BoI's behalf.

relaxed

It's absurd really, I keep complaining every time I go in.

Bigcheeze

I have an old dell laptop at my feet that is only used to access business online.

I have logmein installed on it so I can access business online remotely.

The application hasn't changed in 10 years so don't hold your breath.

Eoin

I was on the verge of leaving BOI purely because of the BOL website. Thankfully I was able to switch to a normal 365online account as I was just T/A a business name, not a company. It's an appalling website.

relaxed

Another run in with the retardio system this morning.

Tried to add a 3rd party Irish beneficiary.

Entered sort code etc. and in the drop down menu for country code it said "[NONE]" which is obvious because its not a cross border beneficiary so it must be Ireland.

When I went to authorise it said select country code. Why ask a retarded question when they know its not cross border.

So when I tried to enter the country code it wouldn't let me choose anything apart from [NONE] because that half of it retarded brain has figured out that it must be Ireland.

Luckily I was able to enter it as a one off sundry payment, not ideal but if that hadn't worked I would have wasted half the day trekking to a branch to manually do it and probably get charged for same.

I will post this in the bank of Ireland forum too.

D Hayes

Unfortunately, I also use BOI's business online offering. Absolute disgrace. 2 years ago they assured me that a new system was in the pipeline, fupping spoofers.

In relation to your issue though, I can't recall having to select a country when making a third party payment?

relaxed

buysellswap wrote: »

Unfortunately, I also use BOI's business online offering. Absolute disgrace. 2 years ago they assured me that a new system was in the pipeline, fupping spoofers.

In relation to your issue though, I can't recall having to select a country when making a third party payment?

Well when you select add domestic beneficiary (rather than cross border) they should know by default its republic of Ireland!!

Incidently I logged in again just now and when I click on the drop down box it allows me select Republic of Ireland (no other option), which I couldn't do this morning.

Its so terrible, I use the normal 365 for my personal account and I can't fault it.

D Hayes

Another day, another BOI Business Online Banking fup-up. It's been hanging on this screen for five minutes.



By the way, the first field above is not User ID. It's whatever the hell is meant to be written under it, which you can partially see.

srsly78

Oh yeah I remember that one, even bug reported it to them years ago. You can work around it by logging in as the admin and using a different password change dialog hidden somewhere. This I found after much consternation.

D Hayes

^ Spot on, thanks. You can change this in the Admin section.

rovoagho

Is it still that wonderful shade of institutional green? Jesus I used to hate it. And that update key screen above used to drive me demented.

Moved to AIB years ago, their system has its flaws too, but it's miles better than BOI.

Best system I've come across so far is Ulster, moved to PTSB recently and it's not as good. I'd guess some of the US systems would put us to shame.

relaxed

The reply I got in the official bank of Ireland forum was that they had checked with online banking and that there are no bugs at the moment.

Obviously they don't seem to think that only working on Internet Explorer is a bug, and that's just for starters of course.

friend and foe

i had the misfortune of working on the BOL helpdesk for four years. it's an absolute disgrace of a system, i used to bring up these issues all the time with team leaders and management on what seemed like a daily basis. every time i was told, "there's an update in the works, we cant make changes to the system as it is." and other such bullsh!t. it got to the stage that because i was repeatedly bringing up 'old issues' that had 'been resolved' i ws viewed as a troublesome staff member and the last year of my working there was essentially a daily berating from management and TL's that i wasn't doing my job properly, even though my job only revolved around answering customer queries and raising their concerns. i could most likely still talk anyone through the entire system without having to use it myself as a reference, even though i left over two years ago. it's quite clear that they don't give a flying f**k about their customers who are forced to use such a retarded banking system, and so the only advice i could offer anyone currently using the system is to leave bank of ireland, and move your accounts elsewhere. it might seem like a bit of a hassle to do, but trust me, it'll save you plenty of money and frustration in the long run as you wont have to ring BOI every time you want to make a simple transfer!

/endrant