BOI App issues - blocked

Sarah

I'm sorry, but as usual, BOI have COMPLETELY missed the point that's being made here, with all the multitude of sometimes incredibly bad changes that have been made to on line banking, a mobile phone associated with a bank account is now deemed by BOI as essential, rather than optional, if the phone won't work for whatever reason, then the user has NO access any more to any form or version of on line banking, which was and is a massively retrograde step.

As was pointed out, not all users have perfect sight, or hands that can cope with trying to type on a stupid little mobile phone keyboard, or hearing that means they get to hear the phone chirping because a web site needs an authorisation to process a payment, or the mobility to get to their phone and log in before the ridiculously short time out period expires, and all of these issues are things that the vast majority of the people designing and developing the latest and greatest version of the mousetrap are not even aware of, they're more than likely mid 20's graduates with very little real life experience, and next to no experience of the sorts of issues that are faced by the older generations that are trying desperately to keep up with the latest loops and hoops that they are being forced to jump through.

I'm very fortunate, my first exposure to banking systems was when the UK went over from the old 240 pennies to the pound to decimal 100 Pence to the pound, and I was working for a company that supplied 3 of the big 4 UK banks with mechanical adding machines, as well as the first versions of on line computers, and the like, and we spent weeks testing the conversion process, because every bank in the country (and in those days there were LOTS of them) had to be able to do the conversion on the set day, and be up and running the next day with the new currency.

I also know a lot about on line banking, that happened at around the same time, and I've watched it developing over the years, along with the various generations of ATM, it's hard to believe that the first ATM's only gave you £10, and kept the card, which was posted back to the user, and then they moved on to a card that was good for up to 20 uses, but still only gave you £10, and after the 20'th use, they had to send out a new card, so in some ways, things have improved and moved on, but in other ways, the loops and hoops now are only unreal, and with the increasing number of attempts to defraud, it's getting very hard to know who or what to trust.

The point I was trying to make, and clearly I didn't make it hard enough, if BOI are going to make it impossible to CONTINUE to use a specific version of the operating system of a phone, then it is incumbent on BOI to give the user advance warning of that change, NOT just suddenly tell them, "You need version X of Android to use our application", that is an unreasonable and unacceptable way to treat users, and in some cases, it may mean a user has no access to funds at a critical time, and no easy recourse to alternative sources of funds. For anyone within the bank to see that as even remotely acceptable smacks of a very bad culture within banking, which will only serve to make increasing number of people move away to alternative providers who are being more aware and accommodating of users with any sort of physical or mental difference that makes it harder for them to function.