I have never been a customer of Citibank-Banamex. When I landed in Mexico about 15 years ago I started working at a rival (much smaller) bank called Bital (now HSBC) and for me it was much easier to open an account there. I have never switched, not that HSBC’s service is stellar but at least their Internet banking works pretty well.
My wife, however is a Citibank-Banamex customer. She normally does her banking transactions over the phone. However, today she wanted to access her account using the Internet. She called me and asked me to help her, because she was having trouble. It turns out that Banamex only supports IE and Netscape 7. Their error page even tells Mac customers to download either product. They do not seem to know that both products have already been discontinued, which is quite amazing.
The fact is that I have been working with Citi quite closely recently as an IBM Software Architect. They are big Java users, mostly a BEA shop but they have recently started to adopt WebSphere Application Server. From what I know, there is nothing in their current software architecture that would stop them to support either Firefox or Safari. That makes the situation even harder for me to understand. As I told them in an e-mail, it is easier for us to switch banks (and more likely) than switch computers. I do not believe that their customer service department understands that it is very likely that about twenty percent of their customers do not use IE as their default browser. Otherwise, they would probably avoid to ignore/upset such a large constituency.
I am sincerely surprised that in early 2008 we still have to educate such large corporations about standards, but it is clear that we have to. That is why I urge all Citibank-Banamex customers to send a complaint using the e-form that can be found here.
P.S. Yes, I have tried to change the user-agent to IE 7/Vista on Firefox and I was able to bypass the test, but all I got a blank screen. Anyways, I am not really interested in outsmarting their system, what I want them is to fix it.