Re: Phone numbers and form fields

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From: Phil Pennock
Subject: Re: Phone numbers and form fields
Date: 17:15 on 04 Mar 2005
On 2005-03-04 at 06:35 +0100, Philip Newton wrote:
> But does my online banking service let me enter a bank sort code in
> that format? Well, it does, but that's pretty recent. Before about
> three months ago or so, it only accepted NNNNNNNN: eight digits, no
> spaces.

On those rare occasions when my bank's online banking site is up and
functioning, it's actually fairly decent in some regards.  Nice to have
a hardware token to do challenge/response too.

But when you've been living in The Netherlands for five years and have
learnt the Dutch names for various financial terms, especially those
which don't have direct equivalents in common use in Britain, it's
rather unsettling to log in one day and find yourself presented with
online banking in English.

Okay, the bank has a record to say that I'm a furrineer.  Great.  Now,
can you let me switch the interface back to Dutch so that I don't need
to figure out which English term has been chosen to match
overschrijvingen?  No?  What, nowhere in all these pages of options is
there an option to go back to Dutch?  What, you had to, at the same
time, go and change the options and ordering and introduce new ones
so I can't just automatically click in the same place?

It's rather strange to be snarling at a website with hate because it
insists upon forcing you to use your native tongue.  I'm still not used
to the English.

It's inconsistent too.  I _know_ that the ATMs can present English menus
because if a foreign card is put in, they offer up a language choice.
So how come the bank can record information about the account but not
offer a way to press a button for English when the card is in the ATM.
Not that I want that _now_, especially since they'd probably force it
instead of presenting the choice.  :^(

If I wanted to be fair to the bank (and I don't, since they charge an
annual fee for the online service so it should frigging well work
reliably, instead of always being down ... but at least these days they
tell you the site is down _before_ login, not afterwards; that is, when
it's not the page where you'd log in which is broken) then ... oh sod
it, I don't even want to be fair enough to make a nice point now.
</petty>
-- 
P: Well, what do we have as a diagnostic tool?
J: Customers
There's stuff above here

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