Bangkok Bank is busy sucking Microsoft's 'certain body part'

Tue, Jun 3, 2008 Tweet Vote on HN Until today i used to be a big fan of Bangkok Bank. In fact everyone in my family and even their companies have been using Bangkok Bank as the primary bank, in many cases their only Bank. I was quite happy with their service, only recently opened an account in another bank for certain cool features that they have which is not the point of my rant here. So... what changed today? Well I tried to do my first login to my BizIBanking (yeah lame buzzword) account. Following the instructions in the email, i clicked login and instead of the login screen I got... This is quite lame. I thought that one of the biggest banks wont try to push down an American capitalist product down the throat of not so rich Thai users, there must be a mistake. So i called up their friendly call center. After numerous IVR selections I finally got thru to their friendly staff. (approximate conversation - my memory gets weaker when my head gets hot!) Me : My new BizIbanking account doesnt work. I use firefox and it says I must use IE. ... at this point he made me restart my browser and try to login again. i told him it doesnt work and reminded him i use linux and firefox and dont have IE. He : Oh, sorry sir. The script of the website is works on PC only. So you have to use IE. Me : But i am using a Linux PC which has Firefox on it. He : You must use IE Me : But windows is unsafe. No computer in my office has windows. windows and IE is easily hackable, do you want my account to be hacked? He : but the script is made for PC.... Me : I have recently opened account at K-Bank and they dont have any such thing He : because they use another script Me : Aha... so i must use K-Bank for my company accounts then. HE : Have a Good Day. At this point I nearly stormed out of my office to goto the bank to close my account, then i realized its past the banks closing hours. I decided to play with user agents. I changed my user agent to "IE 7 on Vista" using the User Agent Switcher firefox plugin. Changing User agent, everything works fine!!! Most such websites usually don't work on Firefox as their programmers are lazy.. but in this case it does work on Firefox. I really wonder what is their hidden agenda behind attempting (poorly) to block firefox users from visiting their site??? I need a windows box at my office to do some graphics stuff, can I get the bank to pay for the license since they force people to use Microsoft's bloatware? Moral of the story : Usually when people say that "I can't switch to Linux cause xxx site doesn't work" they think its the fault of the software. They must realize that usually it is not the fault of the software, but rather some evil corporation serving their wasted interests.