Westpac Web site still broken after two years and ten months

This cannot be accidental. The Westpac.com.au Web site was broken back in September 2007 and still has exactly the same problem in July 2010. Does Westpac hate their customers? Could the person in charge of the Web site be a luddite¹?

The problem with the Westpac Web site all those years ago was that you could not access the site on a slow connection because the home page is flooded with junk and is faulty. Today the page is exactly the same. 34 months and they have not fixed a simple problem. What are they doing? Do they think they are Microsoft?

I use Westpac purely because I needed a business account at a time when a big greedy bank took over my favourite smaller focused efficient customer oriented bank. I thought the big bank would throw out their ineffective systems and use those of the good bank. Instead the big bank forced the conquered customers to switch to the abysmal primitive systems of the big bank. I looked at switching to another bank where I had one account but they were busy closing all their branches. The choice came down to Westpac or the Commonwealth Bank. I chose Westpac because I shared business with people using Westpac.

Westpac had, at the time, the best deal on cashing cheques from international customers and an online system with more features in the area I needed. I signed with Westpac.

I then wanted to add a payment system to one Web site using Westpac and Westpac made the whole project too difficult. Several colleagues implemented similar projects with the Commonwealth bank and had no problems.

Westpac then decided to make their Web site impossible to use in any Web browser not personally approved by Bill Gates. Now I hate Westpac and will change to anybody else the next time I make a change to my business or personal banking arrangements.

As a speed comparison, teller machine access to Commonwealth Bank machines is faster than Westpac machines. Commonwealth Bank machines in far off Bali are faster than Westpac machines here in Sydney right next to the Westpac processing centre.

Another speed comparison. A colleague contacted the Commonwealth Bank and connected a Web site within three weeks including coding time. One attempt to connect a site to Westpac required more than six weeks to get documentation that turned out to be incomplete and we had to wait many more weeks to get a working set of documentation. The total project implementation window was gone before Westpac supplied sufficient information to start on the implementation.

Back to their faulty Web site. If your Internet connection is slow, the Westpac home page never completes. Westpac must have worked really hard to build a time bomb into the page.

Here is a helpful hint. The Internet banking logon page is https://online.westpac.com.au/esis/Login/SrvPage. The login page will actually complete. You can use that part of the Westpac site on a slow link. Someone at Westpac must have taken pity on a customer and secretly removed some of the rubbish from the login page. Do not tell anyone at Westpac. If this secret gets out, the thugs at Westpac will beat up whoever made the page workable.

¹Luddite: A person who opposes technological change. For example, a person who sticks with an iPod despite there being so many better devices out there.