After All These Years, Commerce Bank Online Still Has Flaws

So I opened a small business account at Commerece Bank last Thursday. It was pretty simple - I did it in person - and was told that my Online Small Business Account should automatically be grouped with my personal accounts - oh what a dream that would be too.

I mean that would be some kind of service, wouldn't it? That is the kind of service that I expect, feel that I deserve, and would be thrilled be a part of. Think of it, this rep just enters my information into the system, and Online Banking automatically groups my accounts together. Who wouldn't want that? Doesn't everybody use Online Banking these days? It just seems logical that is how the process would work.

I was told that it used to be that customers had to remove their personal online accounts, manually, themselves, and then re-create them all with the new small business account grouped in, but he thought they'd fixed that now. He gave me the phone number to Online Banking, just in case.

Well I am here to blog today that they not only haven't fixed that, but the process is worse than I could have imagined. In fact, it is so bad that if I were a stock holder I'd demand the resignation of the Director of CommerceBank Online. This person is clearly out-of-touch with how the web works and they are allowing Online Banking to continue being the mess it was back in 2000. They also have no understanding what it is like to be a CommerceBank customer, which I would think would be the first rule in directing an online service such as Online Banking.

I called the 800 number given to me, upon discovering that my new account was not grouped with my personal accounts, two days after opening the account. The person on the line was appalled at what I had been told in person at the Commerce Bank branch on 115th & Nall in Overland Park, Kansas. Online Banking has never worked that way, she told me, and I would have to enroll for Online Banking at www.CommerceBank.com. I asked if she could just group my accounts together for me, but she said she could not. I MUST enroll online...it is the only way.

The online enrollment form is quite ugly for a banking website. It looks as if it was designed by .NET programmers. The fields are so far apart, it is difficult to tell if they line up or not. The bottom of the form is the most important part, where a customer enters the SSN's to the personal accounts to be grouped with the Small Business Online acct. Those fields are spaced so unevenly that it is unclear whether entering two SSNs will be accepted. There is no validation on this form what-so-ever. Do I put dashes in my SSN or not? Roll the dice and take your chances.

Upon submission of this form you get varied responses. If you're using Firefox 2.0.0.16 you either get an apologetic, custom Commerce Bank error page apologizing that the site is down and to try again later(which in the middle of the day, during business hours you know is completely false) or you get the blank white browser error page with an H1 sized Times New Roman font - Bad Request, Invalid Host Header. Make no mistake about it, I tried this four times on two different days, the Enrollment form simply won't work with Firefox.

When I tried the Enrollment form with Internet Explorer 7, it worked successfully. I was taken to additional screens that I hadn't seen before when I tried it with Firefox. Incredible though, those online forms had flaws too. For example, it asked for my birthday and indicated (MM/DD/YYYY) format - which isn't unusual. But after entering my birth date that way, when I tabbed out of the text field, it auto corrected itself to (M/D/YYYY) format. I went back and corrected it, because I assumed the form wouldn't submit until it was (MM/DD/YYYY), but it insisted on M/D/YYYY when I left the field. Fortunately it worked, but requiring customers to follow a pattern, then having the site display it differently is confusing and frustrating. Why make me jump through hoops I don't need to jump through? Talk about cruel and unusual punishment.

After I enrolled in Online Banking for my Small Business Account, then I had to enroll again for Bill Pay, again a completely separate form. This form was also quite ugly and unlike the other forms, required no dashes in any of the numbers. Clearly this site was built by different people in different parts of the country void of any communication what-so-ever. One form takes dashes, others don't. One form has vertical form fields, another has a horizontal layout. One form has validation requiring NO dashes, other forms have no validation at all. I cannot be the only customer this drives stark craving mad.

I was forced to change my login. I couldn't use the same login, because well I was already using it - it already existed. This is retarded to me, adding more complexity to an otherwise simple request to group my accounts together. I have no doubt that since I had to recreate my login, that they will reset all of my other personal accounts, including billpay, and I will have to take the time to re-enter all of my automatic payment settings again, which again will be retarded if that happens.

Finally after submitting the forms necessary to enroll in online banking for my small business account, the final message is that I will be notified by snail mail in 5 business days when my ONLINE account has been setup. This is perhaps the most UN-web-like part of Online Banking at Commerce Bank. 5 Days? Snail Mail? So let me get this straight: I already visited the bank in person, with my IRS Documents with EIN on them, already have multiple other accounts with Commerce Bank, and it will take 5 business days to group my new small business account with my already existing personal accounts? Incredible! Are we really in the 21st Century?

For CommerceBank.com to be permitted to error out with default browser errors, void of any warnings or fine-print that it will not work with the FireFox browser is frankly embarrassing. They just leave the site as is, frustrating thousands of customers, and accepting that as reasonable. Why would any company interested in customer service, purposefully decide to build an Online Banking site that does not work with Firefox? The disclaimer at the bottom of the site says: "Best viewed in Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher and Netscape 7.1 or higher" I can only assume that in mentioning Netscape, they mean Firefox, because Firefox has far and away more users than Netscape in the 21st Century. But to use Firefox to enroll for Online Banking is a path toward frustration and failure.

My hope in blogging this is that enough Commerce Bank customers will read it to discover that they are not the only customers with frustrations in using Online Banking. And also, maybe someone high up in Commerce Bank will take note and investigate why such embarrassments are being permitted at Commerce Bank. My 89 year old grandfather, who died two years ago, used Commerce Bank his entire life. He, thankfully, never had to deal with the frustrations of Online Banking. But Commerce Bank has had such a grand reputation in the 20th Century, it would be a pity for their Online Banking product to render them one of the worst banks in Kansas City, in the 21st Century (especially with so much national competition).