Okay, first. National City. For *months* (it seemed) I would log on to my on-line banking doodly and there’d be this message about how they were totally redesigning their website to make it easier to navigate, yada yada. I didn’t think it was too bad as it was. I would put my user id in on the home page and then I’d get directed to a password page and I’d enter that and from there, I’d be able to do, well, pretty much whatever it is you do with your on-line banking doodly. I guess there are some things I might change but they’re pretty minor and overall, the site works pretty well. Well, what NCC added, under the label of better navigation, was a splash page. So now, when I go out to my on-line bank doodly, I can’t enter my user ID directly on the home page. I am faced with a splash page that asks me to choose the area I am interested in, i.e., “personal banking”, “business banking”, “corporate banking”, etc. There’s even a picture of an outdoorsy-looking guy with binoculars. Probably some gals think he’s cute but he doesn’t have me fooled with his “politician hair”. Anyway, I can’t just enter my user ID on the home page any more. I have to click “personal banking” to get to that. Frankly, the only area of the NCC site that I *ever* access is the personal banking area, so why am I faced with making a choice? Oh wait! There is a CHECKBOX that I can check if I don’t want to ever see the splash page again. And so I have. Over and over and over again. Click click click clikc click. In fact, whenever I go out to the blasted NCC site, the splash page has that blasted box checked. The problem is that I am STILL taken to the splash page first and I STILL have to click “personal banking” to get to where I can enter my user ID! And then, when I GET to that page, there is this terribly annoying Flash thing. It loads for a few seconds (even on my broadband connection) and then a bunch of dots appear, all in a line. They start to bounce around and eventually, some woman appears and I forget what happens next. I treat this whole thing like a video game (an annoying one). Can I type my user ID in fast enough to go to the next page before the dots start to bounce around? Once I get to my account stuff, it doesn’t look any different than it has in, oh I dunno, about 5-8 years or thereabouts? So why all the crap about better navigation? All this at a time when National City’s stock is down to a new low and they’ve cut the dividend. I know that because I’m a stockholder. A smalltime stockholder but a stockholder nevertheless. I know that the reason NCC’s stock is down is due to repercussions from the most recent mortgage scandal and you can analyze that all you want but the bottom line answer is one word: GREED. On the part of the lender’s lenders and the home-buyers and everyone involved in the whole blasted structure. Just ask my dad and granddad. They’ll tellya if you can conjure ’em up. So, why they have spent who knows how much to pay for a stoopid splash page and an even stoopider Flash thing with bouncing balls. I love Flash. It’s fun. But I learned how to do that stuff in Flash 1 and I learned that people HATE splash pages back in User Experience 1. Plus, *I* hate splash pages! NCC is paying somebody out there to do almost nothing.

Where was I? If you’ve made it this far you win! I had rants about the telephone company (which one? any one?) and the vee-hickle insurance company (even though they have REDUCED our gargantuan premium) but I’m outta steam. What’s bugging y’all these days?

Oh, and the refrigimatator seems to be working well now. I probably shouldn’t have blahgged that!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 7:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.