390287 - comerica.com - bank's Web ACH does not accept Gecko browsers

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[c320f]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5

Comerica bank will not accept the user agent string sent by Firefox for their "TM Connect Web" (web ACH).  This can be verified by loading https://www2.comerica.com/webach/.  The web site works with Firefox because if I spoof the UA by installing http://prefbar.mozdev.org/ and set the UA to "IE 6.0 WinXP" I can access the web site.  I've contacted Comerica serveral times by email and they simply tell me that their site doesn't support Firefox.  Normally I would just not go to a web site that doesn't support Firefox as I don't like be forced into using a Microsoft product, but in order to make bank ACH transfers I need to be able to use Comerica's web site.  So short of switching banks I have no choice in the matter.  This would be an easy fix for Comerica, they simply need to allow my UA string "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5"

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Load https://www2.comerica.com/webach/
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
Web site displays page listing supported OS and browsers.

Expected Results:  
Should load Comerica's TM Connect Web ACH page

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I'm not sure why you have filed this as a Firefox bug when you have already determined it to be an issue with their website?

Comment 2

[c320f]

I meant to file it under Product: Tech Evangelism
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Tech%20Evangelism&format=guided

Is there a way to move it to there or do I need to file it again at the above link?

Comment 3

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

You should be able to change the product yourself.

Comment 4

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Yep, this definitely happens, and it definitely shouldn't.

Are there other aspects of Comerica's online banking that don't work, or is their ACH the only thing that rejects non-IE browsers?

Comment 5

[c320f]

The ACH is the only thing that rejects non-IE browsers.

Comment 6

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

c320f, have you contacted Comerica about this? If so, did they ever respond with an explanation?

Comment 7

[c320f]

Yes, I contacted their treasury management customer service and told them that the "Comerica TM Connect Web" product did not allow the user agent string from a Gecko browser.  I asked if they could remove the user agent check when logging onto the web site.  There response is below:

"I spoke with our product managment and development and we only support
Comerica TM Connect Web ACH in a current Windows operating system with a current
Internet Explorer version.  There are no plans to test further with Linux
at this time."

Comment 8

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Perhaps you should point out to them (do you have an e-mail address or other contact info?) that the vast majority of Firefox installs are running on Windows, and that the Macintosh platform has far more marketshare than Linux? Their behaviour as it stands right now is TOTALLY EXCLUDING all their Mac-using customers.

Comment 9

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Furthermore, it sounds like they're rejecting Gecko browsers for no good reason, as from comment 0 it sounds like you can successfully use the ACH features if you spoof as IE. Is that accurate?

Comment 10

[c320f]

Elaine Szymczak
Treasury Management Administrator
[e-mail]

Denise Ling
Assistant Vice President
Treasury Management Services
Comerica Bank
office  [phone]
fax [phone]
[e-mail]

Yes they are rejecting Gecko browsers for no reason, if I spoof as IE it works fine with Firefox.  It wouldn't bother me if they didn't want to officially support Firefox, but to purposely prevent a non-IE browser from using their site is totally unacceptable to me.

Comment 11

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Evangelism letter sent to both of the contacts listed in comment 10, with a cc to the Consumer Complaints Division of the Texas Department of Banking ([e-mail]).

Further consumer complaint info:

http://www.comerica.com/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=7c4be752cf8a5110VgnVCM1000001c21160aRCRD

If I get the same response you did, I think the next step is to send an actual postal letter to Texas, and I'd encourage you to do the same.


Here's what I sent:

Dear Ms. Szymczak and Ms. Ling,

Comerica's online ACH functionality

https://www2.comerica.com/webach/

deliberately and without reason excludes all browsers that are not Microsoft Internet Explorer, including (but in no way limited to) Firefox, Camino, Seamonkey, Epiphany, and Galeon.

There's a report filed regarding this issue in Mozilla's bug system. You can view comments and add comments yourself:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390287

As noted above, there is no valid technical reason to do this. The site is already designed in such a manner that it is functionally compatible with Firefox, Camino, Seamonkey, and other Gecko-based browsers, but you have chosen to deliberately exclude customers who use these Web browsers. (Advanced browser users such as myself can make Firefox "pretend" to be IE and use the ACH features of Comerica's site just fine, so it's clearly not a technical issue.)

This customer-unfriendly behaviour is not only alienating your customers on Windows; it is preventing your customers using Macintosh computers from accessing the ACH site entirely, as there is no longer a version of Internet Explorer that works on the Macintosh.

Furthermore, Bankers Online, an industry Web site, very specifically states, in no uncertain terms, that Internet Explorer is an unsafe browser for online banking:

http://www.bankersonline.com/security/security_browserthreat070204.html

Yet you insist on forcing your customers to use this same insecure, dangerous browser to complete ACH transactions at Comerica.

Data provided by Janco Associates

http://www.e-janco.com/browser.htm

shows that as of January 2008, Microsoft Internet Explorer only represents 60% of the browser market share. This means that you are blocking some FORTY PERCENT of your customers from utilising the ACH functionality on your Web site. Firefox and other Mozilla-based browsers make up the vast majority (about 75%) of this contingent and their market share has been steadily growing. IE's market share, according to the same report, was down 10 percentage points over the previous year! People are abandoning IE in droves, yet you continue to insist that IE is the only answer.

Five years ago, this sort of attitude was easy to justify to the corporate accountants, since IE accounted for over 90% of the browser market and was available on both Macintosh and Windows platforms. Dramatic changes to the technology landscape have made "IE- and Windows-only" a completely untenable position now, as to reject non-IE browsers is to reject 40% of your overall customer base and ALL of your Macintosh customer base. Note also that developing a Web site that *excludes* certain browsers is far more difficult than developing a Web site that makes no attempt at all to exclude browsers. In Web development, increased difficulty means increased costs and development time and greater code maintenance costs, making a compelling argument that it's both easier *and* cheaper to do the right thing than it is to continue with your site's current behaviour.

The most puzzling part of the entire mess to me is that *only* the ACH portion of the site is arbitrarily restricted to Internet Explorer. The rest of the site is accessible to all modern browsers, as it should be. It only makes sense to stop restricting your customers' ability to complete ACH transactions with a browser of their choice, since they already have the ability to accomplish the rest of their online banking with any browser they choose.

Please feel free to contact me if you have additional questions.

Sincerely,
Chris Lawson
Tech Evangelist for Mozilla Products

Comment 12

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

INCOMPLETE due to lack of activity since the end of 2009.

If someone is willing to investigate the issues raised in this bug to determine whether they still exist, *and* work with the site in question to fix any existing issues, please feel free to re-open and assign to yourself.

Sorry for the bugspam; filter on "NO MORE PRE-2010 TE BUGS" to remove.