21–30 of 53 posts
* My perception of time is notoriously bad, but I know for sure it was later than 2005
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well like it or not that's how society works. Name me a community that isn't a where things operate 24/7. It annoys me too, but when 97% of everyone observes a normal sleep schedule, who's even around to staff and support the nightlife? Why should my hours be forced upon anybody else?
Because we are talking about a server, so the marginal cost of operating is basically electricity. And no one is forcing other bank websites to operate 24/7, it just makes economic sense to provide it since it costs so little. I would not patronize a business that had to regularly shut down their website, I would wonder what kind of weak IT department they have and why I would want to invest in that.
Locking bank websites after hours isn't a great proposition for an increasingly cashless society.
When engineering teams are working hard to increase the uptime of their service. This banks approach is funny to ask customers to visit the next day.
Wait until you learn about their approach to getting new customers living abroad (non resident Indians) They’ll ask you to physically mail in all the documents, on your dime, instead of scanning and emailing like a normal person. So I need to spend 100$ to open an account. Unlike American banks who will offer you money to open accounts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, it self selects out people who would cost more money in support to the bank. If you’re in their time zone (and awake when they are), the bank could save money by only needing to have support available at certain times. Similarly, they may not want to have you in their community. So, the community they form might be smaller, but more aligned with what they want. They are definitely reducing their pool of customers…
> the bank could save money by only needing to have support available at certain times. You don't need live support to run a website, you can experience this on most websites that have live support available if you go to their site at 1am local.
I can’t say I’d call this a smart move, but if they still have enough customers to make it worthwhile, I can’t say it’s a bad move. Now, if they can’t get customers or can’t grow because of this, the market will tell them it’s a bad idea.
It’s definitely sub-optimal, from a growth point of view. But so long as it works for them and their customers, why should I care?
Are they the only bank for a region? Or is using them required for some purpose?
Sometimes these requirements aren't as ridiculous as they sound. Some websites are subject to legislation* that requires real people to be available to assist. So if they use local employees to provide assistance, the website ends up being shut down outside of business hours. This isn't a US bank, but if you see a US government site do this for example, that's usually why. (* an incidental "benefit" of legislation li…
>but if you see a US government site do this for example, that's usually why. Do you have any examples that of US legislation that requires being able to reach a local employee? I can barely get state government departments to respond to me, and there are multiple states I have called during normal business hours that flat out say “we are too busy today, call tomorrow”. The idea of a government in the US legislating…
https://www.fcc.gov/media/customer-service-standards
And these banking regulations are too long for me to skim in too much detail, but they mention "telephone" 138 times in the context of various requirements of availability for certain functions and during certain times. One such example:
> 7. Telephone line availability. To satisfy the readily-available standard, the financial institution must provide enough telephone lines so that consumers get a reasonably prompt response. The institution need only provide telephone service during normal business hours. Within its primary service area, an institution must provide a local or toll-free telephone number. It need not provide a toll-free number or accept collect long-distance calls from outside the area where it normally conducts business.
https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/6500-580.html
But more specifically about government requirements, there's stuff like the ADA which requires specific means of access, and there's other things like the USPS USO which, for instance, requires 6 day per week postal service. I'm sure there are others.
I think having “business hours” for websites is an interesting experiment that could help foster a sense of community as people must visit around the same time as everyone else. Also saves on server costs. Imagine for instance if Hackernews was only open from 12pm to 11pm on weekdays and until 1 AM on weeekends.
I ended up deciding it would be too much trouble to keep it secure and prevent spam for what amounted to a small idea, but I've been secretly hoping someone else comes up with it someday.
Fun fact, there exists a bug with EQ Bank where a deleted savings account still counts towards the maximum of 5 savings accounts. The customer service agent indicated this was a known bug and had been for some time! I'm planning to leave within the next year.