Jeroens blog

Yay – I almost thought I could finally access my bank account for the first time in what must now almost be a year – of course I couldn’t.

I’ll start at the beginning, going through all the ways their system failed.

All my problems started off with me just trying to sign in to my on-line banking account. Back then they where switching between a system with just logins, and one with a card-reader you need to put your bank card into. Like I always had done, I tried to sign in to my account, but entered a wrong password 3 times according to the site (very strange since I have 100′s of logins, and practically never enter a wrong password – and my portable password manager certainly doesn’t). So I had to wait a little over a week until they send me a new code. When entering it, it failed again (and so the cycle repeated itself a few times).

At some point the people at the banking office got so annoyed (since this was all my fault), they gave me a card-reader so I could use the new system. I have logged in to that once just to checked how it worked. A week later, when I needed to do some transaction, I did exactly the same, but got some obscure error when I put my card into the reader. After sending an email to my bank and waiting a few days, I got the reply the chip was damaged, and I should go get a new card. I went passed the office again, and requested a new card, which I immediately got. I had to wait for a code to be sent though. Due to some delays at the main office, this took approximately 3 weeks (omg?).

Well, when I finally got that code, I of course tried it out right away. Apparently I had to ‘activate’ my card first at an ATM though. I don’t know how, but I somehow failed to sense in the force I had to do this, and only found out after my card got blocked and someone informed me about it. Great, now I had to wait for another code to be sent!

This one only took a week or so, and I managed to activate it at the ATM. (Why is that required – lame analogue nonsense!) So today I tried to login again. I went to the correct section of the Argenta site, entered my details, put in a challenge and my pin into the card reader, and typed the response in the form on the web-page. I didn’t get any errors saying my code was wrong or that the chip of my card was damaged, so I thought ‘woooot, finally!’.

Half a second later, I got this popup:

This is Dutch, translated into English it says: There is a problem with your card. You can contact the support ….

What?! There is A PROBLEM?!!!! with my card????

I send another mail requesting the reason for this. If they fail to give decent support, I’m going to transfer all the money I got there to one of my other accounts at another bank. I’m not going to quit to try get access to my account. It’s just funny how they keep fucking their system up. If this wasn’t Dutch – I’d submit it to failblog. I’m also staring to think it’s just easier to go hack their servers then to access my account in a regular fashion, it would s not surprise me if the security fails as much as their login system.

1. Darklight says:

   July 26, 2009 at 5:37 pm

   HAHA, fail xD
2. Deleted_screen says:

   July 26, 2009 at 10:57 pm

   Like totally, is all dutch banks like that? I’ve seen some other posts of you with dutch crapbanks. Can’t say the swedish banks are any better but really that Argenta bank just took the price man!
3. [RTS]BN+VS* says:

   July 26, 2009 at 11:37 pm

   I’ll put “Argenta – nominated by Deleted Screen as worlds worst bank” into my sign next time I send them an email, alright?

   I don’t really know about the other Ducth banks – certainly hope they aren’t so fucked up xD