Since I’ve moved to Austria, I’ve had all sorts of problems to access my online banking account. The problem is that every time I install some update on my computer, the bank’s certificate is somehow lost and I have to register my computer again to access my banking account. (Yes, in order to do some operations, such as bank transfers, I need to register the computer I’m using. Otherwise, I can only see the statement on the screen and nothing more). The problem is that every time I have to register the computer again, they do this by sending me a message on the mobile phone, or I have to personally go the bank. After I moved to Austria, my mobile in Brazil was cancelled, so the number they had there no longer existed. I asked if they could send the message to my father’s phone and they said I would have to go to the bank to register his phone on my account. How can this be more stupid?
Luckily, my father had a document giving him power to be me basically (I left it here signed before leaving Brazil, I knew it would be needed at some point). So with this letter he was able to go to the bank, register his phone. Then I entered the website, asked it to send the message to my father’s phone and he sent me an e-mail with the damn code. Now imagine that I would have to do this every time the browser is updated…
This happened once when he was visiting me in Vienna, i.e., his phone was there and not working. I used Skype to call the bank here and after a lot of waiting I talked to a lady asking here to authorize my computer and she said she could not do this because there was no way of proving that I was me. Really? She could ask me *anything* or *everything*, and I would answer correctly. But rules are rules, no matter how stupid they seem.
There is a branch of Banco do Brasil in Vienna and I tried going there to solve this problem. The lady was so rude and said that they could not help me at all. At the end, I have no clue what that branch is for… there is no cashier, no manager and they cannot do anything with respect to passwords…
Today the same thing happened after the latest update. Since I am in Brazil, I decided to call the bank to see if there’s an easier solution for that computer registering stuff. I knew that the phone password I had was canceled a long time for lack of use so I found another customer service number on the website and when I call it, guess what? There’s no solution… simple as this.
At the end, I don’t blame them, but all these people that force them to do this for our “safety”.