[thelist] Re: UK online banks for Mac users

[Bird, Graham]

Geoff,

Ignore this ill-informed gent. The Smile service used to be Java but is now
HTML. I have been a Smile member for several years now, both on 9 and X, and
it has always been fine.

I'm tempted to suspect that "Andy" is actually an employee of Lloyds with
his "avoid Co-op" nonsense. Not only do Smile have just about the best rates
in the industry, they are also the only BS7799 accredited online bank. As
well as that, if you're into such things, you can be safe in the knowledge
that they are also an ethical bank.

Smile have never publicised the fact that it works on Macs, but it does. Of
course, you couldn't have a "demo in-branch" because it doesn't have any
branches, but then that's why it's so good.

And by the way, their telephone service is outstanding.

Cheers,

Graham

> I use Lloyds TSB for my business account and that works great in OS 10 and
> pretty much any browser. It uses HTTPS, and has a fairly clean and fast
> interface. They even did a demo in-branch before I opened the account and
> confirmed it was Mac compatible with their tech dept. there and then. I
> assume their personal accounts use the same interface.
>
> Whatever you do, avoid Co-op and their online service. It doesn't work on
> Mac at all, and is a bit flaky on PCs. It uses a badly-written Java applet
> that requires you to downgrade your Java 2 versions in OS 9, doesn't work
at
> all in OS X, and only works in Netscape Navigator when you get the right
> Java. And then pretty badly.

> They have just updated their site and it is still as bad as ever. I
emailed
> their tech support and the banking ombudsman about it. Their response was
to
> put me on a list of Mac OS X users that expressed an interest, with no
idea
> of timetable when they'll fix it.

> Useless.

> HTH

> Andy W