Bank of America Online Banking Annoyance
Tip It!This is just a quick note to share my recent annoyance with Bank of America’s online interface. While we’ve had a fairly good experience with Bank of America overall, I’ve run into a periodic snag over the past few months when trying to login. In short, I load up their homepage, click to sign in, and am then get the following error instead of their SiteKey page, where I’m supposed to enter our password:
While this only happens in Firefox (Safari is fine — I use a Mac, so I have no idea how IE behaves), it doesn’t appear to be a straight-up browser incompatibility. In fact, it works properly more often than not. But when this happens, I have to clear my browser cache before I can get it working again. This isn’t a huge deal, but I do wind up losing all of my cached data on occasion. Has anyone else seen this sort of behavior?
Published on August 20th, 2008 - 39 Comments
Filed under: Banking, Online
About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!
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39 Responses to “Bank of America Online Banking Annoyance”
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August 20th, 2008 at 8:37 am
I have a Bank of America credit card, and use IE to surf their site. I’ve NEVER had this problem. Of course, with either FireFox and IE, you can set your browser to clear your data when you close the program … try and see if that doesn’t fix your problem.
August 20th, 2008 at 8:42 am
cemccon: Thanks for the reply. I didn’t keep close track of when it started happening, but I’m starting to think that it may have been around the time that I upgraded to Firefox 3. These problems are a relatively recent thing. The good news is that it hasn’t happened in the past week or two — knock on wood.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:42 am
I see this from time to time on various sites when using Firefox. I’m not technical enough to know why but I don’t ever seem to have this problem with IE or Safari.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Weird, that hasn’t happened to me. I use Firefox on my Mac at home and Firefox on my PC at work, and I haven’t received that error message when doing online banking with B of A. Very strange…
August 20th, 2008 at 11:00 am
I use Firefox on PCs at home and work and have never seen that message – and I’ve been using BOA online banking for months.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:26 am
I use IE with the B of A site and have never seen anything like this.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:36 am
I’ve read that FireFox 3 is much stricter in regards to SSL certificates, and in particular expired certificates. I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but it does make sense given you started seeing these errors when you “upgraded” to FireFox 3. I might consider going back to FF 2 and see if that helps.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:38 am
As much as I hate BoA I don’t think this is their fault.
I’ve had it happen on lots of sites. I use Firefox on a mac and sometimes it experiences what I can only describe as hiccups after prolonged use. Then I need to shut down Firefox and start it up again. Alternatively, sometimes my internet connection is to blame and I need to restart my modem or router.
I hope that helps a bit.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Been having the same problem occasionally as well, very irritating.
August 20th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
The only problem I have with BoA is the stupid little secondary window that opens whenever i visit the site. It is tiny, and minimizes itself – but what in the world is the point?
August 20th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I’ve never run across that problem, but I’m still on Firefox 1.5 or around there because the others crash too much.
August 20th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Sometimes I have SSL cert issues with some sites when I load them and FF is less forgiving (which is a good thing) than some other browsers.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
I ditched BoA after they denied my card overseas even though I called ahead of time to tell them the cities I would be visiting and when. I couldn’t get a rental car and I was literally stranded. AmEx would never pull that.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
While I haven’t had this issue on IE6/7 FF2/3, I do have an issue with having to have three different logins for he BofA site.
A. for my joint account with my Spouse.
B. for my own account.
C. for my credit card.
I can view the balances and activity for A while logged in as B and for B while logged in as A. However, I can’t schedule payments across accounts. For example, If I want to pay my student loan, but I forget that I’m the joint account, I have to log out and re-login. The better UI/UX would be to allow me to pick the account for the payment.
The REALLY annoying thing is that I can’t view my credit card history from either account. There’s no integration between the credit cards for Washington State and the other accounts.
August 21st, 2008 at 2:28 am
Hmm…..I haven’t seen that error particularly from BoA but I have seen it surfing other sites at times.
On another note, does anyone here use Bank of America’s My Portfolio feature???
I live off of that feature to manage my finances and it seems to have some issues starting a few weeks ago when BoA decided to “upgrade” it. Calling BoA’s tech support was like asking my 2 year old niece for help: they told me they are aware of the problem but there is no ETA at the moment.
Maybe someone else got theirs to work?
August 21st, 2008 at 5:54 am
what a joke, a bank with such a great reputation.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:24 am
I have used BOA online for years now and have never had this problem, either on IE or Firefox. I do get his on my work machine sometimes if i forget to turn off the proxy settings. The only other times this happens is if the connection goes down momentarily. Thankfully, has never happened with the BOA site.
I ALWAYS clear my cache after logging-out of BOA (or any other financial site). I also have Firefox set to clear the cache upon exit.
According to my personal banker at BOA, the accounts on BOA online are linked by the social security number of the account.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:43 am
I use a Mac and a PC with firefox on both. I see the message quite a few times. Annoying
August 21st, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Does look like a security certification issue, with BoA being a little slack and catering to the IE crowd. If you feel like the annoyance, call Tech Support. Otherwise it might go away as BoA gets up to snuff. They’re pretty slow!
Even with Safari, lately run into a few sites not keeping up.
As someone says “Its a good thing”… means your browser’s looking out for you!
August 21st, 2008 at 1:35 pm
My issue with BofA is their refusal to allow download of recent activity — only monthly downloads. I’ve emailed them many times to complain about this but as usual, not listening. otherwise, no real problems, but I don’t use that card anymore for the above mentioned reason.
August 23rd, 2008 at 8:06 am
This is almost certainly a DNS lookup failure. Because of a combination of its history and its cross-platform nature, Firefox includes its own libraries for many network services rather than using the standard ones, and so occasionally things like this will pop up.
I suggest trying Shift-Reload, which tells Firefox to ignore the cache and try to load everything on the page again; sometimes it can kick Firefox out of its daydreaming.
August 23rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
i have never had to log in multiple times to access my boa accounts, and i have them all. also, the firefox issue has to be with firefox or the computer. i never have gotten this error message on ie, and i have been a customer of boa for a very long time. they are a super bank to me.
August 25th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
I use FF3 exclusively and I use the BoA site quite often to track my transactions and have yet to see this screen. I run several extensions with FF so that may also have something to do with it.
This generation of Fire Fox is quite strict in regards to the SSL certificate which governs whether the site trying to be opened is genuine or not based on the security ticket issued for it. Should it get a slightly corrupted version of it would cause this error possibly, or even that the authentication servers were temporarily swamped with traffic.
August 27th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I get this message as well for various sites but ONLY right after I unsleep my computer and go onto the web immediatly. I wait about 30 seconds and reload the site and it loads up correctly.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Yeah, I’ve actually had this same problem! It occurred only at a friend’s house and neither my laptop nor a new one we’d just received could sign in to the BoA account. It’d get the log-in page but once info was input and clicked, got to a ‘page not found’ or some other error. That’s 2 laptops connected wirelessly (linksys router). So, I went to a desktop hard-wired to the same router & lo-and-behold, it connected o.k. So, I’m thinking it was an issue with wireless security settings? Well, I didn’t get to troubleshoot this very long as it wasn’t my home but I found it perplexing.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
To B. Ross –
It has to be a wireless router setting. I use a LinkSys Wireless Router and all my Bank of America info is readily available. I love BOA!
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:37 am
i have no problems with BofA online…in fact, i love it…this is a firefox problem i’m sure….i run both firefox and IE…i get this message for alot of places i go with firefox….rarely with IE and never with IE at BofA…I am using firefox mostly these days because of security risks but i don’t like it nearly as well as IE…firefox definitely has it’s own set of problems..
March 29th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I really don’ need this kind of irritation–endless renter this reenter that, read ten yards of blah blah blah. I know you won’t get this and if you do you’ll pass it around the office hilariously shouting “how about this one”.
I spent an hour with a very patient lady at the bank in Port Charlotte getting all the sign-in nailed down, and now you want me to go over the whole thing again.#@%%$&^!!! You’re all crazy.
May 21st, 2009 at 9:50 am
Dianne Johnson account was set up for all the right reason What do I need to do Thank you
June 24th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
I have the same problem. Have to try many, many times to get into their web site – and sometimes I give up. I have tried Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, FireFox, Safari for PC and Google Crome – all with the same results. I am using a tower with Linksys wireless technology and XP Pro. Very annoying. But, surprsingly I can get into their website from a laptop running Vista in the same office using the same wireless router. Not sure why it works with Vista and not XP.
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:03 pm
HERE IS A WORK AROUND. I could no longer get in with my PC tower; tried my laptop and it worked the first time but wouldn’t work after that. Then I tried Google Chrome browser in Incognito Mode on my tower – and it works every time (so far).
July 28th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
FIXED IT!!! My problem was my new Linksys WRT160N V2 wireless router. I updated the firmware in the router according to their directions on their website (http://linksysbycisco.com/US/e.....N/download) and now I get to my BOA account without any problem. It is a reported problem with the older firmware of this router.
September 30th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Funny, since I can sign in fine, but it’s the sign off that is the problem. Since I have more than one account – let’s say a checking and a savings account – I ususally look in the details of each account. From the initial overview screen, I click on one account for detail, then I click on overview tab so I can take a look at the other account, the site shows “sign-off successful” page as if I clicked on sign-off link! This happens randomly and is quite annoying… I wonder if anyone ever experienced this.
IE8 on XP
January 14th, 2011 at 2:27 pm
I seem to have similar problems with the band of america web site using IE 8 and Vista. It often does not find the web page (www.bankofamerica.com) and if it does, the login fails shortly afterward with a web page not found error. I can get to it with firefox, but it is very slow compared to other websites. On my XP computer, I have no problems with either IE or FF.
July 4th, 2011 at 11:15 pm
AGAIN, I can’t sign in. This keeps happening -WHY?
July 16th, 2011 at 10:33 pm
I have to comment on CJ’s post, regarding the ‘Sign-Off Successful’ page.
I have been trying to sign in to my account all day, and I can get as far as the ‘Sitekey’ page, but whenever I provide my password, it takes me back to the initial Log-In page, saying ‘Sign-Off Successful’. I too, did not click on the ‘Sigh-Off’ link, so I have NO idea why it’s signing me off, instead of signing me on.
Any suggestions?
July 16th, 2011 at 10:40 pm
Michelle: I’m having the exact same problem tonight – but only in Chrome. It seems to work fine in Safari. Not sure what is going on.
July 16th, 2011 at 11:06 pm
Whew, I’m glad it isn’t just me!
Luckily, I tried again just a few minutes ago, TWICE even, and I logged in fine. So perhaps it’s just a problem with their site directly? I hope this isn’t a recurring issue… it caused me a scare haha. I thought that perhaps something was wrong with my account.
Thanks for the reply, Nickel.
November 25th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
I’m having the same problem as Michelle #36. Started a few weeks ago for no apparent reason. Happens on multiple computers with different browsers. I was on the phone with BOA tech support for 2 hours with no success. Did you ever find a solution?
Thanks!