Logging Off, But Still Not Getting It

Sorry about the absence of posts in the past few days. I have a good excuse — promise.

Anyway, about a year ago I mentioned a Hong Kong bank that misled customers by telling them, after they had logged off their online account, that they had ‘logged out, but hadn’t logged off’ or somesuch. A silly little gimmick, really, designed to sell a few more services on the theme of ‘off’ (travel insurance and stuff; it doesn’t make much sense even now. Naff is probably the word that springs to mind.)

Anyway, it confused users and the bank later withdrew the offending page, to make it clear users had logged off and their account was safe. Ten months on, and the ad-page is back, making the nervous customer unsure about whether they really have logged out of their account.

I haven’t named the bank involved yet, but I’m seriously thinking of doing so. Why are banks’ marketing departments so dumb when it comes to such things? Do they really think it’s worth baffling the user further to sell them a bit of insurance? And why would they reintroduce this page when they assured me last July that, and I quote, “we’ve already removed the concerned statement put on the logoff page. While our original intention is to draw customers’ attention to our promotional goodies when they log off, we would rather modify it should it cause any potential confusion.” Watch this space.