Caught in Abbey National's tangled web

Abbey National's website is poor and its e-banking facilities are the worst web pages I've ever seen from a major company. My wife's daughter, who also uses it, agrees. I've written several times to Abbey National about the site's failings over the last two years, and if anything it has become worse.

Now I think the only hope for me and the thousands of others who suffer from its poor design is that it may be exposed in the personal finance press.

The defects I can immediately remember are:

· The site requires itself to be addressed as www.abbeynational.co.uk rather than abbeynational.co.uk - most well-set-up sites don't require 'www'.

· None of the pages works in a browser that has JavaScript disabled, but none has a warning that JavaScript is required. About 12 per cent of web users run their browsers with JavaScript enabled, and I disable it if a site I'm visiting misuses it to pester me with pop-ups. Even the home page is dead without JavaScript, but displays no warning.

· The e-banking facility is atrociously slow, partly because it uses graphics where text would do and partly because the server is grossly under-powered.

· I quite often get the message 'the page could not be accessed because of server error' when trying to log in. This is a sure sign of an under-powered server.

· The log-in process requires me to enter a 16-digit card number without using spaces that usually split it into four-digit blocks, although the number is printed in four-digit blocks on the card. Normal human beings cannot check a 16-digit number, but can easily check it if it is split into four-digit blocks.

· The transactions I use most are 'transfer money between accounts' and 'make payment'. But I have to go through three pages after log-in to reach these - they should be on the page which confirms the acceptance of the log-in.

· The navigation is unclear. Some of the options are in a fairly easy-to-read block down the left edge, and others are in a block which parallels the top edge and gives poor contrast for the lettering.

· None of the website's navigation links has tooltips which describe in more detail where they will lead you - tooltips are the little yellow explanatory boxes which appear in most Windows software and on most well-designed web pages.

'Improvements on the way to award-winning site'

Abbey National replies: 'We are sorry to hear of this customer's problems with the Abbey National website. We aim to provide a consistently high level of service to our customers. By listening to customer feedback we constantly strive to improve the e-banking service and the other online services we provide. During the year we will be introducing further enhancements to the services currently offered.

'To answer some of the specific points raised, we do test and monitor the site continually to ensure consistency of download speed, however we cannot control factors such as an individual user's ISP. Later in the year we are planning improvements to elements of the e-banking service including the log-on process, navigation and access to the most popular transactions. With reference to the 'tooltips' suggestion, our site is designed to comply with disability and accessibility guidelines set out by the Website Accessibility Initiative supported by the RNIB, therefore the tooltips replicate the words on the images.

'After a major redevelopment of our site last year, www.abbeynational.co.uk was awarded the Gold Award for online banking websites, by Web User magazine, in recognition of the user-friendly improvements we had made to the site. We continue to maintain and develop these high standards of usability to meet our customers needs. Customers are welcome to send feedback to us via the 'contact us' section of the Abbey National website.'

· If you have suffered poor service, inconsiderate
treatment or shoddy products, and want to hit
back, write to Sounding Off, Cash, 119 Farringdon
Road, London, EC1R 3ER, or email cash@observer.co.uk.