HACKER Q&A
📣 noduerme

As a developer, when you see glaring bugs on a major bank's website


When I see something broken on a website, my inclination has always been to try to send a reproducible report to the devs / owners / whoever. Lately, though, any kind of technical contact is conspicuously absent from most large companies' sites. I assume that's because tech contacts just got flooded with mail from frustrated, non-technical users. In a lot of cases it seems like the app store reviews are the only way to surface actual bugs.

A year or two ago, one bank I use (Charles Schwab) started showing completely incorrect daily account balance changes. Their checking account balances were being merged one day behind their brokerage accounts. I tried to contact them, even called the phone line asking who I could talk to that worked on their app. (Their app is horrific, by the way). It was not until weeks later that they seemed to read their app store reviews and realize there was a problem; and then it took them a month to fix it.

Similarly, just now I discovered a new bug in Chase's banking website. A fairly simple thing: Pending transaction totals stop showing up after you switch to filter other transactions. This is probably like a 2 second fix for whoever wrote that module. But I spent 20 minutes searching their online contacts without finding anyone to report a bug to.

Is this the future? Is this where we're at? What's the channel you use to get the devs' attention in these cases?


  👤 meiraleal Accepted Answer ✓
I would never work for free for a Bank that might sue you for finding bugs. Use your time more wisely.

👤 JSTrading
> What's the channel you use to get the devs' attention in these cases?

Why do you think that's the correct thing to do?