US regional bank moves beyond Microsoft

EARLY NEWS can only be found at the grassroots and it's available there no matter how tight the corporate control-freaks try to keep a lid on their plans. I gathered such news from a bank help desk yesterday.

Washington Mutual Bank (NYSE:WM) is going to be moving beyond a devotion to that lowest common denominator web browser Internet Explorer. I have this on the authority of one of its help desk technical support reps.

WAMU (as it's commonly known) is a large and aggressive regional bank in the Western US. Its website's corporate history rather glosses over the '90s, as well it might -- I recall doing an IT systems audit of the firm when it was a Savings & Loan (a Building & Loan, to our British readers) and under bankruptcy protection at the time, I believe. The IT staffing was a lone IBM mainframe Systems Programmer keeping the bank running.

That was in Tacoma Washington, which is a predominantly blue-collar city of papermills and railroads and truck terminals situated near the bottom of Puget Sound (the southernmost reach is the state capital Olympia).

But apparently, Seattle-based banking interests bought Washington Mutual Savings and Loan, renamed it as Washington Mutual Bank, and haven't seen any reason to look back ever since. I must like it, as I bank there.

Which brings me to news of interest. Yesterday I went to login to review my account, but it didn't work -- the login page kept ignoring my inputs and resetting itself. So, like any other clueless web-disabled customer, I called the help desk. The courteous young guy who answered after I had successfully navigated WAMU's voice-response investment in not employing people to answer their phones (does anyone else think this is way dumb?) was intelligent and helpful. He didn't refuse to help me when I admitted that I was using Mozilla as my web browser, under Linux. In fact he said he was learning Linux himself and was genuinely willing to assist me.

I found this refreshing and positive after many unsatisfactory responses from ISPs and other commercial entities after I admitted using Linux.

Anyway, after we figured out that WAMU's website login cannot accomodate reviewing cookies before allowing them to be set, my helper let slip the news that... WAMU will be rolling out support for Mozilla and Safari.

In fact, he said that WAMU will be standardizing support for Mozilla.

This appears to be motivated by Microsoft's sunsetting Internet Explorer support on the Apple Mac. Talk about the monster Vole shooting itself in both feet. I'll admit I had to struggle a little not to holler "Yes!"

Of course, WAMU won't be discontinuing its support for Internet Exploder as it is, after all, based in the Seattle area. Joe and Jane shall still be able to login to WAMU banking services from their hopelessly crippled AOL/Time-Warner accounts using Windows and IE (i.e., "the computer").

But the difference will be that, in the not-distant future, both Mozilla and Safari will also work with the website of a big US regional bank.

So here's a toast to Washington Mutual Bank. I know it makes sense. µ