best online banking in Pittsburgh?

[khyron]

Greets again Steel City, this is that intrepid n00b again who's getting ready to move up there. I read carefully through all the previously tagged banking posts and got a lot of useful feedback but I have one outstanding specific question to ask you - between PNC, Citizens, and National City who has the best online banking interface

Comments

[talldean]

Dear lord, how I wish I could shut off multi-factor authentication. Without user training, it's useless, and you cannot expect users to learn this lesson.

Then again, as long as I'm wishing, getting an email that I have a "secured message" would be awful nice.

[khyron]

Oh some places actually will let you turn it off, or at least will let people "opt in" to it. But in the end, someone down in the Fraud department screams bloody murder and goes on a hunger strike begging the company to stop.

I totally understand how people can find it sort of confounding when they don't want it at first, but it makes so much sense that eventually when older folks die off (sorry, cruel, but it's how the Internet eventually gets to do better stuff) younger customers who have been used to it forever won't mind it at all (and will likely react with fear if it's not offered, especially if they understand identity theft).

[talldean]

If someone's hacked my DNS server to setup a phishing scam to get my bank password, I have bigger problems. Admittedly, this happens on public terminals.

As another linked issue, if everyone moves to the multi-factor authentication, it starts getting harder to remember all these images. I probably have accounts on around a hundred sites.

Perhaps we need a Universal Single-Sign-On application. Hrrrm. Here's looking at Google...

That said, on topic, I'm neither impressed nor disappointed with my National City online account, which bats about even with Chevy Chase Bank, but below BOA.

[khyron]

Personally, I used to scoff too honestly. But that was years ago before wifi access was everywhere. The idea that you can't possibly trust your LAN frequently, let alone the Internet, makes for a lot of interesting new kinds of attacks.

Single sign on concepts of course have all kinds of interesting advantages...and that one really big frightening disadvantage. Could be interesting and make a lot of people happy, but I'd be one of the weirdo hippies that wouldn't use it. For me, the "single sign on" of doing all my financial services with one vendor is enough (that's why I'm not willing to split myself up across multiple nifty Internet based no physical branch type vendors, which you'd think a web dork would be all over doing).

[allthingsnoisy]

I love First Commonwealth's online banking system. They never pull surprises, it looks clean, runs fast, and has all of the features you are looking for (not sure on being able to view it from Mars, however). I've been with FCFC for 12 years and wouldn't dream of going elsewhere.

[khyron]

ING is the undisputed pimp masta of all direct Internet banking where savings is concerned, for sure. I'm resistant only because I adore having all my junk with one financial, but if we ever split things up I'll be all over them.

[t3knomanser]

Citizens is pretty good.

* User interface is fine.
* Savings, cards and checking yes. Every line of business, no. Investment services, for example, are separate.
* I've used it on a Mac, Safari, Camino and Firefox.
* Multi-factor is a go
* Haven't checked. Probably.
* I haven't checked uptime stats or anything, but it's never been down when I needed it.

[31337zeke]

I like Citizens as well. I have seen their online banking be down for maintenance, though. I forget when, but it was an oddball hour, like 7 AM on a Sunday morning or something like that. I don't have a credit card with them, but my two checking accounts (one of which is a joint account) and savings accounts interoperate very well and I really like the bill pay service. The only bad thing is that I don't think the other person on the joint account can't see my scheduled bill payments and such, but I'm the payer of bills for our household, so it doesn't much matter.

[ras2883]

I third Citizen's.

[sekkie]

Fourth Citizen's--my husband has his own business, etc., and it's effortless to manage everything online.

[grace_is_gone]

Dollar Bank.

- good user interface, don't care about pretty, care about function and ease

Check.

- savings, cards, checking, every line of business the bank has through one site

Check.

- works 100% in any web browser on Windows, Mac, Linux, or a computer from mars

Every computer I've tried it on. I don't get to Mars much.

- multi-factor authentication (the little "see the picture" type stuff that asks you questions)

Check.

- secured messaging (ability to contact customer service with the site, not by e-mail)

Check.

- downtime isn't in their vocabulary (think Amazon, craigslist, ebay, etc)

Downtime for an hour, MAYBE once a month, if that.

[adelheid_p]

I've run into downtime on Dollar Banks online site but usually at 10 pm on a Sunday and not very often. Any accounts associated with your SS# are available in the interface. I've never used the messaging feature. They also have a cute little calculator app but I don't use it. I've used the interface in both Firefox and IE. I don't have a basis for comparison with other banks. I've been quite happy with Dollar Bank for many years. My daughter uses National City and has had issues with them but the branch office that she deals with has been good to her.

[relena_wolf]

I am biased because my Dad is heavily involved in the web banking, but I do love Dollar's banking. I'm out of town now and use BOA and there are features from Dollar that I miss, like the ability to reconcile my checking activity to what it will be for the check I've just written. BOA clearly blows them out of the water on many things, but Dollar is a small bank so I'm still impressed.

[khyron]

Many years ago, Wachovia actually had that feature. It was pretty neato because you could enter a check in right as you write it, and some day in the future when it cleared if it didn't match up for some reason you'd even get a little alert. I used to love that