Are the banks all crazy?

My online bank, the Postbank, has just excitedly informed me of the New! Improved! Secure! way for me to do my online banking: using so-called "mobile TANs".

The idea is that I enter in the data (a job the banks used to do, but now I have to do so and I transpose two digits on occasion, causing grief) and then push a button and a new transaction number (TAN) is generated and sent to my mobile phone and includes the account data, so I can check again that I have the correct account number before entering in the TAN.

Bullocks.

I spend enough time as it is doing my online banking. All of the security theater they use costs a lot of time. Now, for all "large" transactions (this will soon be all transactions, mark my words) I have to waaaaaaait until the SMS arrives (and if I am in a foreign country, pay extra to have the SMS delivered) in order to proceed.

Don't believe for a minute that the Postbank will spend even a microsecond thinking how to make life easier for me. They have, for example, templates for common transactions. I have a lot that I need just once a year, but at 40 the end has come. I have written and complained, but no, 40 is the limit 'cause the programmers say so.

Oh, no problem, I read the fine print. I can declare that I have no mobile phone and can then continue to use their iTANs. I just download it from the Download center.

Hmm, the Download center is a link to javascript.void(0); Duh. I wanted to write them a letter. Where did they put the "Contact" link now? I always have to fish for it. Double Duh. javascript.void(0);

I think it is getting to be time to seriously consider switching banks.