Barbara F.

Hey kids, do you want to know what the internet was like in 2003? Try updating your payment methods on Venmo.com. It is SLOW! It is BUGGY!

Did you change tabs to get a verification code? Venmo.com freezes up.
Did you request a verification code and take your thumb off of the "Request code" too early, i.e. <5 seconds? Button does not register.
Did you take longer than 60 seconds to get your verification code? Failure.

I have no idea why it takes some credit cards and not others despite all details being correct. There are so very many "authentication errors" with this website.

Their site does not play well with bank websites. I have tried connecting Venmo with my Citizens account several times to no avail. Venmo is the only company that has trouble doing this.

I'm pretty sure the reason the website runs so very slow and has so many bugs is because it's trying to mine as much data from your computer as possible, slowing the whole thing down.

In short, extremely slow and clunky website, lots of random errors, impossible to rely on.

M&T seems to have failed to keep up with modern technology. Its website was outdated 20 years ago. It lacks any functionality that would keep it with pace with its competitors.

All of the local bank branches are only open from 9AM to 5PM and seem to be in the sketchiest, farthest reaches of the city, so an online presence is so important. It is unfortunate that they dropped the ball.

If you try to use any of the transfer apps like Zelle, your account will freeze, and you have to wait on the phone to unlock your account. I was never able to use my Zelle because my account would just re-freeze when I tried to make a transfer again. Also, my account would just freeze out of nowhere, and when I would call customer service (which, again, takes an hour) they would say that there was a suspicious charge being made. Mind you, I live in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area for most of the year, and my mailing address is a Maryland address five minutes from Virginia, so even though I would do all of my transactions in the same county of Maryland, it is possible that a vendor processed those from down the road in Virginia. This seemed wild to the bank systems.

Putting money in your bank account can take up to 10 business days. I know most companies say this and that they usually are much faster, but M&T has never been faster. Autopay, however, is instantaneous. I have overdraft fees from when it's taken much longer to transfer money through the internal system. They never refund you, ever. Nevermind I signed up for an account that isn't supposed to overdraft - I specifically wanted one that would decline the charge and chose it for that reason.

The website is decrepit. You'll notice a lot of things are just flat out missing. Some of this is just a lack of bells and whistles. They never will try to sell you their credit card or do a points system or whatever. No, they just gave up.

If you have trouble logging in, you will be in for a wild ride. Their IT system is a total crap-shoot. Their security verification is just random questions about you. What are the first five numbers of your social security number? What color is your car? How many bedrooms in your house when you bought it? It can be really awkward when you find out that the bank knows THAT much about you. Yes, it will keep thieves out of your account, but also, it can keep you out of your account depending on how wild the question is. And they will be extremely condescending the entire time. "It says here your password is four months old. Don't you know you're supposed to change your password every three months?" Yeah okay buddy.

I wish Blue Cross Blue Shield would untethered themselves from CVS Caremark for prescriptions. I have never had a problem getting my prescriptions until CVS Caremark. Out of the blue, i need prior authorization for some standard prescriptions. My doctors were so surprised that they needed a moment to process it. Then CVS Caremark denied coverage for one prescription because while it treats one disease, I need two comorbid diseases to meet the requirement, and I am not sick enough to get my medicine. I am lucky that it costs $50 without insurance, but that is a day's wages for many people, and every other Co pay would have paid for it. I can't understand how they can decide that they, who have never examined my body or would know me in a lineup, can supercede my primary care providers' expertise. I do not understand why they get any money from my paycheck if all it does it boost their multi million dollar salaries for their ceos.

Their website is a mess. I needed my prescription card to log in and had never received one. I called customer service, and they just flat out will not tell you your member ID. I never was able to access their site. I can't access any information about my benefits or plans. If you try to log into the site, it has such helpful info as "try removing the first three letters. Now the last 4 numbers. No? Try adding your rx bin number." On and on until you give up.

No one with good intentions is using Sinch.com. The number one cause for finding this site is using sites like freewirelesslookup.com to find out who all the fake calls are coming from, and you find Sinch.com's voice products are their method for masking their actual number to call you or text you. Every customer of theirs is the same - they find you on the internet, like a missing pet site or Facebook marketplace, and try to get a response. Then they try to get you to send your Google confirmation code so they can get into your Google account or worse. You can't block them because they just make up a new fake number using Sinch.com and send every robot or minimum wage scam artist to harass you. I hope the FTC destroys this awful company.

Writerscafe is an old-fashioned website both in terms of security and purpose. It's a writing blog with better organization than a blog and that focuses heavily on the comments section (which is reviews). It has not changed in over a decade, not in its purpose, format, or security. This is both good and bad.

I use Writerscafe to bank stories. I lost my old account, but that is okay because I saved most of those stories, and most of it was written when I was a sad teenager. Now I have everything backed up, but I use WritersCafe when I want to share writing with people in real life and get real life feedback.

When I was younger, I would get detailed feedback, sometimes line for line. However, I would also get scathing personal attacks. About half of the feedback would be absolutely cruel. If a poem seemed sad, I would get a review along the lines of, "Other people have it so much harder! You're lucky to even be alive! Don't you know how hard other people have it?" Mind you, I'd write poems about the last chunk of ice in a cold lake or other nature scenery. The feedback was purely personal.

I also met a lot of creeps on the site. People would give feedback and request feedback, and then they would ask me to call them and read things aloud before I realized, "Oh, oh this is becoming erotica." And I was a teenager, like 15 years old. Some of the worst human beings were on that site. Like other sites, it has its cesspool of people who treat it like social media or people prowling for teenagers.

I find it ironic that a lot of the bullies found their way to Site Jabber and have decided that people who don't like the site are obviously just bad writers. They write at length about how bad those writers were and how that's probably the problem. Just imagine bearing your heart out or just having fun writing and having nasty reviews like the ones below attack you as a human being. Hah.

When you sign up, do not use the same password as you use for any other site. I know, I know, you hear that a lot, but I cannot stress this enough - the website is not secure and not updated at all. Do not put anything on the site that you would not put on the front page of the news, not your bio or your password or anything at all. Back up all of your writing in case you lose your account to someone else. Back in the day, the website lost its server and all of the writing on it, so keep in mind that anything on this site can be lost forever.

Good luck, and happy writing.