From: jennifer.heffernan@boq.com.au, To: jonjayray@hotmail.com


Dear Dr Ray,

I refer to your email of 31st July, in which you raised four issues and I
address each of these below:

1. "I know of NO paper bank statement that omits running balances. If
you want to wean your customers off paper and get them on to the net
instead, you are hardly going to do it by offering REDUCED service. You
should be offering better service."

The Transaction History function provided within our Internet Banking
service is not a statement. The benefit that this function provides to
our customers is that you can see all transactions on your account,
including transactions made on the same day. This is regardless of
whether the transactions occurred on your account since or before your
last statement was issued.

At Bank of Queensland, we have no plans to migrate customers off the
standard issue statements that we continue to provide free of charge to
all customers residing in Australia. The Transaction History function
provided free as a part of the Internet Banking service does not replace
a statement and you will continue to receive standard issue paper
statements free of charge. Fees apply to non-standard issue statements,
customer statements issued at the branch and statements mailed to
overseas addresses.

We do not provide access to previously issued statements as a part of
our Internet Banking service. As I mentioned in my letter of 29th of
July, "We knew that we would not be able to provide on-line archives of
previously issued statements for some time, so we decided to provide a
minimum of 120 days of transaction history."

2. "If you offer a 'Contact us' facility you should provide it. Doh!"

We do currently provide a 'contact us' facility to our customers. I
understand that you used this service to contact me yesterday. We built
it this way to ensure that anyone, anywhere could contact us, regardless
of whether they were registered for Internet Banking, whether they had
lost their password or whether they were a customer or not.

We are however, looking at a way of extending this feature of our
website to customers who are signed on to Internet Banking. I hope that
we can offer this feature soon.

3. "Backspacing is elementary on the internet. Get with it!"

All Australian banks, except for one have disabled the browser 'Back'
button. The bank which does not disable the 'Back' button instead
displays a 'Page Expired' message, signs the customer out and asks them
to log in again. The reason why Bank of Queensland and other banks
disable the 'Back' button is that using it causes the link established
between the browser page and the Bank's back-end systems to disconnect.
This link, referred to technically as session management, is an
extremely important part of how we ensure secure transactions can occur.

When you are using Internet Banking, electronic links are established
and exchanged between the bank's systems and your browser. Given the
technology of the browser and the internet, the use of the back button
re-sends a previously issued set of codes that appear to the bank's
systems to be an unauthorised attempt to duplicate a valid session.
Therefore, no Australian bank allows the use of the 'Back' button.

However, as I understood from your letter dated 15th July you were
actually looking for a way to look at a previously displayed transaction
history page. As I stated in my letter dated 19th July, we will look at
providing this functionality should we receive regular requests from
other customers for the same functionality. Obviously, those requests
that we receive more frequently will be looked at with higher priority.

4. "I am once again amazed that I had to write to your chairman to get my
Bankcard statement online. Is that the only way customers can get it done?
Have you done anything to check why the branch did not carry out this
simple request?"

I don't believe that our customers need to write to the Chairman to
organise simple requests like this. I am very pleased that you are the
only customer who has felt that he needed to write to the Chairman about
our Internet Banking service. I have spoken to the branch manager
regarding the matter and she has assured me that you have never spoken
to her regarding the matter, or written or phoned her regarding the
matter.

As we did not receive a written request from your to add your Bankcard
to your Internet Banking profile, I can only assume that you have made a
verbal request to a staff member who has not acted on that request. I
apologise for this having occurred.

The branch manager has assured me that you can talk to her any time
should you have any issues, concerns or questions regarding the service
provided by her staff. Her name is Lisa Brien and her phone number is
3397 1527. Please feel free to visit Lisa in person, phone or write to
her regarding any issues, concerns or questions that you may have. Our
branch managers are there to help our customers and meet their needs
face-to-face.

We want you to feel that banking with the Bank of Queensland means great
personal service and value for money. I hope that I have helped with your
concerns and I thank you for banking with us for more than seventeen years.


Jennifer Heffernan
General Manager