Wait a minute let's read that again. 2 months. Mint's service for one of the largest banks in the Northeast has been unavailable for 2 months. Holy shit how has this not made the tech news yet? Better yet, how have there not been firings (plural)?

Although many are concerned about the fate of Mint, it sounds as though most of the changes will be happening to Quicken’s 1.4 million online users. They will be moved to Mint in the spring, said Mr. Patzer, who will oversee the transition.

UPDATE 9.11.09: Citizens Bank is working directly with us to fix this issue. It was not an intentional blocking issue but rather a technical connectivity issue. I'll post an update once this problem have been resolved. It should be very soon.

It’s no secret that I’ve been in absolute lather for the past couple of weeks over the sudden and unexplained connectivity problems I’ve experienced with Mint.com. On Aug. 23, Mint stopped refreshing my Citizens Bank accounts. While it’s incredibly easy to stay within one’s budget when no money ever comes in or out, this issue rendering their service completely useless.

I’ve had my go-round with Citizens in the past. It took 2 months and 2 “lost” cards before the new bank card that I ordered arrived. Then there was the 3 phone calls to change my address, 2 of which were related to a backwards zip code. You read that right- they somehow managed to enter my zip code backwards…twice. But in desperation I signed up for a Quicken Online account and voila, it worked like a charm. So I had this one all on Mint, and I was pissed.

Mint didn’t make it easy on themselves. Days passed with no word from support. (Here’s a tip- how about putting some of those fat funding rounds towards customer support?). I had all but given up, and had started to gift wrap a turd-in-a-box to ship directly to Mintland headquarters when this little gem appeared on the Mint forums:

Hi Citizens Bank Minters,
It appears Citizens, www.citizensbankonline.com , is now actively and purposefully blocking Mint.com from connecting. This has been happening for over a week now. We apologize for the frustration and we’re trying to work to a resolution at this time. We’ll post here with any status updates as they are available.
Thanks for your patience while we try to find a way to connect successfully.

If this is true, there had better be a damn good reason for it. Like, Citizens engineers discovered a critical flaw in the Mint data provider. Or Al Qaida were using Mint’s brilliant budgeting tools to handle their finances. Or just a big misunderstanding. Because whichever company is in the wrong here is getting a nice new turd-in-a-box sent their way.

I've embraced your amazingly free service and I love it. Anyone who is not using Mint.com is a silly goose. I only have a single request, and it's a small one. It doesn't involve powerful accounting tools, complex statistical analysis or slick sexy charts. All I want is to not see the above graphic every other day. Please crank up the priority up a notch or two. I'll gladly pay for it.