Abbey in bank holiday meltdown
Taking 'bank holiday' too literally
Posted in Management, 25th May 2007 13:24 GMT
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Abbey's business banking systems have taken an extra long weekend and been completely unavailable since yesterday, leaving customers unable to fulfil critical payments ahead of the spring bank holiday.
The bank's systems suffered a less severe technical problem earlier in the week, which affected only moving money via online banking. It had appeared resolved, but since at least Thursday evening all business customer functions have frozen.
Call centre staff were telling irate callers last night that the shutdown would be resolved in "about an hour". We were given the same timeframe on Friday lunch time, along with an apology, and told that "systems are updating".
Despite the assurances, as at 1.30pm Friday, customers were unable to make online payments, withdraw cash, or service their accounts through call centres.
One customer who contacted us described the length and timing of the unscheduled outage as "scandalous".
We are waiting for a comment from Abbey. ®
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COMMENTS
Still Down for me.... :(
While web access to accounts appears normal after the bank holiday (for me), Abbey has still yet to fix my ISA account despite being broken by the same cause, around the same time. Contributions remaining (set on tax year) have been reset to zero leaving me unable to transfer my funds between accounts.
Definitely no help available via phone\technical services with quotes including:
"Ring back in an hour it should be fixed then.... “(Excellent fob-off - that was a week ago)
"Caused by the problems we had over bank holiday, try back in a week...” (Answer today)
And my favorite (when asked a suitable timeframe for checking the status)
"You can ring everyday if you wish; I can give you no definite date to resolve this, or disclose the details of the problems causing this..."
Not a whisper of an apology
After six days of not being able to move my money or manage my accounts online, and following several complaints to the "Complaints department" and to the CEO's office (desperate measures!) it does seem that the Abbey systems are working again.
Have they apologised for the inconvenience - no!
Have they bothered to contact customers at all or acknowledge that there was a problem - no!
I have had a letter from the complaints department acknowledging that I complained but as it is a standard letter I doubt I will hear any more.
What a shoddy and unprofessional way to treat customers.
Abbey - STILL NOT WORKING
Pathetic. Have never had a problem with Abbey before but this is intolerable.
A week later, they're still having problems. I can log in but can't see a/c balances.
Every System Going
Its not just Abbey Business systems that have failed. The past 3 months everything Abbey has touched has fallen apart. I had transactions declined on Saturday for no apparent reason. I phoned Abbey and they said it was a VISA problem which it clearly wasn't. I asked for a balance there and then, only to find out their internal systems were offline too!
I'm starting to chronicle everything of late at http://www.switchtoabbey.co.uk following fraudulent activity on my account which nearly 3 months later, Abbey still havent resolved.
No surprises
I have to deal with Abbey call centre and branch staff everyday + they are the bain of my life!
Hence we call them "Shabbey National" haha!
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