Tech fault at RBS and Natwest freezes millions of UK bank balances
No fix date available for devastated customers
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RBS and Natwest have failed to register inbound payments for up to three days, customers have reported, leaving people unable to pay for bills, travel and even food. The banks - both owned by RBS Group - have confirmed that technical glitches have left bank accounts displaying the wrong balances and certain services unavailable. There is no fix date available.
The ongoing screw-up means that people waiting on pay checks, transfers or social welfare have been left out of pocket. And angry. Natwest customers took to the Natwest site forums to complain:
One dated the start of the problems back to Monday:
I deposited money Tuesday and it does not show on my balance, so how can this issue just have come about today? In my local branch they told me that the depositing problem had been present since Monday! Why continue to let us deposit then?
One commenter said that cash choke-up left him unable to take his daughter to a hospital appointment:
I have been left unable to take my daughter to her hospital appointment due to this mess and have now got to wait weeks for another appointment! Not only this we now have no food and no other options. Absoloutley disgraceful.
Many customers were worried that an accounts freeze would leave them unable to pay bills due - leaving them open to late fees. One was taking matters into his own hands:
Just to let you know, I'm charging NatWest £30 for being incompetent. You have my account details. by TomDav from Wiltshire on June 21, 2012 at 1:34 pm
RBS and Natwest spokespeople have assured customers that they are working on the problem but were unable to name a fix time. The crash also affects other RBS Group banks including UlsterBank in Northern Ireland.
Not all services are affected: apparently ATM transactions (under £300) and small other day to day banking jobs continue to work. Though Ulsterbank staff were having to hand out paper receipts for deposits according to this article.
An RBS Group spokesman would only say:
We are currently experiencing technical issues which mean that a number of customer account balances have not yet been updated and some of our online services are temporarily unavailable. We are working hard to fix this and hope to have the problem resolved as soon as possible.
A notice on the Natwest and RBS home page apologised and said that they are experiencing very high call volumes as a result.
According to their corporate information RBS Group has 26m customers in the UK. ®
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COMMENTS
Re: Welcome to the modern world
No. This is a bank, and they have my money. I expect them to have their shit together. It's their job.
The fact they've probably sacked all the expensive folk that knew their jobs, and scrimped on DR/BC is not my problem. If this happened at my bank, I'd be out of there as fast as I could pull my money & direct deposit out.
This is exactly the sort of thing the "fail" icon was meant for.
Oooh
Not good, I used to work there pre-redundancy... This is a highly unusual state of affairs, the IT in major UK banks is highly complex, I could have a few wild stabs in the dark at what may have caused the problem, but will hold myself back.
I will comment though, that RBS staff have taken shit for several years now general morale is pretty low. This is from the new management offshoring their jobs, random redundancies, random non-redundancies where people have been told they're going and then asked to stay on again and again, protesters outside your office/branch. Also, at the height of the financial crisis the abuse that you'd get from random strangers when they found out who you worked for was staggering. The landlady at my local told me once that "you can just tell them to f*ck off, you know".
I loved my time at RBS, great people, fantastic IT, but sadly it just all got too much and when the voluntary redundancies were offered, I jumped...
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