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THE CENTRAL BANK has said that it is pressing Ulster Bank to resolve its current technical issues as quickly as possible.
It made the comment today just hours after ISME said that Ulster Bank should waive fees in the wake of a technical failure in the bank’s system which has led to customers being unable to access payments.
The Central Bank released a statement today, which opened:
The Central Bank has been in contact with Ulster Bank at the highest level to press the bank to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and ensure that customers are treated fairly.
It continued:
The Central Bank’s concern is to ensure that all customers are supported and accommodated by Ulster Bank until the system is fully operational again and we have made this clear to Ulster Bank.
The Central Bank said that at a meeting with Ulster Bank senior management today, it “emphasised the importance of clear communication and support to consumers”.
Ulster Bank reiterated its commitment to ensuring access to funds for customers through its branch network which will be open for extended hours. Ulster Bank has also committed to ensuring that no customer will be at a financial loss and to providing up-to-date and clear information to customers.
The bank has been dealing with a major technical problem that has been ongoing since Wednesday of last week and has affected money lodged to accounts.
It has apologised unreservedly to customers who have been affected and said yesterday that it is taking longer than anticipated the clear the backlog caused by the issue.
For the rest of this week Ulster Bank will extend the opening hours of approximately 80 of its branches across Ireland from 9.30am until 7pm.
It is asking customers to bring photographic identification and their account details with them. The bank’s dedicated help desk is open 8am to 10pm today on 1800 205 100 or +353 9156 2910 from abroad.
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It’s all well and good to keep branches open a little later, but it’s of no use to those of us on holidays abroad with no access to our pay.
Or those of us who work shifts! They should immediately give all affected a fee free overdraught. Because of not having had a pay slip issued yet, they refused me cash today….bastards.
that is fckucking terrible Dave. Im facing the same shite on wednesday, and if i dont get my pay slip to them i miss my direct debit and my mortgage payment. And I start nights on wednesday
In the same boat with dd’s but I called a couple of companies yesterday and they said that the dd hadnt been rejected, it was showing as hanging and should go through, just late, when ulster get around to processing it and that as said companies know about the situation they won’t be penalising me.
The same Central Bank that practises”light touch regulation”. I’m sure Ulster Bank are cacking themselves.
That should sort it out so now – no doubt UB were just kicking back until the CB ‘pressed’ them.
Thought the same thing. Finally someone stepped in to have a stern word. It’s about time …
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/25/rbs_natwest_what_went_wrong/
“The tech problems at the RBS banking group that left millions of people unable to access money for four days last week were caused by a failure in a piece of batch scheduling software, sources have told The Register.
And at least some of the support staff for that software have been outsourced to India – as recently as February.”
Here’s how actual regulation works in the US – don’t process cheques for more than 24 hours?
Ok, Federal Reserve steps in. Your bank is probably shut down and its assets redistributed to other banks.
Oh, and how are the cost savings on all those outsourced IT workers looking now? Where are the 1500 workers that were laid off? Too busy to help? Aw shucks. By the way, did you ever catch the guy who was selling a computer with customer data on ebay?
I’m at a bit of a loss here. If they’re dealing with a backlog you would expect that to be cleared in an orderly fashion. My wages were due today, but given what’s going on I didn’t expect to be able to access the funds until the end of week at least. However, this morning when I checked my balance the money was there . Seems a bit odd, don’t u think??
Not alot the central bank can do, problems also in royal bank of scotland and natwest. Its not good for the people who cannot access their accounts.
I posted a cheque to my account last Wednesday and am still waiting for it to be processed and show in my balance. I’m sure things are a lot easier for bankers on a huge salary but when you need the money to buy the necessities and to pay bills, it’s a different story. nMy guess as to what happened is that they were making changes to their systems to allow for changes in transaction fee on accounts and someone fecked something up.
What I heard from an inside source is that they were upgrading the system (CAC7?) that basically is the master plan for every individual batch operation that the runs overnight. This upgrade didn’t go as planned so apparently they rolled back to the older version. It seems that the masterplan was no longer present in the system so no jobs were run overnight and hence the chaos started. This is inline with what The Register are saying.
The story is that this batching activity was moved offshore so I’d imagine there’s some old staff getting some handsome short term contracts to sort this out!!
You’ve got to wonder why they were upgrading all three banks at the same time. It would be bizarre if any bonuses were paid in this bank this year. It’s a basket case and I’m one of their customers. I was fortunate that my wages were processed the day before this happened!
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