Just nine months after their last glitch, RBS and Natwest banking systems have fallen over on what should be the busiest shopping day of the year. That leaves thousands of customers unable to pay for and complete their online purchases this evening.
We’re also hearing reports from pubs (Yes Dan’s in the pub) that debit card transactions are being declined. As well as bank card transactions it would appear that online banking and mobile smartphone banking apps from the two banks are down as well. It would appear that the issues began between 6pm and 7pm and have cascaded into a full blown banking meltdown.
As RBS not only owns NatWest, but also Ulster bank we wouldn’t be surprised if their customers too are having problems.
In today’s largely electronic world this simply shouldn’t happen – it’s not like people carry cheque books around or even have cheque guarantee cards any more. NatWest and RBS banks reputations suffered last March when their systems last crashed and disgruntled customers are again taking to Twitter to vent their rage.
RBS Help issued a statement on Twitter at 7:52pm simply saying “We’re aware of some technical issues and are working hard to fix them. Sorry and thanks for your patience”. There have been no further updates forthcoming from the bank to date.
If you couldn’t purchase online, withdraw money, pay for your petrol or buy a pint and are a Natwest or RBS customer at least you know it’s not your fault however inconvenient or embarrassing it may have been.
Edited to add: Natwest have given Tamebay a short statement and request saying:
We’d like to recommend that you mention the NatWest System Status Page in your article. People can use this to see if any part of the system has malfunctioned in any way, whether it be online, payments (as seen yesterday), or mobile.
We appreciate that this shouldn’t happen in the first place, but if you could incorporate this into your current article, we’d expect this to be beneficial to your readers – both now and in the future.
6 Responses
So embarrassing, had to leave engagement ring at petrol garage and pay round taxi trip of 50 pounds to pay for petrol. Natwest are a very bad joke.
I suspect that some of the cash machines you see about run on the same system: short walk homes shows several cash machines not in service.
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Funny enough, I found 3 machines on my way to buy something late this afternoon which were not dispensing the paper stuff….aaahhhh>>>>>>
Not sure if there’s a connection to this, but eventually had to use a corner shop Cash machine & pay £1.75 to get my own bloody money out…
Now I know why I have more than one current/bank account & cards!!.
I couldn’t spend a ridiculous amount of money on tat at winter wo derland. Thought my card was just being declined. Very embarrassing!
There’s a lot more to this than meets the eye as 75,000 people affected is hardly a small number of customers. Their spokesperson was very coy over questions to do with hacking which suggests they haven’t a clue as to what went wrong or hacking accounts actually occurred.
With an IT system that NatWest themselves admit is unfit for purpose, its highly likely that NatWest got hacked and unusual transactions were taking place that flagged a problem. In their situation, if that was happening their only course of action was to shut the system down until they could block the threats. Hence 75,000 affected customers who were trying to carry out on-line transactions over that short period of time.
Either way, just like last time, NatWest are being very economical with the truth and if I was a customer, I’d take my money out and go elsewhere as they obviously can’t be trusted.