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posted by mrpg on Monday April 30 2018, @01:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the clusterfuck++ dept.

The Guardian reports

[...] With customers locked out of their bank accounts, mortgage accounts vanishing, small businesses reporting that they could not pay their staff and reports of debit cards ceasing to work, the TSB[*] computer crisis has been one of the worst in recent memory. The bank, its chief executive, Paul Pester, admitted on Thursday, was “on its knees” and it faces a compensation bill likely to run to tens of millions of pounds.

[...] By March 2017, the nightmare for customers that was going to unfold a year later appeared inevitable. “It was unbelievable – hardly even a prototype or proof of concept, yet it was supposed to be fully tested and working by May before the integration work started,” the insider continued. “Senior staff were furious about the state it was in. Even logging in was problematic.”

[...] However, only hours after the switch was flicked, systems crumpled and up to 1.9m TSB customers who use internet and mobile banking were locked out. “I could have put money on the rollout being the disaster it has been, with evidence of major code changes on the hoof over last weekend and into this week,” the insider said.

[...] Customers reported receiving texts saying their cards had been used abroad, that they had discovered thousands of pounds in their accounts they did not have – or that mortgage accounts had vanished, multiplied or changed currency. One bemused account holder showed his TSB banking app recording a direct debit paid to Sky Digital 81 years from now. Some saw details of other people’s accounts and holidaymakers complained that they had been left unable to pay restaurant and hotel bills.

TSB, to customers’ fury, at first insisted the problems were only intermittent. At 3.40am on Wednesday 25 April, Pester tweeted that the system was “up and running”, only to be forced to apologise the next day and admit it was actually only running at 50% capacity.

[*] [Update added for our non-UK community. --martyb] TSB Bank was originally founded as "Trustee Savings Bank plc" on November 27, 1985:

TSB Bank plc is a retail and commercial bank in the United Kingdom, which is a subsidiary of the Sabadell Group. TSB Bank operates a nationwide network of 550 branches across England, Scotland and Wales. TSB launched in its present form on 9 September 2013, with more than 4.6 million customers and over £20 billion of loans and customer deposits, and is headquartered in Edinburgh.


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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday April 30 2018, @05:11PM (3 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Monday April 30 2018, @05:11PM (#673814)

    Have you tried Gold ?

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Monday April 30 2018, @06:04PM (2 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 30 2018, @06:04PM (#673838) Journal

    Gold only works if you stockpile it at home, otherwise you're just trusting someone else to know and accept that it's yours. And then you've got to successfully hide it, and convert it into usable currency when you want to use it without revealing that your stockpile is at home making you a target.

    The sole advantage of gold is that it doesn't take much space to store it. Well, also it's value has been consistently increasing during our lifetimes. (That wasn't true 100 or so years ago. And may not be true in the future.)

    OTOH, Gold, because of it's popularity, is wildly overpriced. You'd probably do better to invest in durable commodities. (NOT commodity futures. I'm talking about things like copper, steel, etc.) The problem is they take a lot of space to store, so you're pretty much forced to trust someone else to store it for you.

    It sort of depends on what kind of future you are investing for.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday April 30 2018, @09:21PM (1 child)

      by MostCynical (2589) on Monday April 30 2018, @09:21PM (#673928) Journal

      Apocalypse or recession..can I have a third choice?

      --
      "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex