Can we trust you with our money? Anger as online banking hit again
MILLIONS of frustrated bank customers were yesterday locked out of their online and mobile accounts for up to five hours in the latest technical glitch to blight the industry.
Online and mobile services went down early in the morning.
Customers of NatWest, Ulster Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland were met with error messages trying to access their internet account or mobile app and began reporting problems at about 5am.
The banking group has nearly eight million customers who use mobile and online banking.
RBS/NatWest yesterday apologised to the customers unable to access their accounts.
The problems, which lasted for about five hours, are thought to have stemmed from a firewall upgrade, but investigations are ongoing.
The bank said no customer data was compromised at any point.
Disruption
The latest disruption came just a day after Barclays customers were locked out of their online accounts for several hours due to technical problems which have now been resolved.
RBS chief executive Ross McEwan said: “We feel the pain for our customers every time this happens. Absolute apologies to customers who are used to using mobile – and more and more are using mobile.”
“We make a lot of changes to our technology on an ongoing basis. It may be related to that but we just don’t know at this point.”
Asked about previous glitches, he said such incidents had “dropped dramatically”. He said: “If you look back at 2014, we had something like 300 incidents. Last year we only had 20, so we are certainly improving.”
An RBS statement said: “We would like to apologise to customers who experienced issues logging into their online and mobile banking accounts. This issue has now been resolved.”
Customers hit out at the banks on Twitter, with one saying: “Natwest app down again. Not really acceptable for our 24 economy! How can we trust you with our money?” Another customer told NatWest: “I am absolutely furious. You can quite easily take all the direct debits but can’t let me access my account. Absolutely ridiculous.”
Others said they had no way of moving money as their nearest branch was over an hour’s drive away.
Earlier this month, RBS announced plans to swing the axe on another 54 branches, 14 of which are the last bank in town.
The problems follow TSB’s huge meltdown earlier this year, after a botched IT switch saw millions of customers locked out of accounts.
Meanwhile, HSBC is carrying out routine essential maintenance tomorrow which means its mobile banking app and online banking will be unavailable for a period in the early hours of the morning.