Ulster Bank Systems are down *READ* Mod post #291

mirwillbeback

BuffyBot wrote: »

I remind everyone to read the Moderation note here. I've already had to delete more off topic, irrelevant and insulting posts and in some cases issue infractions to those responsible.

There is a zero tolerance for muppetry approach being taken on this thread - and this is now the second notice I've given. Keep within the site rules, charter and moderation instructions and we'll all be fine. Otherwise, expect sanctions if you decide to ignore the warnings given.

Apologies, didn't notice the mod notes.

fasttalkerchat

There were queues at cash machines today from people withdrawing money they don't have.
For anyone considering it, they will catch up with you eventually!

skinny90

I have to say fair play to aib staff in Newcastle Galway,it's not my local bank nor did I open an account there but they where very easy going and allowed me to take out 500 quid which I didn't have to get me through the week for rent and bills as this could be on going until wednesday

fasttalkerchat

skinny90 wrote: »

I have to say fair play to aib staff in Newcastle Galway,it's not my local bank nor did I open an account there but they where very easy going and allowed me to take out 500 quid which I didn't have to get me through the week for rent and bills as this could be on going until wednesday

??
Are you taking the piss?

skinny90

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

skinny90 wrote: »

I have to say fair play to aib staff in Newcastle Galway,it's not my local bank nor did I open an account there but they where very easy going and allowed me to take out 500 quid which I didn't have to get me through the week for rent and bills as this could be on going until wednesday

??
Are you taking the piss?

No I'm not I went in with my pay slip and id,basically they give you up to 500,UB were also doing it fortheir customers and certain banks where open until 7pm this evening...we where told this at work.BOI arnt doing it
I rang aib call centre and they said only if it's your bank where you opened your account but Newcastle Said it was fine

fasttalkerchat

skinny90 wrote: »

No I'm not I went in with my pay slip and id,basically they give you up to 500,UB were also doing it fortheir customers and certain banks where open until 7pm this evening...we where told this at work.BOI arnt doing it
I rang aib call centre and they said only if it's your bank where you opened your account but Newcastle Said it was fine

You mean that you should have the money??
I thought you were taking money you actually don't have.

unclebill98

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

There were queues at cash machines today from people withdrawing money they don't have.
For anyone considering it, they will catch up with you eventually!

Explain....

You could take out what was already in your account.

Ilovelucy

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

There were queues at cash machines today from people withdrawing money they don't have.
For anyone considering it, they will catch up with you eventually!

Not sure what you mean. You can't take out money from ATM you don't have.

fasttalkerchat

unclebill98 wrote: »

Explain....

You could take out what was already in your account.

Basically a few cash machines were letting anyone with an Ulster bank card take out £500. If you go straight to another ATM you get another £500 and so on!

I'm not condoning this in any way btw.

AltAccount

You do know they know who owns the cards, right?

unclebill98

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

Basically a few cash machines were letting anyone with an Ulster bank card take out £500. If you go straight to another ATM you get another £500 and so on!

I'm not condoning this in any way btw.

In the context your implying, no it is impossible.

If you had the funds you could take out as normal €750 in two transactions i.e. €400 & €350.

coffee_cake

Atms not working at all now

Carssou

Hi,

I quickly read some posts in this thread and also the updates on UB website, I wasn't aware of the issue until this evening when my GF tried to withdraw money from an ATM without any success, after selecting the amount the card pop out without any messages, we thought it was the ATM and tried another one and also with my own debit card with same result.

We have money on both accounts and are a little worried that in the updates on UB website and here everyone seems able to withdraw money from an ATM.

Are there any person who cannot whithdraw money as well?

Sorry if my English looks weird.

Thank you very much,
Ludo

coffee_cake

Snap, carss, my friend and i cant

Ilovelucy

That's a good sign that ATMs are offline.

midlandsmissus

I wonder do they have a crisis issue team who sat around thinking, 'the best way to deal with this is to drip feed how bad the actual situation is, give the masses as little info as possible, because ff we actually told them how bad it was from the start there would be all out panic.'

You can bet they've had alot of meetings and put some crisis strategy in place.

'Don't let the public know how bad it actually is!'

Carssou

bluewolf wrote: »

Snap, carss, my friend and i cant

Thanks

I wonder why if this is an issue with a patch deployment why they simply don't roll-back it and go back to the last working configuration.

The company I work for roll back deployments when they find them buggy and I suppose most of others company do it as well.

skinny90

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

skinny90 wrote: »

No I'm not I went in with my pay slip and id,basically they give you up to 500,UB were also doing it fortheir customers and certain banks where open until 7pm this evening...we where told this at work.BOI arnt doing it
I rang aib call centre and they said only if it's your bank where you opened your account but Newcastle Said it was fine

You mean that you should have the money??
I thought you were taking money you actually don't have.

No I have no account with ulster bank but as my nat west pays my wages I was affected.
Basically if where due wages and didn't receive them due to the UB issues aib and participating banks will let you take out upto 500 quid on a tempory overdraft and when your wages eventually come in it will come in minus the amount already withdrawn (up to 500)
If any interest is charged on the temporary overdraft ulster bank will fully compensate as its their fault and the other participating banks are helping them manage some chaos

fasttalkerchat

skinny90 wrote: »

No I have no account with ulster bank but as my nat west pays my wages I was affected.
Basically if where due wages and didn't receive them due to the UB issues aib and participating banks will let you take out upto 500 quid on a tempory overdraft and when your wages eventually come in it will come in minus the amount already withdrawn (up to 500)
If any interest is charged on the temporary overdraft ulster bank will fully compensate as its their fault and the other participating banks are helping them manage some chaos

Ah thats fine then. I was warning against people getting 500 quid and thinking it was free money. Its all over facebook that cash machines are giving out free money.

Obviously it will be rectified at some point!

rameire

i think it should be made clear before anybody goes nuts on an ATM.
if you withdraw money from an atm and you are thinking that it is free money due to their being no money in your account, YOU ARE WRONG.
the money you are withdrawing is coming from your account and will show when the balances finally fix themselves.

Also UB is open tomorrow and some are open sunday
if you have a UB account and have not received your pay / dole /pension due to the fault.
if you go to a UB branch with ID, your acc number or bank card and maybe a previous payslip or statement showing a reoccurring payment, the bank will facilitate a withdrawal from your account up to 500 euro. if you want above this amount ask for the branch manager, and they will try and facilitate you.

skinny90

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

skinny90 wrote: »

No I have no account with ulster bank but as my nat west pays my wages I was affected.
Basically if where due wages and didn't receive them due to the UB issues aib and participating banks will let you take out upto 500 quid on a tempory overdraft and when your wages eventually come in it will come in minus the amount already withdrawn (up to 500)
If any interest is charged on the temporary overdraft ulster bank will fully compensate as its their fault and the other participating banks are helping them manage some chaos

Ah thats fine then. I was warning against people getting 500 quid and thinking it was free money. Its all over facebook that cash machines are giving out free money.

Obviously it will be rectified at some point!

Ya Appoligies for the lack of clarity in the first post on the iPhone,Appoligies to the mods as about 3 posts I replied to I reported them by accident also.
As I said tho fair play to aib in Newcastle they where very understanding and sympathetic with the issue,work mates who are with BOI are screwed as they wouldn't honour tempory OD

Stheno

Carssou wrote: »

Thanks

I wonder why if this is an issue with a patch deployment why they simply don't roll-back it and go back to the last working configuration.

The company I work for roll back deployments when they find them buggy and I suppose most of others company do it as well.

It depends on how close to the metal the patch that is deployed is, some cannot be rolled back, and the lower down the system you go, e.g. server level, the harder it is to roll back.

In this case I suspect they failed to identify the full impact of the patch being rolled out and to realise all of the interdependancies, and potentially rolling back could be worse than fixing the existing damage.

Their Incident Management is being tested this week for sure! They need to hire an ITIL expert Change Manager to ensure such releases are not deployed or are properly tested before being deployed.
I wonder did they outsource Service Management with their IT services?

szjon

Perhaps some of you knowledgable guys (IT) could comment on my theory.

I am 99% certain that there was an issue in the preceeding weeks, my theory is that they have uploaded the patch/update to a system that was already harbouring a fault. This seems to have made the issue into the catastrophe it now is. Perhaps the reason they cannot fix it quickly is because they have failed to identify the underlying fault. I would imagine a rollback would not bring them back to where they were expecting if this was a compounded problem.

Ilovelucy

ATM glitch seems to be fixed now as my account has updated with two ATM transactions made today.

fasttalkerchat

szjon wrote: »

Perhaps some of you knowledgable guys (IT) could comment on my theory.

I am 99% certain that there was an issue in the preceeding weeks, my theory is that they have uploaded the patch/update to a system that was already harbouring a fault. This seems to have made the issue into the catastrophe it now is. Perhaps the reason they cannot fix it quickly is because they have failed to identify the underlying fault. I would imagine a rollback would not bring them back to where they were expecting if this was a compounded problem.

I would give an uneducated guess that there would have to have been two incidents. Possibly data loss from a backup a few days ago then a crash on the main system after that.

Stheno

szjon wrote: »

Perhaps some of you knowledgable guys (IT) could comment on my theory.

I am 99% certain that there was an issue in the preceeding weeks, my theory is that they have uploaded the patch/update to a system that was already harbouring a fault. This seems to have made the issue into the catastrophe it now is. Perhaps the reason they cannot fix it quickly is because they have failed to identify the underlying fault. I would imagine a rollback would not bring them back to where they were expecting if this was a compounded problem.

I'm not a techie, I work in Service management, but your theory sounds valid to me. There was an issue, and in trying to resolve the issue the patch was applied, without a full and thorough understanding of the consequence, resulting in what has happened this week.

Rollbacks are not always feasible, be it due to loss of or corruption of data, fundamental changes as a result of patching etc etc.

If they do not know the underlying fault then they are probably trying to rebuild from scratch suggesting a rollback was not possible.

I worked in an organisation where a small change meant we had to rebuild a system from scratch which took approx four days so it makes sense to me.

Ultimately the "blame" here will be with the change management and qa team who authorised this patch without ensuring all of the risks were evaluated.

@derekeire, outsourcing still leaves the accountability for services with the internal IT department providing the service via the outsourced company, i.e. RBS in this case.

I do feel truly sorry for the techs and managers trying to sort this out, it's no fun to spend days slowly making progress to ending something like this.

ash23

My wages came into the account at midnight (with BOI via UB)
Relief!!!

Stheno

ash23 wrote: »

My wages came into the account at midnight (with BOI via UB)
Relief!!!

Good for you, you must be delighted

coffee_cake

yeah my online stuff is totally up to date now including an inter account transfer i made today
i have hope for the atms tomorrow