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

Hibernicis

rameire wrote: »

Think of it like this.
there are thousands of flights designated to land at Dublin Airport on wednesday.
but due to a the computers being down they have to talk the planes down one by one, by hand.
and due to it being done by hand it will take significantly longer than 2 days to clear the planes in the holding pattern.

Poor analogy. If a plane due to land on Wednesday was in a holding pattern for 2 days it would run out of fuel and crash. Second thoughts, perhaps not such a bad analogy.

Stheno

Red Alert wrote: »

Will they ever be forced to explain what happened, because I get the feeling the media are not trying very hard to do a scoop or an exposé on it? Bank of Ireland were never made explain the mess some months ago either - was the technical background to it ever uncovered?

There will be a massive internal review over this, and people regardless of where they are, and I suspect some at a senior level, will lose their jobs.

However, there will be limitations on what will become public, certainly the regulator and the Irish payment systems guys will be more aware of what caused this, and over time the general IT community (who strangely enough are fairly tight lipped about such happenings as they know all too well it could be them) will find out some of the details.

I bank with Ulster Bank, and I've been inconvenienced by this outage, I've not been able to lodge to my account to make payments, nor have I been able to get expenses due to me from work, but working in the IT field and having worked through a couple of disasters (nothing on this scale), I'm resigned to it, and understand that in a few days it will be fixed.

It is a shocking indictment of RBOS and their continuity, change, and incident management, I hope that if they survive it, they learn.

Solair

Seems RBS axed a LOT of IT jobs over the last while:

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/inside-outsourcing/2010/09/rbs-uk-it-staff-morale-down-as-offshoring-takes-hold.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/sep/02/rbs-cuts-3500-uk-jobs

http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/2009/Oct/7/rbs-may-outsource-2bn-worth-of-work-to-india.html

Doesn't take much googling to find a lot of stories about how they've slashed their IT budget.

Jesus Wept

I presume my rent payment didn't go to my landlady.
Also deposited 150 via express deposit in branch on Friday. :rolleyes:

Stheno

Solair wrote: »

Seems RBS axed a LOT of IT jobs over the last while:

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/inside-outsourcing/2010/09/rbs-uk-it-staff-morale-down-as-offshoring-takes-hold.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/sep/02/rbs-cuts-3500-uk-jobs

http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/2009/Oct/7/rbs-may-outsource-2bn-worth-of-work-to-india.html

Doesn't take much googling to find a lot of stories about how they've slashed their IT budget.

Look Bank of Ireland have outsourced their IT to first HP then IBM over the past ten years.

I don't know anything about UB, despite having worked there to transition the retail section to RBOS systems years ago, but BOI have worked long and hard to have a real partnership with their outsourced companies, and indeed have retained their applications support internally which seems to be the issue here.

Outsourcing is not the devil some are claiming here, poor management of outsourced relationships and a lack of acknowledgement of the need for those outsourcing to manage the relationship is.

Very few financial institutions these days have fully insourced IT.

Solair

Stheno wrote: »

Outsourcing is not the devil some are claiming here, poor management of outsourced relationships and a lack of acknowledgement of the need for those outsourcing to manage the relationship is.

Very few financial institutions these days have fully insourced IT.

I'm not saying that outsourcing's a tool of the devil. Rather, that I think RBS is suffering from 'slash and burn' post-bailout cost saving panic.

Also, in this climate, banks can't really afford to have screw-ups like this. It's extremely damaging to confidence. This situation will undoubtedly cause a lot of individuals and businesses to re-think how they do their banking.

The scale of this thing is definitely unprecedented. I've come across situations where banks' systems went partially out of service, or went down for a few hours or even 24 hours, but this is just scary. RBS/Ulster Bank has been basically 'out of service' now since late Tuesday night!

I also find it odd that this could happen in a business where your IT systems are basically the entire infrastructure for your business. This isn't like an company where IT systems are the support infrastructure. The IT network *is* the bank. It's like trying to operate an airline without aircraft!

Ally Dick

Solair wrote: »

Seems RBS axed a LOT of IT jobs over the last while:

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/inside-outsourcing/2010/09/rbs-uk-it-staff-morale-down-as-offshoring-takes-hold.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/sep/02/rbs-cuts-3500-uk-jobs

http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/2009/Oct/7/rbs-may-outsource-2bn-worth-of-work-to-india.html

Doesn't take much googling to find a lot of stories about how they've slashed their IT budget.

All gone to Chennai India, and to hell with the quality control

Stheno

Solair wrote: »

I'm not saying that outsourcing's a tool of the devil. Rather, that I think RBS is suffering from 'slash and burn' post-bailout cost saving panic.

Also, in this climate, banks can't really afford to have screw-ups like this. It's extremely damaging to confidence. This situation will undoubtedly cause a lot of individuals and businesses to re-think how they do their banking.

The scale of this thing is definitely unprecedented. I've come across situations where banks' systems went partially out of service, or went down for a few hours or even 24 hours, but this is just scary. RBS/Ulster Bank has been basically 'out of service' now since late Tuesday night!

I also find it odd that this could happen in a business where your IT systems are basically the entire infrastructure for your business. This isn't like an company where IT systems are the support infrastructure. The IT network *is* the bank. It's like trying to operate an airline without aircraft!

I agree with you I think it's shocking in the extreme that this has happened and that there was no continuity in place to deal with it, be it restoring from backup, having time delayed hot sites, whatever.

It could be a case that there were transaction based hotsites in place which are useless in this regard, but it fundamentally boils down to poor change management, make a change, and make sure you've a backout/backup in place.

Most organisations I know in this situation apply a critical change to one site and delay it going through to another by taking the links down, doesn't seem to have happened here.

Easy to criticise on an internet forum, but having worked in a few such environments, it's par for the course!

Treora

Management bonuses incentivised by IT cut backs and outsourcing leading to disgrunted employees. This combined with a bank to bank clearing system (as opposed to centralised system) due to a blind and weak central bank and an apathetic department of finance on IT decisions. It's the ghost of Nearys past.

Ireland was waiting for full control of transactions to go throught the ECB, but now that will be a good 15 years, if ever.

There is zero chance of the Irish government taking responsibility for control of the finance transaction system - too much like governance for them.

Red Alert

Would it be crazy to suggest that every account has a database journal on a server in the central bank, so that in the case of a catastrophic failure the central bank could declare itself the canonical source of account data?

Treora

Red Alert wrote: »

Would it be crazy to suggest that every account has a database journal on a server in the central bank, so that in the case of a catastrophic failure the central bank could declare itself the canonical source of account data?

You mean like how the Revenue Commissioners keeps a copy of all transactions on their well publicised private cloud. There are a number of countries, Singapore comes to mind, where the debit card transactions are only valid once the transaction is cleared by the central referencing agency. Ireland is one of one handful of European countries that does not have centralised clearing. This is also the reason why the banks are moving off insecure laser/ipso and to visa debit. That and visa are paying them.

Belgium has had centralised clearing for decades. Isn't that the basis for how they created the SWIFT system.

skydish79

From the guardian this morning

The Financial Services Authority said NatWest would be responsible for any charges customers were liable for, or interest they need to pay as a result of the bank's error, but would not be responsible for consequential losses, which could include missing out on a holiday or losing a home

deelite

Just watching sky news and nat west's website is down and they have to open branches this morning.

banjacksed

Im a bit confused to why the HSE payments are going through UB and not aib or boi, also social welfare payments going through UB, What's going on with that and why arent the government using aib or boi for social welfare payments.
My sister is on social and cant get a penny out of UB, which i find strange if their paying out to the working people,I'd say heads will roll over this the coming week, with pensioners also being affected.

linguist

One question I do have to ask though is how it is that so many of those affected would appear not to have credit cards. I'm not suggesting everyone has one and I feel particularly sorry for people relying on social welfare payments. However, for a working person in the HSE etc... to have no fallback such as an account elsewhere or a credit card seems rather silly.

waster81

linguist wrote: »

One question I do have to ask though is how it is that so many of those affected would appear not to have credit cards. I'm not suggesting everyone has one and I feel particularly sorry for people relying on social welfare payments. However, for a working person in the HSE etc... to have no fallback such as an account elsewhere or a credit card seems rather silly.

Yeah that's the spirit its the customers fault really!

what were they thinking, expecting a bank to give them access to their own cash,

Anyways a credit card is a dangerous thing unless you can pay it off 100% every month

cookie1977

banjacksed wrote: »

Im a bit confused to why the HSE payments are going through UB and not aib or boi, also social welfare payments going through UB, What's going on with that and why arent the government using aib or boi for social welfare payments.
My sister is on social and cant get a penny out of UB, which i find strange if their paying out to the working people,I'd say heads will roll over this the coming week, with pensioners also being affected.

I'm guessing (hoping) it's because UB was the best deal for the government at the time (albeit it probably doesn't look so good now).

cookie1977

linguist wrote: »

One question I do have to ask though is how it is that so many of those affected would appear not to have credit cards. I'm not suggesting everyone has one and I feel particularly sorry for people relying on social welfare payments. However, for a working person in the HSE etc... to have no fallback such as an account elsewhere or a credit card seems rather silly.

Unfortunately my bank don't accept my credit card as payment for my mortgage.

Neither do my supermarkets lidl and aldi. Nor do many small shops unless I spend a minimum.

Hibernicis

The €500 which I took from my UB c/a this morning via a BOI ATM showed up instantly on the anytime online display. The salary which was due in my a/c on Friday is stil AWOL.

danois

Hibernicis wrote: »

The €500 which I took from my UB c/a this morning via a BOI ATM showed up instantly on the anytime online display. The salary which was due in my a/c on Friday is stil AWOL.

I am waiting on my fis still that was supposed to go in on Thursday and my wages from Friday still not in. I took 60 out this morning and that showed straight away. That was my last 60 so it better be sorted soon.

xxlauraxxox

i cant use my card in either a atm or in a shop ,log on to online banking and my account was showing up nil last night even tho id about 700e in it and im still waiting on my wages since thursday ulster bank get it sorted ive been working all weekend i cant go into the bank :mad:

Trotter

This is getting ridiculous.. and look at the lack of any kind of government reaction! People are walking out of shops and supermarkets with their hands hanging because they can't get to their own money! My employer doesnt allow payment other than into a bank account.. What if this happens again to multiple banks at the same time?

The lack of reaction from our 'betters' on this is a bad sign because it shows the lack of ability, care etc. They won't walk out of a shop after their card failed and leave their shopping behind.

Im livid.. no wages still and I was due to be paid on Thursday.

Stavro Mueller

danois wrote: »

I am waiting on my fis still that was supposed to go in on Thursday and my wages from Friday still not in. I took 60 out this morning and that showed straight away. That was my last 60 so it better be sorted soon.

Yeah, that's the sickener. The process for taking money out of your bank account doesn't appear to have stopped working at all :mad: I bet too that the clean-up from this will take a while and that some people will have to do quite a bit of chasing to have the fines and fees taken off their bank balances.

Sean Bateman

It's a complete mess.

There's a lesson here for us all though - Be prepared for something like this. That's not a criticism of anyone and I appreciate that there are a lot of people living "hand to mouth" but if you can, operate a savings account with another financial institution.

donegal_road

people laughed at me 2 years ago when I told them I have a cupboard in the house with approx 1 year's supply of non perishable food, such as dried lentils, flour, oats, bran, chick peas etc. I also grow my own vegetables & have 2 freezers full of stuff. Im advising my mum this evening to buy in 6 months supply of whatever drugs she has been prescribed for blood pressure. Europe is teetering on the precipice.. and whether or not this technical issue with UB is IT related, Im not willing to take their word that everything will be ok by midweek, I am also not willing to take the chance that all other banks will stay intact.

Solair

They are still not doing enough talking to the media and on online forums!!

Ulster Bank : hourly or more frequent updates requires now! Get a twitter feed going and put an actual IT person out there. Waffle explanations are not good enough. This is not a minor hiccup !

All that's happening now is an information vacuum which will be filled with panic.

It's not like we have any confidence in banks to begin with after the last few years of being milked dry for bailouts!

Twitter feed, Facebook & verified rep on boards.ie would do a lot to calm nerves if they provide real info!

This is a bank that's so good at communication that they have UK helpline numbers on their Irish ATMs labelling so, I'm not going to hold my breath!

Prop Joe

Ok i have been waiting on a FAS payment since thursday no sign of it,Used my debit card this morning and checked the balance online after,The money has been withdrawn,So if they can register the money being withdrawn how come they ant with the money being lodged??

Radharc na Sleibhte

Due to be paid Thursday here too, and still nada.
Took out me last 20 last night, of course that came out straight away.
(to be fair, maybe that shows the problem IS fixed and they ARE working their way through the backlog).
Albeit mighty fuking slowly.....!!!

Hibernicis

For the record.....

To help as many of our customers as possible, we will have 20 Ulster Bank branches open across Ireland, Sunday 24th, from 10am to 1pm. It would be helpful if customers could bring identification and their account details with them. We will continue to post regular updates here.

And when you follow the link, here is the list of 20 sorry let me fix it, that should be 12

Castlebar
Cavan
Dooradoyle
Dublin, Grafton Street
Dundrum
Galway
Letterkenny
Liffey Valley
Midleton
Naas
Swords Pavilion
Wexford

rameire

Hibernicis wrote: »

For the record.....



And when you follow the link, here is the list of 20 sorry let me fix it, that should be 12

Castlebar
Cavan
Dooradoyle
Dublin, Grafton Street
Dundrum
Galway
Letterkenny
Liffey Valley
Midleton
Naas
Swords Pavilion
Wexford

do the 8 up the north not count, seen as they say 20 ACROSS IRELAND.