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

filmbuffboy

Ally Dick wrote: »

Does nobody pay fees ? Interest will automatically accumulate on accounts that are overdrawn unless they waive it

havent they promised to waive any fees incurred as a result of this fiasco?

whether they do this automatically, or when every individual nags them about their respective accounts remains to be seen.

they should just do it automatically, after what everyone has been through!

mathie

Brendan Rodgers wrote: »

Just back from the Raheny branch where the staff were again very helpful and I withdrew cash no problem. I did overhear the manager answer a question regarding DDs and SOs, saying the latest info he had is that they'd be "forced through" irrespective of what your balance is saying.

Got home to find an email receipt from PayPal saying my Netflix DD has been paid, and just checked my Vodafone account and it's showing a balance due of zero. That's some comfort to me at least, but like many others, it's the blatant lies that are the most aggravating. Continue to work through the backlog? Everyone I've talked to has had no progress made on their account's standing since June 20/21.

Domhnall66 wrote: »

Just think about it logically: rolling back batch updates, or redoing them or any sort of automated reconciliation process doesn't take 10 days or whatever it has been. As horrifically improbable as it sounds, I believe they can only be entering all transactional data manually.

All withdraws in the last week and a half will be manual
They've not even entered any into the system yet
That indicates a bigger problem
And the latest update from Ulster contains no resolution date.
Worrying

bizmark

dee. wrote: »

Was that money you were due?

no not that much it seems to match up with how much i payed out recently which is scary as i might now have tickets for flights etc that havent been payed even though it seemed they were

Honestly not a clue whats going on now

wonski

kkontour wrote: »

I see a SO has come out of my acc today dated 22nd june, should have been 20th.
Its a scheduled transfer from my ub current acc to a ub savings acc
My current account is now overdrawn but the money is not gone into my savings. Thats an internal transfer deducted but not credited.
P.s no wages for two weeks now

The same happened to me last night...
Money are neither in current, nor in savings. It was only 50E weekly S/O, but since my salary has not arrived yet, i may need these money.
DD's due tomorrow - we will see how it goes...

silentbang

mathie wrote: »

All withdraws in the last week and a half will be manual
They've not even entered any into the system yet

Yep thats what i took from talking to the teller yesterday too, they have not been working through any backlog, she said when systems were back to normal, then they would go through all accounts and update them manually and statements sent out to show this.
At the moment ,in Drogheda at least, they are helping people out by just giving them money and will worry about balancing accounts etc later when systems are fully operational, very messy indeed id imagine, but all this 'we're working through the backlog' is just lies if you ask me,they couldnt be if they cant even check your account history in the bank, they only have as much access to your account details as you can see on a mini statement from an ATM as far as i could tell.

Tow

mathie wrote: »

They've not even entered any into the system yet
That indicates a bigger problem
And the latest update from Ulster contains no resolution date.
Worrying

The Register reported that the CA-7 batch scripts were deleted.
I don't know how complex they were, but if there was a lot of logic in them (rather than just Run Job A, B, C) it could be the equivalent of losing the source code (business logic) for running the bank.
At this stage it would more than appear there were no working backups.

Jesus Wept

The guy wheeled out (overall branch manager or something like that) to talk to Newstalk had a serious attitude on him. Consider me finally pissed off at these useless and arrogant gob****es.

Meanwhile the everyone above this guy, all directors and the CEO continue to hide in the jacks. State of ye.

goat2

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/28/rbs_job_cuts_and_offshoring_software_glitch/
here is a link to a bit of information on this it glitch

mrsdewinter

Just to reiterate what so many other posters have noticed over the past 24 hours: debits seem to be going through, affecting my balance and the sum I'm allowed to withdraw (and the figures seem to have varied since yesterday afternoon), but my wages (paid on the 28th) have not shown up yet. Mortgage/insurance/savings scheduled to leave my account tonight/tomorrow morning. This should be fun...

Domhnall66

Andy Carroll wrote: »

The guy wheeled out (overall branch manager or something like that) to talk to Newstalk had a serious attitude on him. Consider me finally pissed off at these useless and arrogant gob****es.

Meanwhile the everyone above this guy, all directors and the CEO continue to hide in the jacks. State of ye.

I heard that interview on Newstalk, I agree the UB spokesdroid was well out of order both in his tone, which was bordering on shouting and what he was saying, which was tantamount to blaming us unreasonable people for returning again and again to clog up his pretty branches with our ludicrous demands for our own money! Do we not know they are a bit busy right now? Hello? Earth to peasants! If you don't have bread, why don't you just eat cake?!? Sorry /rant over, you just reminded me of it, unbelievable

And yes, during one of my very enjoyable stints in the UB queuing for my money I heard someone ask for the manager to be told they were "unavailable". He or she has no business being a people manager in my view if they are going to leave their front line out to hang while they skulk away in the back office. Same goes for lickspittle, feckwit CEO - the last quote I heard from him was he was waiting to see if RBS would pay him his bonus or not (in fairness, I should however point out that this was in response to a direct question on the bonus, he didn't just blurt it out apropos of nothing). Well Jimmy my boy, given your boss in RBS has said publicly he doesn't deserve his, I wouldn't hold your fecking breath....

filmbuffboy

Domhnall66 wrote: »

I heard that interview on Newstalk, I agree the UB spokesdroid was well out of order both in his tone, which was bordering on shouting and what he was saying, which was tantamount to blaming us unreasonable people for returning again and again to clog up his pretty branches with our ludicrous demands for our own money! Do we not know they are a bit busy right now? Hello? Earth to peasants! If you don't have bread, why don't you just eat cake?!? Sorry /rant over, you just reminded me of it, unbelievable

And yes, during one of my very enjoyable stints in the UB queuing for my money I heard someone ask for the manager to be told they were "unavailable". He or she has no business being a people manager in my view if they are going to leave their front line out to hang while they skulk away in the back office. Same goes for lickspittle, feckwit CEO - the last quote I heard from him was he was waiting to see if RBS would pay him his bonus or not (in fairness, I should however point out that this was in response to a direct question on the bonus, he didn't just blurt it out apropos of nothing). Well Jimmy my boy, given your boss in RBS has said publicly he doesn't deserve his, I wouldn't hold your fecking breath....

would that interview with the spokesperson be available anywhere to listen to? ive had a look for it online to no avail

Domhnall66

filmbuffboy wrote: »

would that interview with the spokesperson be available anywhere to listen to? ive had a look for it online to no avail

Yeah, I had a look on the Newstalk website myself right after posting as I just remembered their podcast thing, they have three to four items up there on UB and I listened to the first few seconds of each but none of them were 'it', sorry


I didn't catch the very very beginning of the segment so I cannot say if it was a scheduled interview or some random bod called in. I have the feeling it was the breakfast show as I don't normally have NT on during the day unless I am in the car for some reason but I could well be wrong, sorry.

parsi

The attitude to bonuses is very telling - these guys are being asked if they will forfeit their bonus.

They seem to be confident that their company will award them a bonus in the first place.

filmbuffboy

Domhnall66 wrote: »

Yeah, I had a look on the Newstalk website myself right after posting as I just remembered their podcast thing, they have three to four items up there on UB and I listened to the first few seconds of each but none of them were 'it', sorry


I didn't catch the very very beginning of the segment so I cannot say if it was a scheduled interview or some random bod called in. I have the feeling it was the breakfast show as I don't normally have NT on during the day unless I am in the car for some reason but I could well be wrong, sorry.

no worries, thanks anyways.

would have been nice to hear it! though, if the spokespoersons attitude was awful it might have put me into a further rage!!!!:mad:

Domhnall66

In today's Sunday Times, main section page 15 (admittedly about the Barclay's scandal in the UK, not UB):

"....as Taylor [Martin, former CEO of Barclay's] observed: "There is not so much to a bank except its licence, its computer systems and its reputation.""....

Not looking too bright for UB then.

unkel

Domhnall66 wrote: »

Just think about it logically: rolling back batch updates, or redoing them or any sort of automated reconciliation process doesn't take 10 days or whatever it has been. As horrifically improbable as it sounds, I believe they can only be entering all transactional data manually.

Your fear is my fear. But still it can't be true, can it? I mean deleting data and also deleting any backups? Maybe in a SME with a physical disaster (fire / earthquake), but in a global enterprise???

If it is true, how many man hours are needed for data entry? :eek:

The stock value of RBS has already gone down several billion, and we haven't even seen figures for any other costs. How much did the outsourcing to India save?

Solair

Domhnall66 wrote: »

In today's Sunday Times, main section page 15 (admittedly about the Barclay's scandal in the UK, not UB):

"....as Taylor [Martin, former CEO of Barclay's] observed: "There is not so much to a bank except its licence, its computer systems and its reputation.""....

Not looking too bright for UB then.

They seem to forget that!

Get rid of the IT systems and you're left with a few branches and a lovely logo and very little else.

wonski

After reading that most-if not all accounts - are only showing debits, i have a fear that Ulster Bank is trying to make sure that no acccount is overdrawn over acceptable for them amount.
If they keep applying debits to accounts, and holding up salaries, no account holder would be able to withdraw more than should.
Taking into account that they already agreed to pay direct debits/standing orders regardless the balance on accounts, this may be very true.
It is only speculation, but if they started to apply credits first, they know there will be chancers out there, who withdraw as much as they can, and they would have to chase up customers to make them pay back. And that could take weeks...

Ally Dick

unkel wrote: »

Your fear is my fear. But still it can't be true, can it? I mean deleting data and also deleting any backups? Maybe in a SME with a physical disaster (fire / earthquake), but in a global enterprise???

If it is true, how many man hours are needed for data entry? :eek:

The stock value of RBS has already gone down several billion, and we haven't even seen figures for any other costs. How much did the outsourcing to India save?

I think they ballsed up the production system and the backup system at the same time. They applied the same failed upgrade to both. They must have applied the same process to both systems to back it out, and wiped out "OPC" on both. If you wipe out OPC, you are effectively getting rid of the map network for your system, that tells you what to run and when. It's guess work after that, unless you have people with significant system and business knowledge. My guess is that they spent the first while trying to get OPC back, but they can't so they are running jobs manually. I would doubt it's gone as far as data entry just yet

Ally Dick

Watching the Meath v Kildare match earlier. Nearly dropped my cup of tea when I saw the advert during the break

"A financial plan for every fan, at Ulster bank"

You couldn't make it up....

100gSoma

The greatest mistake that UB made was reneging on the commitment to have everything back up and running by tomorrow morning.
The date to have all services fully restored is now indeterminate due to the fear of missing another deadline. This PR mistake will be a turning point for many people who were prepared to just wait the week. (me included).

I spoke to the support staff on the phone today about moving deposits out of UB and it's not possible for anything to leave until after the system is back up and running. When that will be, we do not know. I think the big fear for UB now is bigger customers with 10s or 100s of thousands on deposit with them may begin to leave. I believe these people will now look at alternative options because of the total loss of confidence with this missed deadline tomorrow.

The UB staff themselves are well aware of the potential of losing customers and the scary prospect that customer attrition will be large enough to end their operation here. i.e. They know their jobs could be on the line because of this issue that was not caused by them directly. It's a very sorry state of affairs. I will wait as long as I can, but I feel missing tomorrows deadline will be a turning point for many people. Especially those with larger sums on deposit who have lost all confidence in the way this has been handled.

strandroad

100gSoma wrote: »

I spoke to the support staff on the phone today about moving deposits out of UB and it's not possible for anything to leave until after the system is back up and running.

Would they allow you to take out your savings in cash? It's probably a very silly idea and I'll just wait it out but where I am UB is literally three doors down from PTSB so I considered just moving the money this way (with a bodyguard) if I have to.

Solair

mhge wrote: »

100gSoma wrote: »

I spoke to the support staff on the phone today about moving deposits out of UB and it's not possible for anything to leave until after the system is back up and running.

Would they allow you to take out your savings in cash? It's probably a very silly idea and I'll just wait it out but where I am UB is literally three doors down from PTSB so I considered just moving the money this way (with a bodyguard) if I have to.

I think they'd have to but you might need to give them notice if it's a lot of cash as they'd need to have it ready for you.

Some branches might not want piles of cash either.

A cashiers cheque / bank draft should work though.

just check with PTSB to ensure the Ulster cheques are actually clearing. They'll welcome savings on deposit with open arms though!

Trotter

My standing orders and DDs left my account on Wednesday according to my online banking. They still havent 'landed' in any of the 3 accounts I'd expect them to have gone to.

If by tomorrow, DD's and SO's that have left my account still arent where they should be, I've a real problem.

Has anyone else's standing orders from Wednesday or before last week actually hit their intended other accounts yet? It would normally have happened by Friday.

JTMan

Ulster have just extended bank opening hours, again, this time till Friday coming. Might give an indication that they expect this crisis to continue for at least another week.

Domhnall66

unkel wrote: »

Your fear is my fear. But still it can't be true, can it? I mean deleting data and also deleting any backups? Maybe in a SME with a physical disaster (fire / earthquake), but in a global enterprise???

If it is true, how many man hours are needed for data entry? :eek:

The stock value of RBS has already gone down several billion, and we haven't even seen figures for any other costs. How much did the outsourcing to India save?

I don't know if it is true, clearly (I have worked with BCP/DR for the guts of 8 years but in IT, not banking) however a need to manually re-enter [all] the transactional data is the only situation that [I believe] fits the scraps of information we do know. Let's have a look at the facts or at least the facts as reported by sources any of us can have a look at:

1. The issue manifested itself at an enterprise level with in RBS/NatWest/UB 10 calendar days ago.
2. The technical issue (presumably subsystem A no longer updating subsystem B but I don't know and I submit it doesn't really matter) was reported as fixed at the RBS/NatWest level quite soon (25th June: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2186742/payments-fixed-claims-rbs-major-backlog-remains).
3. Transactional data was not restored at the same time as the issue was 'fixed' and - for Ulster Bank at least - this problem continues at the time of writing, although people are reporting sporadic 'weird' updates to their balances as viewed online.
4. Every day of this debacle, 10s of thousands if not 100s of thousands of transactions (ok, ok: the number of them is not a fact but a personal estimate, however this link for RBS as a whole references "100s of millions", so it seems reasonable: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/banking/9355467/RBS-computer-failure-condemns-man-to-spend-weekend-in-the-cells.html) have continued to flood into the system unabated, including:

• Salary payments, refunds and other credits
• Direct Debits and Standing Orders
• Loan repayments and lease payments
• Insufficient fund notifications and other 'rejected' or administrative bank to bank messages

5. Today is the first of July and the end of the last fiscal quarter/start of a new one. Many payments (mortgages and other loan repayments for example) are commonly made on the first of the month, lease payments are normally reconciled (credited/debited) by quarter.
6. All manual withdrawls made in-branch during this period must be manually entered, since clearly they were recorded manually (at least they were for mine in my branch).
7. The resolution dates provided by Ulster Bank have been missed multiple times: http://ulsterbank.ie/roi/personal/generic/service-update.ashx#q10

A. So I ask myself, what kind of technical change cannot be rolled back very very quickly (provided roll back data is availble)? Sure it may require downtime, sure it takes an amount of time to plan, execute and verify, but if you are talking about any level of automation, no change in my experience (including multi-geo logical and physical infrastructure changes) would take 10 days to roll back.

B. Why have the resolution dates slipped without any explanation? If you did a 'restore' operation, and screwed it up, you'd want to get the explanation out there, right? "Well aligning the Throgmorton relays to the Warp Cores is, as I am sure you will appreciate, a very complex task and regrettably on this occasion we did not succeed, however we are continuing to blah blah". Now we are talking about a bank here, reluctant to allow the smallest detail escape less they lose the scraps of confidence remaining in them (particularly among institutional investors) but still...I find it hard to credit.

C. You know what does take forever? Manually entering the data back up into the system and reconciling it/making sure it tallies when all the while net-new transactions are pouring into the system unabated.

My personal prediction? Sometime next week UB will announce that "the majority" of credits during the downtime have been restored and are accessible, you will need to recreate your direct debits and standing orders, sorry about that, and that anyone outside the "majority of our customers" who are experiencing problems should call a dedicated helpline to resolve the 'few', 'mop-up' issues....

Why do I say that? Well it all depends on whether you buy into my belief that they are forced to recreate everything manually. If you don't then this scenario just won't apply but if it is manual, they simply don't have enough hands, even if they task every InfoSys staffer in India to it, they'll have to draw a line in the sand and say: "right, salaries are restored, mortgage payments are restored, commercial leases are reconciled; that's the big stuff done - let's worry about the nitty gritty later, or better yet, just tell everyone to cancel and recreate them...". It is, admittedly what I'd do, so a bit of bias there.

Just to be thorough: one alternative to the "has to be manually recreated" theory is that they can batch-restore from tape or whatever but it has kept failing to tally/verify each time they have tried. Now that scenario also fits a view of the facts, albeit a far, far grimmer one for all concerned - a bank's transactional data is its business, just like a street-money lender's little black book....no transaction records = no bank.....

Beefy78

mhge wrote: »

Would they allow you to take out your savings in cash? It's probably a very silly idea and I'll just wait it out but where I am UB is literally three doors down from PTSB so I considered just moving the money this way (with a bodyguard) if I have to.

That is a very silly idea, and one that is going to cause even more problems if other people have it as well.

Unless you're talking above €100,000 it's perfectly safe in UB. Even if it's above that amount the biggest potential cause of harm for that money would be people doing exactly what you're talking about.

Geri Male

Andy Carroll wrote: »

The guy wheeled out (overall branch manager or something like that) to talk to Newstalk had a serious attitude on him. Consider me finally pissed off at these useless and arrogant gob****es.

Meanwhile the everyone above this guy, all directors and the CEO continue to hide in the jacks. State of ye.

Northern accent?

Anyone get his name?

silentbang

Fungus wrote: »

Ulster have just extended bank opening hours, again, this time till Friday coming. Might give an indication that they expect this crisis to continue for at least another week.

Without doubt this is going to drag into next week, every day they stay open and the systems are down it is creating more backlog, but how long can they go on before the backlog gets out of hand (if it hasnt already).
Everything in bank is being done manually and will all have to be redone,so i dont see people accounts being up to date by the end of the week, no chance id say.

filmbuffboy

silentbang wrote: »

Without doubt this is going to drag into next week, every day they stay open and the systems are down it is creating more backlog, but how long can they go on before the backlog gets out of hand (if it hasnt already).
Everything in bank is being done manually and will all have to be redone,so i dont see people accounts being up to date by the end of the week, no chance id say.

if thats the case then they should shut up shop for a few days and just focus on clearing the backlog. time will tell anyways. its gonna be an interesting week!!!!