Banking 365 down again?

blade1 · 16-08-2023 5:15am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984328#Comment_120984328

Only in the fiction section.

aoraki · 16-08-2023 7:44am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984258#Comment_120984258

Ah fair play to ya. Sure this type of stuff has never happened to Banks before, particularly Bank of Ireland. They'll have no clue what to do to try and get their munney back. They'll send you a couple of letters and then they'll surely give up when they realise that they are dealing with a mastermind such as yourself. They have absolutely no resoures available to them when trying to retrieve debts and the courts will absolutely take your side on such a matter like this.

You're an inspiration to us all!

ebbsy · 16-08-2023 7:45am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984014#Comment_120984014

They must have all stood beside the ATMs

Jim2007 · 16-08-2023 8:09am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120983800#Comment_120983800

I don't believe the Garda were deployed to guard the ATMs, I do see the potential for law and order to break down at the ATMs when people start to realise that the ATMs have a limited amount of cash and they might not get a chance to get their hands on "free money". I can see them being deployed for that reason.

I have never been involved in providing critical incident management services to any of the Irish banks, so I'm not familiar with their operations and perhaps there are issues not know to the public. But I find the way the whole situation was managed very amateur. Clearly their edge case testing was a way with the fairs as was their rollback planning and execution. I'd certainly hope that the CB and ECB will be asking some very serious questions as to their disaster recover planning and testing. They should have been able to close it down, roll it back and in the worst case go into disaster recovery mode and that does not seem to have happened or at least it took way to long to execute.

aoraki · 16-08-2023 9:07am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984579#Comment_120984579

That's 100% the reason the Guards were deployed, they didn't want pitched battles breaking out at the ATMs between all the fine individuals queueing up patiently to receive their free money.

And yes, some serious questions need to be asked of Bank of Ireland after what happened yesterday. We don't know if it was caused by external factors (such as a network going down, or some hardware failure) or if it was caused by a production deployment that went bad. But that was a serious and long outage. You'd have to assume/hope that they have some sort of HA/DR capability and in the event of things going wrong can failover to healthy systems?

I'd say the post-mortem calls this week in the BOI IT and Operations dept will be interesting!

aoraki · 16-08-2023 9:15am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120983936#Comment_120983936

While there are probably a few cases of genuine people who inadvertently went into overdraft by withdrawing funds that they didn't actually have, let's be honest here, the vast vast majority of people who will find themselves in an overdraft situation after this will have done so out of pure opportunism (bordering on theft).

I can't see there being much sympathy for the latter category, and nor should there be.

drogon. · 16-08-2023 9:18am

As someone who works in IT and has experienced infrastructure outages firsthand, it's truly empathetic to see the challenges faced by frontline staff and the backend engineers who tirelessly work overnight to resolve these issues. It's unfortunate that investments in IT infrastructure are often seen as costs until a major breakdown occurs, prompting organizations to allocate funds for urgent fixes. Such situations highlight the importance of valuing and investing in robust infrastructure proactively to minimize disruptions and ensure smoother operations.

PokeHerKing · 16-08-2023 9:24am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120983680#Comment_120983680

They'll have to pay it back as you can't be enriched through error, that's law.

They will not be liable to pay OD interest unless they've signed up to an OD facility.

Which I'll presume nobody involved in this will have.

stephenjmcd · 16-08-2023 9:47am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984898#Comment_120984898

It's in the T&C when you open an account

Linked post from above has the links.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984244/#Comment_120984244

BOI have said themselves as well, accounts will go into overdraft

kirk. · 16-08-2023 9:57am

cannot complete request error ATM on my app

PokeHerKing · 16-08-2023 10:35am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985019#Comment_120985019

An overdraft facility is an agreed line of credit. As discussed in pg 8 of that link. It's a negotiated facility with a 30e yearly fee.

Not clear to me if the interest rate/charge they're discussing on pg 5 is related to that or not. But one thing I'm certain of is you cannot be charged OD interest if you do not have an OD facility.

Even more so if its due to bank error.

G_R · 16-08-2023 10:45am

They do charge interest on unauthorised overdrafts, I've been charged it myself back when I was less careful with what direct debits were due and they were honoured.

In any case, BOI have said they won't apply interest (or will at least refund it) for any unauthorised debit balances caused by this error.

kirk. · 16-08-2023 10:47am

unauthorised debit balances caused by this error 😁

G_R · 16-08-2023 10:52am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985332#Comment_120985332

Yeah, the difference being people who have an authorised OD limit on their account and are using it will be charged.

aoraki · 16-08-2023 11:04am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985323#Comment_120985323

Really? Where did you see that? I thought if anything they'd be coming down on this behaviour like a tonne of bricks

SAMTALK · 16-08-2023 11:08am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985417#Comment_120985417

The error was from their side so I suppose in fairness they can only expect to get back what was wrongly taken at best

G_R · 16-08-2023 11:16am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985417#Comment_120985417

I'd have thought the same, but it's on the Journal

https://www.thejournal.ie/bank-of-ireland-glitch-6143834-Aug2023/

Jim2007 · 16-08-2023 11:17am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984898#Comment_120984898

You need to read the general T&C that you sign up to when you become a customer of the bank. It normally covers situations where the customer obtains an unauthorised credit and provides for interest payments, penalties and termination of banking facilities.

Someone needs to check this up, but I believe an unauthorised credit of over 500 Euros will get you a negative entry on your CCR report. So if a person needs to get a mortgage etc... it might be smart put the money back PDQ and hope it does not meet the reporting requirements.

aoraki · 16-08-2023 11:19am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985439#Comment_120985439

The bank system was down, but nobody was forcing these people to go down to the bank to withdraw funds that they knew they didn't have. That's pure opportunism and they did that in the belief that they wouldn't have to pay it back, so you could even argue criminal intent.

If somebody leaves their window open at night and you're passing by and you see a top of the range laptop worth thousands inside, then yes, it's stupid that they left the window open. But that doesn't absolve you of any blame or consequence if you decide to hop in through the open window and help yourself to the laptop.

The bank would be fully justified in charging interest and fees in these cases IMO.

KildareP · 16-08-2023 11:19am

BOI will likely say a debit card is no different than a cheque - just because you can write cheques well beyond what you have in your account does not mean you are off the hook for them or not responsible if you go overdrawn. It wasn't all that long ago that if you had a bender of a weekend using your debit card your account balance wouldn't update until the following Monday or Tuesday.

All that said, Bank of Ireland are absolutely awful and I don't know why anyone would bank with them. They laid off thousands of their in-house IT team over the years and it's starting to show between the antiquated online and app and the increasingly frequent extended system outages. Clearly they didn't learn from RBS' mistake.

SAMTALK · 16-08-2023 11:22am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985488#Comment_120985488

I totally agree with you and would have zero sympathy for anyone penalised. I'm just saying BOI would probably settle for funds returned to save on anymore embarrassment or back lash.

PokeHerKing · 16-08-2023 11:25am

It's been a long time since I worked in a branch but there was no such thing as debit interest on current accounts when I did.

Unpaid DD/SO fees yes but no debit interest. An OD facility is a line of credit with an agreed applicable interest rate.

It's a completely separate facility that required a credit application.

I can't really think why debit interest would be applicable on a current account. In my day if a DD/SO was paid putting an account into deficit it was the branch managers decision to allow it.

Bank wouldn't have a leg to stand on charging debit interest on their own error/decision.

G_R · 16-08-2023 11:28am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985474#Comment_120985474

I've only worked on the loans/mortgages side of the house, but the Credit Reporting Act requires banks to report any facility over €500, and report the balance outstanding at the end of each reporting period (for us was the end of the month) within 5 working days of the period ending.

Thinking about it, given that the facility is technically 0, it might fall outside the scope of the CCR.

G_R · 16-08-2023 11:36am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985539#Comment_120985539

Just dug out the CCR Lender Guidance manual, there's no reference to unauthorised overdrafts at all.

Looking at the technical specification for what should be reported in respect of an overdraft, one of the mandatory fields is the date the facility was granted. No facility has been granted in this case, so I'd personally interpret it as being non-reportable tbh.

aoraki · 16-08-2023 11:43am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985506#Comment_120985506

Yeah, fair enough. And I just read an article confirming what the other poster posted - looks like the Bank won't be charging interest on these overdrafts.

G_R · 16-08-2023 11:48am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985531#Comment_120985531

When I worked in BOI (which is maybe 10 years ago or so) a customers internal account rating determined whether or not a DD would be honoured if there wasn't enough funds to cover it. If it was a honoured, interest was charged on the negative balance. If it wasn't honoured an unpaid SO/DD fee was applied to account (€12.70 if I remember correctly).

As far as I'm aware they no longer charge unpaid fees but they do still charge debit interest.

coylemj · 16-08-2023 2:07pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985323#Comment_120985323

Could you please explain how a customer could have put their account into an unauthorised debit balance which was 'caused by this error.'

If I walk into a shop and find the drawer of the cash register has been left open, is it the fault of the shop if I help myself to a few €50 notes? People need to take responsibility for their actions.

As poster aoraki has pointed out above (post #70), nobody forced people to withdraw or transfer money (to the likes of Revolut) which was not in their account. Nothing happened to anybody's account unless the account holder decided to move money - the bank's IT systems didn't push anyone into the red.

aoraki · 16-08-2023 2:40pm

The fact that you can withdraw the ¢1000 is actually a feature of the system in the event of a widespread failure, and not a glitch in and of itself. The Banks could very easily configure the ATMs to not dispense any money if the ATM cannot verify with the main banking system to determine whether the customer actually has the funds or not in their account (like it does when the system is fully functioning). This is probably the easiest thing to do from the bank's perspective.

The problem with that approach however is if you have funds in your account and you need to access them for an emergency but the system is offline, then that's not good from the customer's perspective. So the banks use this trust based mechanism to allow customers to withdraw up to a limit of ¢1000 during times that the main system is offline.

I think most banks do this, maybe even all of them. But I wonder if they will rethink this policy in light of the widespread stupity that occurred yesterday.

coylemj · 16-08-2023 2:54pm

The problem with that approach however is if you have funds in your account and you need to access them for an emergency but the system is offline, then that's not good from the customer's perspective. So the banks use this trust based mechanism to allow customers to withdraw up to a limit of ¢1000 during times that the main system is offline.

That has been true since BoI first launched their ATMs. In fact, BoI stole a march on AIB because, before any of the Irish ATM machines went online, a BoI 'Pass' machine, although it was offline, would allow a trusted customer to withdraw cash. There was some kind of flag within the magnetic strip on the BoI card which indicated the customer's status. AIB did not enable their ATMs until they went online and if the link went down, nobody could withdraw cash.

G_R · 16-08-2023 3:18pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120986585#Comment_120986585

I think we're on the same side here, I think people were idiots for withdrawing the money if they didn't have it.

However, had the error not occured, the ATM would have been online and would have declined the transaction due to insufficient funds if they didn't have the grand in their account.

I personally think BOI would be within their rights to charge interest and an irregular account charge on top, but I would imagine it was decided the optics of that wouldn't play well and it wouldn't be worth the hassle.

Jim2007 · 16-08-2023 5:22pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985578#Comment_120985578

I don't know but I'd be surprised if a customer had unauthorised credit over 500 Euros at the end of the reporting period and the institution was not obliged to report it as that would be contrary to the objective of the EU directive to strengthen consumer credit across the single market. But the weather is too nice and I'm retired..... so I won't be digging into it.

Jim2007 · 16-08-2023 5:28pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120986918#Comment_120986918

I guess we'll have to wait and see the extend of the problem. I'd guess they are legally entitled to do so, but we'll have to see what they do. Personally I'd be looking at it as a good reason for cancelling relationships on dead beat accounts, because the chances are good that the one that won't want to pay back will also be the ones generating very little profit for the bank.

SouthWesterly · 16-08-2023 5:33pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985474#Comment_120985474

The bank are saying this. Sort it out and your rating is fine . Ignore it and face not getting a loan or a mortgage

mazdamiatamx5 · 16-08-2023 7:09pm

Has anyone found that not all transactions from Monday and Tuesday not showing yet on 365 online?

coylemj · 17-08-2023 11:26am

I think this was a monumental PR disaster for the Gardai. Sending officers to block access to ATMs was not their business. Anyone with an ounce of sense could have figured out that if you were able to make an unauthorised withdrawal from your BoI account, you did not need to go to an ATM at all, you could have transferred the money to Revolut or another bank or credit union account.

If it was a case that the ATMs were dishing out free cash to all and sundry, Bank of Ireland could have shut down the network in an instant. They did not need the cops to protect them from their own incompetence.

blade1 · 17-08-2023 1:12pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120990068#Comment_120990068

Was there anyone genuinely wanting to use an ATM and stopped by the guards?

Bad form if they were.

coylemj · 17-08-2023 1:42pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120990703#Comment_120990703

The Irish Times says that that did happen ...

Gardaí were deployed in various locations to prevent people withdrawing money from ATMs and to disperse queues of people waiting to use them.

https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2023/08/16/garda-presence-at-atm-queues-triggered-by-more-than-40-calls-from-concerned-citizens/

Jim2007 · 17-08-2023 2:11pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120990068#Comment_120990068

I can understand the Garda being deployed to prevent a breach of the peace which could have happened if say word got around that the float in the ATM was running out that people were afraid they would not get their "free money". But to the best of my knowledge all banks include provisions in their general T&C to address unauthorised credits and the ways interest, fees and penalties will be applied and customers have agreed to this. So if you are doing something you have contractually agreed to, I'm not sure what crime you'd have committed. Perhaps we'll here more down the line.

From what I have read so far I'm not at all convinced of BOIs ability to deploy, rollback and do disaster recovery based on this. I would certainly hope that the Central Bank will conduct a review and product a report on it.

aoraki · 17-08-2023 3:09pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120990943#Comment_120990943

I was talking to a friend who had to use an ATM on Tuesday evening. It was a fairly prominent location in my local town. He said the guards at that paricular ATM were not stopping people using the ATM, but he reckoned they were there more for crowd control if any trouble started. Purely anecdotal though, not representative of what happened at every ATM the guards came out to.

jamieon · 17-08-2023 10:48pm

I deposited x amount into my account today at a local branch. Checked my account at 9 or 10pm and it was fine. Now its completely gone according to banking 365. Anybody experience this today? BOI are really **** up !

G_R · 17-08-2023 11:38pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120993304#Comment_120993304

That's a common enough thing to happen with BOI accounts. Transactions disappear or sometimes show as doubled late at night as pending transactions are batch processed and move to fully posted. It will resolve itself in a few hours (and your balance is not affected, the transactions are there, they're just not displaying on the app/online)