Major outage hits Commonwealth Bank

David Heath
Wednesday, 14 December 2011 20:06

Business IT - Security

The Commonwealth bank last night experienced a major computer outage affecting NetBank, ATMs and EFTPOS.

According to the Commonwealth bank's Facebook page, a posting made sometime around 6:30pm yesterday stated: "We are aware customers may be experiencing issues with NetBank, ATMs and EFTPOS.

"We are working to restore services as a matter of priority, and apologise for any inconvenience caused."

According to many comments to the facebook message, shops using the CommBank EFTPOS network were unable to process transactions (from any bank) - one pizza store reported having to throw away hundreds of dollars of cooked food when people were unable to pay for it.  Many customers were also angry that a variety of automated payments wouldl probably fail last nghtt, causing late-payment fees; others were simply angry that they were unable to access funds so close to Christmas.

A similar message appeared on the bank's web site, "We are aware customers may be experiencing issues with NetBank, ATMs and EFTPOS.

"A number of customers may also be experiencing issues accessing our contact centres and phone banking.

"We are working to restore services as a matter of priority, and apologise for any inconvenience caused."

What seems much worse is that more than one comment to the Facebook message suggests that balances are wrong - one person observed that a $7,000 loan had been mysteriously 'repaid,' another that $300 was missing.

Right now, iTWire suggests that readers not attempt to contact the bank - they already know there's a major problem and they're working as hard and quickly as they can to fix it.

In addition, any Commbank customer able to withdraw cash from a 'foreign bank' ATM should expect to be reimbursed the transaction fee by presenting the machine docket at a branch.  This has not been confirmed by the bank, but has occurred every other time (in this writer's memory) that such a problem has happened with any bank.

Comment and an update is being sought from the bank.

 

Update: at around 10:20pm, the bank reported on their web site, "NetBank, ATM and EFTPOS services have been restored.

"Customers may still be experiencing issues accessing our contact centres and phone banking.

"We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

Clearly the cause is not yet known.  We await an update from the bank.