BOI having ATM network issues. Don't be left stuck this evening. - Mod note post #1

FreudianSlippers

ch750536 wrote: »

Sounds like a plan to me...

You do realise we'd still owe the IMF for that money and we'd just need to borrow more, right?

ch750536

dr.bollocko wrote: »

Internationally reported as a fault with the IT.
Money there to capitalise and guarantee the banks.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/item/19494-bank-of-ireland-computer/

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/1207/breaking35.html

Anyone any source at all which suggests that this is the beginning of the fall of the banks that is any way reputable?
Suggest a run on the banks all you want. Use your twitter or facebook or wherever. Just don't do so here as boards is not interested in allying itself in such a manner and furthermore not interested in spreading misinformation.
This is not a request for further input / discussion. This is a note to say that talk of promoting a run on the banks will not be entertained here.
PM For details.

dr.bollocko wrote: »

GET YOUR MONEY OUT NNAAAOOW!
ITS ALL COMING DOWN AROUND US!!!

Ban thyself Banster!

infamous

Dr Bollocko, you are so full of your own self importance. Maybe it is a bank run maybe it isnt but this is a discussion forum and people are supposed to be allowed express their opinions. You have come up with solid info that it is totally a technical issue someone else maybe able to refute this evidence with their info-this is the way discussion forums work or should work it is not a dictatorship. We all know that a bank run would have disasterous affects but by closing your eyes to the possibility of one wont make it go away.

ch750536

OisinT wrote: »

You do realise we'd still owe the IMF for that money and we'd just need to borrow more, right?

But after the hooker pays the hotel I get my cash back right?

ch750536

On a serious note I have worked for many banks, writing very specific software on a per client basis, albeit in the UK so slightly different. I would have something like this happening without a co-ordinated attack or solar flare or something as incredibly low chance of occurrence.

Name the last time this happened?
Name the last time there was a proposed run on the banks by a worldwide known person?

Coincidence? My opinion, not very likely.

dr.bollocko

infamous wrote: »

Dr Bollocko, you are so full of your own self importance. Maybe it is a bank run maybe it isnt but this is a discussion forum and people are supposed to be allowed express their opinions. You have come up with solid info that it is totally a technical issue someone else maybe able to refute this evidence with their info-this is the way discussion forums work or should work it is not a dictatorship. We all know that a bank run would have disasterous affects but by closing your eyes to the possibility of one wont make it go away.

I can see you're angry. But the point is this. Through numerous searches of all news sites available to me there has been no indication anywhere that this is anything other than an IT Fault. I recognise that there is an interesting overlap between Mr. Cantona's calls for a bank run and this IT fault. However in the absence of any evidence from reputable sources to back it up this is nothing but rabble rousing of the sort we've tried to avoid spilling over onto boards. Conspiracy theories are for the relevant forum.

misterdeeds

Monty Burnz wrote: »

I'm hearing that AIB cards will still work in BOI machines.

but A I B have no money !

Monty Burnz

dr.bollocko wrote: »

This is not a request for further input / discussion. This is a note to say that talk of promoting a run on the banks will not be entertained here.
PM For details.

I'm not promoting a run on the banks. I will note however that there has been an ongoing draining away of commercial deposits in Irish banks this year.

The outflow of funds from Irish banks has been so great that AIB has admitted to suffering €13bn of outflows this year, 15% of its deposit base, while Bank of Ireland has lost around 12% its depositors.
Cash outflows have accelerated in recent days. The withdrawals are largely caused by companies that are withdrawing funds as a result of a cut to the banks' credit ratings.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/28/irish-bailout-includes-immediate-10bn

Monty Burnz

dr.bollocko wrote: »

I can see you're angry. But the point is this. Through numerous searches of all news sites available to me there has been no indication anywhere that this is anything other than an IT Fault.

It almost certainly is an IT fault. But if it wasn't, what would you expect them to say to buy time? People have been lied to so much by the banks and the government that they would be fools to swallow anything they are told now.

ch750536

dr.bollocko wrote: »

I can see you're angry. But the point is this. Through numerous searches of all news sites available to me there has been no indication anywhere that this is anything other than an IT Fault. I recognise that there is an interesting overlap between Mr. Cantona's calls for a bank run and this IT fault. However in the absence of any evidence from reputable sources to back it up this is nothing but rabble rousing of the sort we've tried to avoid spilling over onto boards. Conspiracy theories are for the relevant forum.

Do you seriously believe for one minute that the banks would make a statement reading

'Today we decided to withold all cash just in case what Mr Cantona said had any impact at all'

C'mon. Its not like there have been no examples of banks not telling the truth lately.

FreudianSlippers

ch750536 wrote: »

But after the hooker pays the hotel I get my cash back right?

nope.

FreudianSlippers

Monty Burnz wrote: »

It almost certainly is an IT fault. But if it wasn't, what would you expect them to say to buy time? People have been lied to so much by the banks and the government that they would be fools to swallow anything they are told now.

If they were gone under, employees would have been turned away at the doors this morning and the banks would be closed.

Think about it!

Cavehill Red

Big coincidence that they suffer an unprecedented IT breakdown, including all support systems and online, on the very day of the international bank run campaign.

A pal of mine used to work in the ATM IT system for another Irish bank. It's highly unusual for every single system to go down at once. One might say, almost unbelievably unusual.

I do hope they're not lying and can resolve their IT difficulty ASAP.

dr.bollocko

ch750536 wrote: »

Do you seriously believe for one minute that the banks would make a statement reading

'Today we decided to withold all cash just in case what Mr Cantona said had any impact at all'

C'mon. Its not like there have been no examples of banks not telling the truth lately.

I know.
However suggesting the bank is doomed or going to fail and to run there now and withdraw all your money right now, as some posters have, is unnecessarily reactionary and crosses the line to conspiracy stuff which is simply unfounded.

ch750536

OisinT wrote: »

If they were gone under, employees would have been turned away at the doors this morning and the banks would be closed.

Think about it!

Na, not what we are saying, were stating that the cost of cash on a day like today is too great for them, to hold liquid assets. They lose money on cash held physically.

Also note the loss of commercial cash, all you would need is for King Eric to have an impact on 5% of deposits to force the banks into a situation where they have run out of cash, this can start a run very easily.

Monty Burnz

dr.bollocko wrote: »

I know.
However suggesting the bank is doomed or going to fail and to run there now and withdraw all your money right now, as some posters have, is unnecessarily reactionary and crosses the line to conspiracy stuff which is simply unfounded.

Dead right. If you are taking out your money when everyone is fearing a bank run, then it's already too late.

marco_polo

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ggm04Pk0OTEuVRWL1m0rRZJh_XTA?docId=CNG.14a4e293d01a51c1733429bdd67c8378.d31

Still not sure how millions of French people not withdrawing their money from their banks could have had a critical impact on BOI.

ch750536

marco_polo wrote: »

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ggm04Pk0OTEuVRWL1m0rRZJh_XTA?docId=CNG.14a4e293d01a51c1733429bdd67c8378.d31

Still not sure how millions of French people not withdrawing their money from their banks could have had a critical impact on BOI.

Because that is in hindsight. If people were following his words it is too late, they needed to act before it was too late.

Cavehill Red

marco_polo wrote: »

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ggm04Pk0OTEuVRWL1m0rRZJh_XTA?docId=CNG.14a4e293d01a51c1733429bdd67c8378.d31

Still not sure how millions of French people not withdrawing their money from their banks could have had a critical impact on BOI.

True. What I find interesting about that report is the fact that the banks issued denials. They're hardly going to say, yeah, we're losing deposits. People should stop.

If there was a bank run, you're not going to hear about it on the news until it's too late.

dr.bollocko

marco_polo wrote: »

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ggm04Pk0OTEuVRWL1m0rRZJh_XTA?docId=CNG.14a4e293d01a51c1733429bdd67c8378.d31

Still not sure how millions of French people not withdrawing their money from their banks could have had a critical impact on BOI.

Higher proportion of Manchester Utd. fans?

Kensington

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Big coincidence that they suffer an unprecedented IT breakdown, including all support systems and online, on the very day of the international bank run campaign.

A pal of mine used to work in the ATM IT system for another Irish bank. It's highly unusual for every single system to go down at once. One might say, almost unbelievably unusual.

I do hope they're not lying and can resolve their IT difficulty ASAP.

Is it actually that uncommon? My days of retail would be filled with terror knowing the AIB card authorisations system would crash, without fail, during the christmas rush. Card authorisations would go down, then their atm's would go down due to the extra demand from people unable to use their cards and then their manual payment processing would go down. It'd take hours before they came back online fully.

Monty Burnz

Kensington wrote: »

Is it actually that uncommon? My days of retail would be filled with terror knowing the AIB card authorisations system would crash, without fail, during the christmas rush. Card authorisations would go down, then their atm's would go down due to the extra demand from people unable to use their cards and then their manual payment processing would go down. It'd take hours before they came back online fully.

I can never remember that happening in the last 20 years. Not to say that it hasn't, but I certainly never noticed it.

dr.bollocko

Cavehill Red wrote: »

True. What I find interesting about that report is the fact that the banks issued denials. They're hardly going to say, yeah, we're losing deposits. People should stop.

If there was a bank run, you're not going to hear about it on the news until it's too late.

We've made it to the wall street journal.
"There is no unusual behavior at bank ATMs," the spokeswoman said. "All ATMs are operating normally but with a restricted cash service for Bank of Ireland cardholders," the bank said. "Some customers may be unable to conduct point-of-sale transactions but Bank of Ireland credit card transactions are unaffected."
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20101207-708963.html
Transactions restricted due to issue checking balances.

marco_polo

ch750536 wrote: »

Because that is in hindsight. If people were following his words it is too late, they needed to act before it was too late.

It would have made a bit more sense to shut it down their systems before opening for business then, rather than late morning .

Cavehill Red

Kensington wrote: »

Is it actually that uncommon? My days of retail would be filled with terror knowing the AIB card authorisations system would crash, without fail, during the christmas rush. Card authorisations would go down, then their atm's would go down due to the extra demand from people unable to use their cards and then their manual payment processing would go down. It'd take hours before they came back online fully.

A single system, especially the remote card authorisations system, can go down regularly. Card authorisations especially, as they are reliant on phone lines too. They can go down in one location and not next door.
For a systematic IT snafu to happen though, is to my knowledge pretty much unprecedented.

FreudianSlippers

marco_polo wrote: »

It would have made a bit more sense to shut it down their systems before opening for business then, rather than late morning .

Maybe they didn't notice at first until ppl started getting free cash

Ziycon

DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying it is, just my observations of the media coverage.

From that press releases and what we know on what has happened there are similarities as to what happens in big organisations when they are hacked, they will pull the plug on all mission critical systems until they can say they are 100% safe. It doesn't matter how much redundancy they have it will all be taken offline.(Which I wouldn't think is likely for a bank in this day and age)

The other possibility is that due to the legacy systems that banks have there could be a simple issue with the middle-ware failing which would cause havoc with all 'new' systems and retrieving account information/balances.

Or it could be nether...;)

marco_polo

OisinT wrote: »

Maybe they didn't notice at first until ppl started getting free cash

Pity it only happened after I had tranferred my rent

marco_polo

Ziycon wrote: »

DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying it is, just my observations of the media coverage.

From that press releases and what we know on what has happened there are similarities as to what happens in big organisations when they are hacked, they will pull the plug on all mission critical systems until they can say they are 100% safe. It doesn't matter how much redundancy they have it will all be taken offline.(Which I wouldn't think is likely for a bank in this day and age)

The other possibility is that due to the legacy systems that banks have there could be a simple issue with the middle-ware failing which would cause havoc with all 'new' systems and retrieving account information/balances.

Or it could be nether...;)

Two sounds more likely, and the delay is probably because they are trying to dig up and trying to reanimate the corpses of long dead Mainframe and/or Cobol programmers. :pac:

Justin Collery

It's probably just a computer fault, but I would be very, very interested to know what type of fault it was.

The first items to go down were the branch network, ATM's and personal online banking. This was followed a couple of hours later by the business banking section. I know this as I was checking both.

Many moons ago I worked in the BoI ITD. The mainframe at the time as I remember stored personal and business customers side by side. Each customer type was flagged appropriately, but both were store on the same machine.

A failure that effects just personal customers first, and then business customers could happen. You could have an update to the mainframe software that effects only personal customers. Something happens during this update that invalidates the data for personal customers (or at least makes it look invalid), business customers continue as before without problems. In order to fix the problem, the entire system needs to be taken down to roll back any changes, meaning after the fault has been identified, all customers, including business customers are effected.

I'm guessing something like I described is what has happened. Wouldn't like to be the guy or gal in charge of upgrading the production system, or the testing before production, or the update, I'd say some choice language is being used.

I wouldn't get too worked up about it. One banks IT failing, thats just unlucky. Now two banks IT failing at the same time, well, that would be just careless

FreudianSlippers

jcollery wrote: »

It's probably just a computer fault, but I would be very, very interested to know what type of fault it was.

mad hax lolz

soden12

It could of course be another example of incompetence from the bank.

Monty Burnz

Have they fixed this yet?

CabinteelyGuy

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Have they fixed this yet?

From what i know not till tomorrow.

AnonoBoy

"Well Mr. Bond I expect you're wondering why I shut down the entire ATM system of the Bank of Ireland. Let me explain it to you while this high-powered death laser slowly makes it way towards your crotch......"

K-9

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Have they fixed this yet?

Suppose we'll know if it's a bug or not by tomorrow.

Anyway, plenty of vested interests who'd love a bank run, currency speculators etc.

wobblyknees

Ziycon wrote: »

DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying it is, just my observations of the media coverage.

From that press releases and what we know on what has happened there are similarities as to what happens in big organisations when they are hacked, they will pull the plug on all mission critical systems until they can say they are 100% safe. It doesn't matter how much redundancy they have it will all be taken offline.(Which I wouldn't think is likely for a bank in this day and age)

The other possibility is that due to the legacy systems that banks have there could be a simple issue with the middle-ware failing which would cause havoc with all 'new' systems and retrieving account information/balances.

Or it could be nether...;)

Do you enjoy working for BOI?

Monty Burnz

K-9 wrote: »

Suppose we'll know if it's a bug or not by tomorrow.

Anyway, plenty of vested interests who'd love a bank run, currency speculators etc.

I don't know if we could move the euro to an extent that speculators could profit from, not without them making a HUGE bet on it. And it would be a bet.

Slogger Jogger

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Have they fixed this yet?

365online was back when I tried it a few mins ago.

Cavehill Red

Someone suggested the phone banking system in BoI is now up again? Any confirmation of that?

srsly78

BOI business banking is also offline today wtf?

Novella

Just been in my local shop and their BOI atm is off, as is the one on the main street just up from the shop. One woman was actually shouting at a member of staff at the till, crazy lady.

Canonfan

I heard people were taking money from the ATM with 0 banlance. Something wrong for sure.

Resi12

Someone I know just took out 500 quid! I'm off for a walk

Gamesnash.ie: Pat

Slogger Jogger wrote: »

365online was back when I tried it a few mins ago.

Did you actually log in though ? The main login page is up but it comes up with a "failed to deliver request" error message when actually logging in.

TheSpecialOne

People are withdrawing money they dont have! something is going on!

Slogger Jogger

Gamesnash.ie: Pat wrote: »

Did you actually log in though ? The main login page is up but it comes up with a "failed to deliver request" error message when actually logging in.

Unless it was just temporarily back, but I got my balances etc. Around 5ish I used a hole in the wall and did a laser txn so your bread and butter services still work. Didn't try to withdraw 500 like others though :rolleyes:

Slogger Jogger

TheSpecialOne wrote: »

People are withdrawing money they dont have! something is going on!

Its not like the Bank won't know who they are...

hmmm

TheSpecialOne wrote: »

People are withdrawing money they dont have! something is going on!

What may be happening is that BOI are allowing small withdrawals to be made to a certain limit until their main system comes back online. When the system returns, all those people will be charged healthy overdraft fees if appropriate. Good, because they are gob****es if they think they can get free money.

tbh

Cavehill Red wrote: »

For a systematic IT snafu to happen though, is to my knowledge pretty much unprecedented.

You've clearly never worked in IT, with respect. A complex multilayer system designed and produced by multiple vendors all trying to underbid each other failing on a large scale is the most precedented thing in the world. What did you think snafu stood for? Situation normal, all fckd up. To paint an it failure as something to be suspicious about is hilarious.