Ulster Bank Systems are down READ Mod post #291

jesus_thats_gre · 01-07-2012 6:18pm

themiso wrote: »

to direct debits ... I have DD with vodafone and when I log in to vodafone it says :
Recent Account Payments
Jun 25 €93.00

and current balance (vodafone) : 0

so I guess DD are working

I wouldn't assume too much on that front.

I work in the area of billing in telecoms and there isn't necessarily a live link between the utility company and the bank - generally batch processing.

The utility company will process their direct debits due for a certain bill day in batch. They will assume that all direct debits will be honoured and credit your account.

They will then send the output file for the batch processing to the processing bank for processing.

The bank, a day or two later and after all other banks have processed their output, will return an output file to the utility provider advising which direct debits were not honoured.

The utility company will then process this in batch on their billing system and it likely debit your account in in order to cancel the already applied credit.

So, keep an eye on that account.

jesus_thats_gre · 01-07-2012 6:21pm

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.

You could be talking about millions of records. I have seen it take 4/5 days and that was completely automated.

We aren't talking modern systems here with nice data models. We are talking complex legacy environments.

wonski · 01-07-2012 6:21pm

From Ulster Bank site:

What about my direct debit, will it be paid? We understand that customers are concerned they might get disconnected from a utility or service provider if their account is not paid. We would like to reassure our customers and those of other banks, that in most cases there will not be any impact. For some of our customers there will be a delay in seeing credits and debits on their accounts, but during this delay we will have paid their service provider on their behalf. In all cases we are working with other banks, service providers, insurance and utility companies to make sure that customers will not be without their services, will not be out of pocket and will not have their credit record affected.

end of quote

Now the question is - some people confirmed that their bills have been paid - but is there anyone who received letter/email from suppliers/providers about missed payment? Because they say in most cases there will be no impact, but does it mean that in some cases there will be then?
Thanks.

Berty · 01-07-2012 6:28pm

wonski wrote: »

Now the question is - some people confirmed that their bills have been paid - but is there anyone who received letter/email from suppliers/providers about missed payment? Because they say in most cases there will be no impact, but does it mean that in some cases there will be then?
Thanks.

Yes a DD was rejected by Ulster Bank destined for a loan in the PTSB. It is my 2nd last payment and only now have I defaulted on the loan. Awful to receive such a letter and nothing I can do about it. This was due to be paid on the 22nd and never was even though today I can see a Standing order managed to leave my account on the 22nd.

km79 · 01-07-2012 6:29pm

Direct debit to 3 for phone bill was due on 25th. Checked 3 account and it has been paid. Not reflected on my UB statement. Lots more due out tomorrow ....including UB mortgage. My balance is 0....

Domhnall66 · 01-07-2012 6:31pm

jesus_thats_gre wrote: »

You could be talking about millions of records. I have seen it take 4/5 days and that was completely automated.

We aren't talking modern systems here with nice data models. We are talking complex legacy environments.

Good point. I suppose, yes, I was thinking - in terms of my experience - of a properly managed change (albeit my most recent enterprise-level change experience was also on a mess of legacy systems...A mere 10 years old though, I admit, not 30 or whatever it is.).

So let's go by your timeline, 4-5 days, and say they started with RBS first, then NatWest = 10 days, so another 5 for UB? A pretty horrible outlook for all their customers (inc. me and the missus) and UB itself. Even if our Central Bank and government are toothless old dogs, the market will be rather merciless I feel...in fact I wonder what has been keeping the sharks at bay thus far.

silentbang · 01-07-2012 6:32pm

wonski wrote: »

Now the question is - some people confirmed that their bills have been paid - but is there anyone who received letter/email from suppliers/providers about missed payment? Because they say in most cases there will be no impact, but does it mean that in some cases there will be then?
Thanks.

Hi from my understanding MOST suppliers/providers will give time for payments as soon as they see you are banking with UB or if you ring them and mention 'Ulsterbank' they will have heard about it and will help you out where they can.I think most are doing what they can to facilitate UB customers affected by this ie. some have moved DD payment dates back a few weeks to give people time.
Just say 'Ulsterbank' they all know the situation and that its not your fault.

Domhnall66 · 01-07-2012 6:34pm

km79 wrote: »

Direct debit to 3 for phone bill was due on 25th. Checked 3 account and it has been paid. Not reflected on my UB statement. Lots more due out tomorrow ....including UB mortgage. My balance is 0....

I am in precisely the same boat. In fact 3 have cut off my service now (NB: this was due to me being a naughty boy previously/a dispute with 3, I really can't lay the fundamental cause at the feet of UB, much as I'd like to, however I can't pay my bills if they won't give me my money, no matter how many times I dirtied my bib in the past - it was due on the 22nd) and my UB mortage is due to leave today.

Unlike you though, I am rich, rich do you hear me?! Ha-ha! I have 2.24 euros showing in my balance! Truly in the Land of the Blind the one-eyed man is King!

silentbang · 01-07-2012 6:35pm

Beer Baron wrote: »

Yes a DD was rejected by Ulster Bank destined for a loan in the PTSB. It is my 2nd last payment and only now have I defaulted on the loan. Awful to receive such a letter and nothing I can do about it. This was due to be paid on the 22nd and never was even though today I can see a Standing order managed to leave my account on the 22nd.

But the money was in your account? It was the banks mistake/fault that it wasnt transfered?, surely you can prove it was out of your hands?
From reading through the thread most other banks,plus agencies such as ESB,Eircom etc are being very understanding.

Ryaner · 01-07-2012 6:36pm

Trotter wrote: »

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.

Standing orders from the 25th haven't shown as left on mine.

Domhnall66 wrote: »

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,

Reports of thousands of people going to branches daily url]http://www.independent.ie/national-news/ulster-bank-it-fiasco-heading-into-week-two-3154549.html[/url so easy to believe 10s of thousands per day building up. POS terminals are still running and will be queuing stuff up as long as those businesses can stay open.

Domhnall66 wrote: »

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.

They have to actually restore the salary payments first, and at this point they haven't. Remember there are some large scale payments going out that'd easily blow apart the "its fixed, honest" line they would give. HSE bank with Ulster from the sounds of things.

wonski wrote: »

From Ulster Bank site:
Now the question is - some people confirmed that their bills have been paid - but is there anyone who received letter/email from suppliers/providers about missed payment? Because they say in most cases there will be no impact, but does it mean that in some cases there will be then?
Thanks.

I know of at least one person who has had a DD bounce from a provider.

strandroad · 01-07-2012 6:40pm

Beefy78 wrote: »

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.

I agree on principle, and I hope to avoid it. Nowhere near 100k too. These random amounts appearing in people's accounts make me think about their data integrity though.

Are business accounts affected in the same way, or is it a separate database?

Domhnall66 · 01-07-2012 6:47pm

Ryaner wrote: »

They have to actually restore the salary payments first, and at this point they haven't. Remember there are some large scale payments going out that'd easily blow apart the "its fixed, honest" line they would give. HSE bank with Ulster from the sounds of things.

Very well made - if infinitely depressing - point.

Does anyone know of an instance of someone going down with salary slip/proof of id/blah blah and asking for all their money (less the amounts they have withdrawn in person at the branch)? In my case, because I am paid monthly, this would be in excess of the [atm] daily withdrawl limit, which I heard from branch tellers was their rule of thumb so far....

Berty · 01-07-2012 6:52pm

silentbang wrote: »

But the money was in your account? It was the banks mistake/fault that it wasnt transfered?, surely you can prove it was out of your hands?
From reading through the thread most other banks,plus agencies such as ESB,Eircom etc are being very understanding.

Technically you could argue I was funded enough for the Direct Debit but in reality it didn't leave. I called them up after receiving the letter and uttered "Ulster Bank" and that was the end of it.

Still though it showed that the payment never left my account and PTSB, even though they would be aware I was with UB(by my DD details) still sent me a letter of default threatening "action" If I personally don't resolve the matter. :rolleyes:

jesus_thats_gre · 01-07-2012 6:52pm

Domhnall66 wrote: »

Good point. I suppose, yes, I was thinking - in terms of my experience - of a properly managed change (albeit my most recent enterprise-level change experience was also on a mess of legacy systems...A mere 10 years old though, I admit, not 30 or whatever it is.).

So let's go by your timeline, 4-5 days, and say they started with RBS first, then NatWest = 10 days, so another 5 for UB? A pretty horrible outlook for all their customers (inc. me and the missus) and UB itself. Even if our Central Bank and government are toothless old dogs, the market will be rather merciless I feel...in fact I wonder what has been keeping the sharks at bay thus far.

I wouldn't put too much weight in my example as the only parallel between my experience and this is that they are legacy environments.

I have zero experience in banking and zero inside knowledge on this issue so.

For nerdy reasons though, I can't wait to find out exactly what has happened.

Domhnall66 · 01-07-2012 6:54pm

Beefy78 wrote: »

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.

Why is it a silly idea? It doesn't have to go under your mattress or up in the thatch...withdraw, set up a new account with a different bank, call your creditors to explain and set up new debits, tell your employer your new bank details and let UB sort out its mess? Restoring my money eventually, at some as-yet undetermined date in time, is not a status myself or my family can live with unfortunately.

Because if everyone did it, it would cause a run on the bank? Well I agree, but only if the full cost of honoring the deposit guarantee had not already been factored in as a loss in our national P&L accounts, in which case we have bigger problems than a run on UB....otherwise: to hell with them.

Ryaner · 01-07-2012 7:24pm

Domhnall66 wrote: »

Because if everyone did it, it would cause a run on the bank? Well I agree, but only if the full cost of honoring the deposit guarantee had not already been factored in as a loss in our national P&L accounts, in which case we have bigger problems than a run on UB....otherwise: to hell with them.

The cost of a full run on the banks and payout *would8 bankrupt the country ( ignoring that it is already so:rolleyes: )
It wouldn't be prudent to leave that mount of cash lying around. They could, under normal circumstances, handle one bank going. The bigger problem is how people would react if it got that far. Personally I don't think it would or even could.

The worst possible situation I foresee is they have lost all transactions from the 20/21st. In this worse possible situation they have to ask other banks to resend through their banks and rebuild internal transactions from their shadow database. It takes time but things don't go missing. Everything shows up eventually. There is hints of manual entry going on in places, but mistakes in manual entry are common place and easy to sort. All in all, things will come back and nothing will be lost.

Actually the biggest loser out of this will be the government. This *has* to have a knock on to the economy. How many affected people haven't been spending these last two weeks? How many small businesses are going to go to wall either directly or indirectly over this?

phormium · 01-07-2012 7:28pm

I wonder have they many staff due to start tomorrow inputting the manual transactions, ads running with several recruitment agencies late last week, not mentioning bank name but hardly too difficult to figure out.

freeq · 01-07-2012 7:30pm

mhge wrote: »

I agree on principle, and I hope to avoid it. Nowhere near 100k too. These random amounts appearing in people's accounts make me think about their data integrity though.

Are business accounts affected in the same way, or is it a separate database?

We also have our savings with UB and all of these glitches have affected us massively. We were just about to close the purchase of our new house and unfortunately our mortgage is through Ulster Bank so despite the fact that Solicitors have requested loan funds two weeks ago we were then told there will be delay until systems are fully operational on Friday 29th June (as expected back then). Mortgage offer was due to expire this week so they have rang me and kindly extended it for two more weeks. It goes to show you that they don't really know when their systems are operational again.

We are currently renting so had to talk to the Agent to extend our lease for a week or so extra as we previously gave them a notice we would be out by June 30th. They agreed that we stay until the 10th July but this means we can stay in the apt but have to pay extra rent now which we haven't really prepared for.
If this wasnt enough, I was due my 5 week month salary in my account on Friday but it's nowhere to be seen yet...

DoneDL · 01-07-2012 7:30pm

I have got a horrible feeling that UB may be unable to get the system updated and running successfully.

01-07-2012 7:32pm

Didn't they sort things out in the UK though with Natwest? Why the problem here?

fly_agaric · 01-07-2012 7:39pm

parsi wrote: »

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

The "fat cats" get a big bonus when things are going well because it's all totally down to their genius, leadership, and hard work.

I'm sure they would expect to get a bonus when things are going badly as dealing with all the problems has been such a frightful strain on them!

edit: I'm also a poor UB patsy/customer with money and payments lost in electronic limbo so will definitely be switching paypath to somewhere else before next payday!

filmbuffboy · 01-07-2012 7:43pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Didn't they sort things out in the UK though with Natwest? Why the problem here?

i was thinking the exact same thing. If anything the time it should take to get UB back up and running should have taken less, rather than more time....

silentbang · 01-07-2012 7:50pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Why the problem here?

Probably the same reason why the country is in such a financial mess, bad management of banks, will we ever learn :rolleyes:

strandroad · 01-07-2012 7:59pm

filmbuffboy wrote: »

i was thinking the exact same thing. If anything the time it should take to get UB back up and running should have taken less, rather than more time....

Just guessing, but perhaps NatWest got their software to work and was able to rerun the procedures. From what we can deduct UB is not at this stage yet.

filmbuffboy · 01-07-2012 8:05pm

mhge wrote: »

Just guessing, but perhaps NatWest got their software to work and was able to rerun the procedures. From what we can deduct UB is not at this stage yet.

yeah, but why are they not at this stage yet is the question, seeing as the problem is the same in both institutions?

its almost been two weeks!

silentbang · 01-07-2012 8:14pm

filmbuffboy wrote: »

yeah, but why are they not at this stage yet is the question, seeing as the problem is the same in both institutions?

its almost been two weeks!

Exactly... If its the 1 problem that caused this on the RBS system why then does the same solution not work for all RBS banks?
Are we not all on the same system? Hence the reason we were all effected?
If the problem was the same why is the solution different? or at the very least how can it possibly take longer to sort out a fraction (100000 in Ireland, 7 million in England) of the accounts????

Islander13 · 01-07-2012 8:15pm

Word is that Stephen Hester is finally in Ireland

filmbuffboy · 01-07-2012 8:17pm

Islander13 wrote: »

Word is that Stephen Hester is finally in Ireland

do you have a source for this info?

silentbang · 01-07-2012 8:17pm

Islander13 wrote: »

Word is that Stephen Hester is finally in Ireland

Hopefully he has the spare parts with him

Islander13 · 01-07-2012 8:19pm

Lets just say there was a conference call for UB staff tonight. Not much progress over weekend apparently and staff were informed he was in town. Looks like we could be another week before resolution

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

Comments

Ulster Bank Systems are down READ Mod post #291