Ulster Bank Systems are down part 2 *READ* First post

Giblet

If the configuration / scripts for each job and the overall batch was lost, corrupted and not backed up, they might never get it back in working order. It would probably be a huge list of items which are run in specific order which link with each other and have tons of magic flags set within the system for auditing and pumping data into the next job. Recreating this would be very difficult to near impossible if they hadn't a current backup.

Pataman

For some reason my bankline password has been deleted. I had to apply for a new one??

d9oiu2wk07blr5

NuMarvel wrote: »

I already wrote a formal complaint to the bank so we'll see what that gets. And I emailed the Central Bank this morning asking them what legal and punitive options, if any, are open to them and when would they start exercising those options.

I would also suggest that people start emailing business representative organisations to let them know how your lack of accessible funds is affecting their business. For example, my rent payment is delayed and while my landlord is okay with that (so far) I've emailed the landlord's association to remind them that their members could be affected. If you're holding off on booking a holiday, let the Irish Travel Agents Association know. If you're cutting back on day to day spending until you can be sure your balance is correct, let organisations like ISME know.

Well, I am putting them on notice that I want my lodgements, DD and an updated balance on my a/c provided within a certain timeframe....otherwise they can expect a complaint to the financial regulator quoting the relevant sections of the consumer protection code which they are in flagrant breach of...and I will also be heading to the financial services ombudman .

filmbuffboy

at this stage they really are going to have to provide some sort of compensation to their customers, arent they?

or am i being extremely naive/unrealistic?

danois

Who would I complain to is it the Financial ombudsman? I have a form printed off and ready to go but is that who I complain to or is there someone else I need to complain to first?

tunedout

The saying of this incident/thread is definitely "heads should roll". I never heard this saying until this saga and this thread, now I've never read the same saying so many times in the matter of a week or two.

NuMarvel

danois wrote: »

Who would I complain to is it the Financial ombudsman? I have a form printed off and ready to go but is that who I complain to or is there someone else I need to complain to first?

You need to make your complaint to Ulster Bank in the first instance and if they don't resolve satisfactorily resolve the matter, you can then refer it to the Ombudsman.

If you want to highlight the breach in the Central Bank's Consumer Protection Code (as referred to by whattow), then you should also contact the Central Bank in their role as regulator of financial services.

wonski

filmbuffboy wrote: »

at this stage they really are going to have to provide some sort of compensation to their customers, arent they?

or am i being extremely naive/unrealistic?

Well - they will have to refund charges, but don't think they will compensate more than necessary. And any compensation would have to be asked for by customer. No chance they will lodge money into customer accounts as a goodwill gesture - too many people affected...

Wouldn't mind them offering existing customer some free overdraft/interest free credit card offer after it all ends. For business customers some charges waived for few months to keep them and prove it is worth to stay...
We will see. At this moment i just want them to get it sorted, and put my account back in order.

Domhnall66

filmbuffboy wrote: »

at this stage they really are going to have to provide some sort of compensation to their customers, arent they?

or am i being extremely naive/unrealistic?

I don't think it is naive exactly, they themselves said at some point they were examining this as a possible option.

What I think may be unrealistic is that it will amount to anything decent. For example, lets go with their figures for a moment: 100,000 affected in the R.O.I.
So they offer each of those 100 euro, thats 100 * 100,000 = 10,000,000 euro (plus whatever it cost to dispense). I don't know about you but I've been to the bank 3 times and will have to go at least 1 more time @about 1.5hrs a time if you include travel to and fro. Factor in petrol and parking costs and my time itself and 100 euro would look much closer to "breaking even" as opposed to "compensation"....so 10mil would get them probably more bad will then it would make the tsunami of complaints die down.

Whats decent then? 200 euro for everyone? Sure, but clearly that doubles the costs to UB. 500? etc. etc.

I reckon they'll go for "blink and you miss it", risible compo offers. "U First" account holders who pay charges for current ac banking will have the charges waived, perhaps for the quarter, perhaps longer. This has the advantage that they can kick the can down the road in terms of the loss to them since it comes from future revenue, not existing cash. Or they'll agree to reimburse people for their personal time up to some inadequate limit in addition to the stuff they've said they will already refund such as insufficient credit DD/SO failures etc.
Or they could offer us .25% better deposit rates, the list is quite endless but I fear one thing is virtually certain, if they do decide to offer something (by no means definite), none of us will be out celebrating on it, unless it is at the "two litre of cider in the back field" level of partying....


One thing I am interested in is the level of redress one might have available via the small claims court or similar; but again no-one is going on vacation out of that process, even if the claim could be/was successful, it only covers up to quite a small amount (used to be 1000 euros, not sure if that is still current) and I believe it is reasonably rare for damages to be awarded, as opposed to recompense for costs incurred on the winning party by the losing one.

JABS

"The Bankline monthly billing for JUNE 2012 has been calculated.You can view a copy of the Billing notification via View Notification on this service"

Theres a surprise

bruchan1980

Today it is a week and four days since my pay should have been transferred to my account. The pay has been transferred from my employers (Department of Education & Science - as I am a teacher) but has not arrived in my account.
I accept that there has been a 'technical difficulty' but I have a severe problem with the extended period it is taking to fix this problem.
I believe a number of serious questions need to be answered by UB:
- Where exactly is the money that has already been transferred from various sources?
- If these funds are in UB's 'holding accounts' they will be accumulating interest. UB should not be allowed to profit from these funds, so will any profits gained be passed directly on to the customers who have been inconvenienced as a form of compensation?
- No specific timeframe is forthcoming for the correction of the problem, I as a teacher am due to receive my salary again this Thursday, will this again be held up by UB?
- Will government step in and force UB to fix this sooner rather than later?
- What assurances can UB offer that this will not happen again?

wonski

Domhnall66 wrote: »

I don't think it is naive exactly, they themselves said at some point they were examining this as a possible option.

What I think may be unrealistic is that it will amount to anything decent. For example, lets go with their figures for a moment: 100,000 affected in the R.O.I.
So they offer each of those 100 euro, thats 100 * 100,000 = 10,000,000 euro (plus whatever it cost to dispense). I don't know about you but I've been to the bank 3 times and will have to go at least 1 more time @about 1.5hrs a time if you include travel to and fro. Factor in petrol and parking costs and my time itself and 100 euro would look much closer to "breaking even" as opposed to "compensation"....so 10mil would get them probably more bad will then it would make the tsunami of complaints die down.

Whats decent then? 200 euro for everyone? Sure, but clearly that doubles the costs to UB. 500? etc. etc.

I reckon they'll go for "blink and you miss it", risible compo offers. "U First" account holders who pay charges for current ac banking will have the charges waived, perhaps for the quarter, perhaps longer. This has the advantage that they can kick the can down the road in terms of the loss to them since it comes from future revenue, not existing cash. Or they'll agree to reimburse people for their personal time up to some inadequate limit in addition to the stuff they've said they will already refund such as insufficient credit DD/SO failures etc.
Or they could offer us .25% better deposit rates, the list is quite endless but I fear one thing is virtually certain, if they do decide to offer something (by no means definite), none of us will be out celebrating on it, unless it is at the "two litre of cider in the back field" level of partying....


One thing I am interested in is the level of redress one might have available via the small claims court or similar; but again no-one is going on vacation out of that process, even if the claim could be/was successful, it only covers up to quite a small amount (used to be 1000 euros, not sure if that is still current) and I believe it is reasonably rare for damages to be awarded, as opposed to recompense for costs incurred on the winning party by the losing one.

Let's be honest - most of users here are very annoyed at UB at this moment, but most do OK for now. The branches are there to go in and ask about money that are due to us, and that is probably the very reason they give the money out without much hassle. If anyone suffered in any way, he can write a letter outlining costs etc. But i, and most of people here, wouldn't ask for money back for 1E parking charge, or 1E petrol cost.
I know there may be different cases, but as long as they offer you what you ask for during the fiasco, they are covered...

They also would not want to send a message that they are going to spend millions in compensations because some people had to take hour off from work, or drive 10 miles to the nearest branch. All deposits/savings accounts would be at risk...

booth70

I still can't believe that someone who was due to be paid on the 27th has had their salary come through when there are people who were due to be paid on the 21st who haven't seen anything come through!!:mad:

This goes against everything the fceking liars have been saying about clearing a backlog and working 'chronologically' thro all the transactions

d9oiu2wk07blr5

danois wrote: »

Who would I complain to is it the Financial ombudsman? I have a form printed off and ready to go but is that who I complain to or is there someone else I need to complain to first?

You have to go to UB first of....and the address is the Customer Relations Unit, Ulster Bank HQ Georges Quay Dublin 2....stating what the problem is, and what you want them to do to fully resolve the matter and in what timeframe. I might also help to point out that you are aware of the relevant sections of the consumer protection code.

If the matter is not fully resolved within that timeframe you can go to the Regulator and Ombudsman.

Ps. I am also going to address this from the point of Data Protection in that India is not on the approved EU lived providing for an adequate level of protection under D

swampy353

bruchan1980 wrote: »

Today it is a week and four days since my pay should have been transferred to my account. The pay has been transferred from my employers (Department of Education & Science - as I am a teacher) but has not arrived in my account.
I accept that there has been a 'technical difficulty' but I have a severe problem with the extended period it is taking to fix this problem.
I believe a number of serious questions need to be answered by UB:
- Where exactly is the money that has already been transferred from various sources?
- If these funds are in UB's 'holding accounts' they will be accumulating interest. UB should not be allowed to profit from these funds, so will any profits gained be passed directly on to the customers who have been inconvenienced as a form of compensation?
- No specific timeframe is forthcoming for the correction of the problem, I as a teacher am due to receive my salary again this Thursday, will this again be held up by UB?
- Will government step in and force UB to fix this sooner rather than later?
- What assurances can UB offer that this will not happen again?

- Floating in the ether, it is probably with UB but they dont know that and until they get a handle on the back log they wont be able to reconcile it
- Banks generally dont earn interest on deposits, they earn money by charging a higher rate on loans then on deposits and the difference is profit (in theory anyway)
- Wouldn't hold my breath for your salary on Thursday.
- Government intervention isnt going to fix it any quicker, if they had stepped in in the first place, we may have been made higher priority, but at this point they are now dealing with UB systems
- the only assurance is that something like this is very rare, as mentioned before they may use this situation to iron clad their systems, but as with anything with human input, it is not infallible. The same could happen to any system if the same errors are made

JABS

booth70 wrote: »

I still can't believe that someone who was due to be paid on the 27th has had their salary come through when there are people who were due to be paid on the 21st who haven't seen anything come through!!:mad:

This goes against everything the fceking liars have been saying about clearing a backlog and working 'chronologically' thro all the transactions

Perhaps and its a big perhaps. Perhaps that guy who got paid from the 27th was paid by a same day transfer from his employer. Didnt someone say 1000 posts ago that UB were processing these free of charge???

swampy353

JABS wrote: »

Perhaps and its a big perhaps. Perhaps that guy who got paid from the 27th was paid by a same day transfer from his employer. Didnt someone say 1000 posts ago that UB were processing these free of charge???

Yeah read that too, they waived the €18 fee

swampy353

Reminder to all, there is a poll running here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2056688895
Lets see how many people have actually received their money

filmbuffboy

Domhnall66 wrote: »

I don't think it is naive exactly, they themselves said at some point they were examining this as a possible option.

What I think may be unrealistic is that it will amount to anything decent. For example, lets go with their figures for a moment: 100,000 affected in the R.O.I.
So they offer each of those 100 euro, thats 100 * 100,000 = 10,000,000 euro (plus whatever it cost to dispense). I don't know about you but I've been to the bank 3 times and will have to go at least 1 more time @about 1.5hrs a time if you include travel to and fro. Factor in petrol and parking costs and my time itself and 100 euro would look much closer to "breaking even" as opposed to "compensation"....so 10mil would get them probably more bad will then it would make the tsunami of complaints die down.

Whats decent then? 200 euro for everyone? Sure, but clearly that doubles the costs to UB. 500? etc. etc.

I reckon they'll go for "blink and you miss it", risible compo offers. "U First" account holders who pay charges for current ac banking will have the charges waived, perhaps for the quarter, perhaps longer. This has the advantage that they can kick the can down the road in terms of the loss to them since it comes from future revenue, not existing cash. Or they'll agree to reimburse people for their personal time up to some inadequate limit in addition to the stuff they've said they will already refund such as insufficient credit DD/SO failures etc.
Or they could offer us .25% better deposit rates, the list is quite endless but I fear one thing is virtually certain, if they do decide to offer something (by no means definite), none of us will be out celebrating on it, unless it is at the "two litre of cider in the back field" level of partying....


One thing I am interested in is the level of redress one might have available via the small claims court or similar; but again no-one is going on vacation out of that process, even if the claim could be/was successful, it only covers up to quite a small amount (used to be 1000 euros, not sure if that is still current) and I believe it is reasonably rare for damages to be awarded, as opposed to recompense for costs incurred on the winning party by the losing one.

I honestly dont see UB reversing unpaid charges, overlimit fees, interest etc as 'compensation'. given the circumstances, that would be only right.

for me at least, theyll have to go a step further than that.

mabye make some sort of commitment to keep free day to day banking for a number of years?? perhaps increase the rate of interest savings accounts benefit from?

who knows?

but at this stage, they are definately going to have to make some sort of goodwill gesture for me to stay at least. i cant speak for anyone else, but simply reversing overlimit charges etc which were caused by them messing up in the first place is NOT in my eyes 'compensation'

outsourced_ire

Got paid today but only because my employer put through a Same Day Transfer. I'll be refunding the original transfer if it ever comes through!

Berty

People are talking about Complaining to Ulster Bank.

I personally think it's too early to complain because by the time they get, process and consider responding to your complaint it has either gone on longer, had changes occur in the meantime, got worse or fixed itself.

I WILL be making a formal complaint to UB and leaning towards a "Final Response letter" and then a complaint to the FSO.

We'll see what comes from that BECAUSE recently I complained to UB about procedural errors in getting a credit card. They made changes to the process and gave me €149 compensation. That was about a week before this debacle so I can't imagine getting €149 now as the pot is truly going to be dry.

mathie

filmbuffboy wrote: »

I honestly dont see UB reversing unpaid charges, overlimit fees, interest etc as 'compensation'. given the circumstances, that would be only right.

for me at least, theyll have to go a step further than that.

mabye make some sort of commitment to keep free day to day banking for a number of years?? perhaps increase the rate of interest savings accounts benefit from?

who knows?

but at this stage, they are definately going to have to make some sort of goodwill gesture for me to stay at least. i cant speak for anyone else, but simply reversing overlimit charges etc which were caused by them messing up in the first place is NOT in my eyes 'compensation'

No incentive would make me stay.

They have proved themselves to be incompetent.

I cannot trust them with my money.

PaulC86

mathie wrote: »

No incentive would make me stay.

They have proved themselves to be incompetent.

I cannot trust them with my money.

I second that. Already contacted another bank. I'm gone!

filmbuffboy

mathie wrote: »

No incentive would make me stay.

They have proved themselves to be incompetent.

I cannot trust them with my money.

i completely see where youre coming from.

and to be honest, if it goes on much further then ill be joining the ranks of those leaving.

but there arent exactly a mass of options as to where to go...

BOI, PTSB, AIB all have their customers jumping through hoops to get free banking.

but yeah, if this debacle goes on much longer than ill be leaving too. time will tell.

its gonna be really interesting to see the final figure of those who do end up leaving though.

d9oiu2wk07blr5

filmbuffboy wrote: »

I honestly dont see UB reversing unpaid charges, overlimit fees, interest etc as 'compensation'. given the circumstances, that would be only right.

for me at least, theyll have to go a step further than that.

mabye make some sort of commitment to keep free day to day banking for a number of years?? perhaps increase the rate of interest savings accounts benefit from?

who knows?

but at this stage, they are definately going to have to make some sort of goodwill gesture for me to stay at least. i cant speak for anyone else, but simply reversing overlimit charges etc which were caused by them messing up in the first place is NOT in my eyes 'compensation'

They could double the amount that was suppose to be credited to bank a/c by way of visa debit payments to business, salaries and sw payments etc...and forgo any interest and charges on overdrafts, unpaid DD's etc.

LEIN

filmbuffboy wrote: »

BOI, PTSB, AIB all have their customers jumping through hoops to get free banking.

Ptsb have the most attainable targets and that's where I will be going.

mathie

filmbuffboy wrote: »

ts gonna be really interesting to see the final figure of those who do end up leaving though.

UB will be able to tell us.
This Wednesday.
This Friday.
Next week sometime.

filmbuffboy

Owen Ashy Numismatist wrote: »

They could double the amount that was suppose to be credited to bank a/c by way of visa debit payments to business, salaries and sw payments etc...and forgo any interest and charges on overdrafts, unpaid DD's etc.

if they doubled every payment that is due to go into every account that would cost them in the tens of millions. that wont happen.

and foregoing interest and charges due to this debacle is NOT compensation. they caused the mess in the first place, and should rightly clean up the mess.

if they offer cmpensation of some kind itll most likely be far more meagre than gift cash lodgements

Capri

mathie wrote: »

UB will be able to tell us.
This Wednesday.
This Friday.
Next week sometime.

Last I heard they actually said they WEREN'T going to forecast any more resolution dates - ie, the problem is getting on top of us ??? :eek:

The majority of people put too much trust in computers / technology - while it IS great when it works , when it goes wrong it could wipe you and your life off the planet :P

loconnor1001

I partially jumped ship today. Reluctantly opened up an account at PTSB and that is where my wages will be headed next week. Haven't decided whether or not to transfer all my DD/SOs over or not when this mess is sorted, but I definitely won't have any more of my money floating around in never never land.