BoI Visa Debit not working

wjj

Hi,

My payment on Amazon using my BoI visa debit card was declined so I called 365 and was told that there is a problem across the board and they were working on it as top priority but that there is no time frame for a fix. I asked if there was somewhere I could track progress and was basically told no. I suggested twitter and it was like they'd never even thought informing customers of such an event had ever even crossed their mind. 

Maybe you can update?

Kopparberg Strawberry and Lime

was wondering what was going on for the last 2 days with my visa debit,

many different outlets declined on chip and pin verification !

I was able to get withdraw money from an ATM but when i tried the 0818365365 number it wouldn't ring, same as the other number !

would've been nice if BOI did notify us in some way rather than finding out at horrible times !

Bank of Ireland: Tara

Hi All,

Thanks for your posts.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused yesterday. We can assure you all our cards are processing normally.

Thanks
Tara

Irish Steve

Tara,

That's a very short and not particularly informative response to an issue that has clearly had major implications for a significant number of customers. I had a card refused at a suppliers, and that to me is an unacceptable scenario, if for no other reason than that it gives the supplier a bad impression of me as a customer, and to add insult to injury, I knew that there was no problem with the value of the transaction compared to the balance of the account, as I had specifically checked earlier in the day to ensure that there was no issues.

Fortunately, I was able to pay for the items with an alternative account, but if I had been unable to collect the items, the time and cost of having to return when the issue with the payment system was resolved would have been considerable, and that is without taking the lost time info consideration.

I made inquiries at the branch earlier today, and their response was equally vague, the counter staff had not been informed that there had been any issues with the transaction processing systems, and it seems that the attitude of the entire BOI group was that there had been a minor issue that wasn't particularly serious, so most people had not been even informed of the issue, let alone briefed on what had actually gone wrong.

Well, I am sorry to say that as far as I am concerned, a failure of the on line transaction processing system that results in customers having transactions declined is a fundamental issue that in most organisations would be a reason for heads to roll, the primary purpose of a bank is to provide transaction processing, which is increasingly an on line real time process that is the core of the operation, and ANY failure of that system is NOT a minor inconvenience, it is a fundamental failure of the organisation to adequately and effectively manage the systems that provide their service to the clients, and to be dismissive of such a failure is an indication of a major culture and attitude problem that has become the norm within Bank of Ireland.

To add insult to injury, it was not possible to get any information from the support services, as the number was not even accessible, which tells me that a significant number of people were attempting to contact Customer Services, with the technology available to the BOI group, it should be very easy now to have a facility to play a recorded message to users that would at least make it clear that the support organisation is aware of a major system failure, and that it is being worked on.

Customer Service is about keeping the customer informed, especially when things go wrong, and providing information about possible options to get around the problem. That was missing yesterday, and for some customers, the failure of the system would have had significant consequences. That fact seems to be of little regard to BOI. which is worrying in the extreme, given how important it is for on line processing to work 24/7.

I would like to hope that someone somewhere within the BOI management structure is looking very urgently at what went wrong yesterday, with a view to ensuring that appropriate changes are made to prevent a recurrence 

regards

Steve

Bank of Ireland: Paula C

Hi Irish Steve,

Thanks for taking the time to post,

We apologies for any inconvenience that our customers may have experienced on Monday, please rest assure that all our cards are operating as normal.

We will certainly flag the feedback mentioned here to our support team for review.

Thanks,
Paula C

wjj

+1 for everything Steve said, hadn't had the time before now to get back to this. 

All systems fail every now and again. The real problem with what happened the other day was a complete failure of communication. In these days of instant communication it amazes me that to find out why our cards were declined we have to ring up a number, go through 10 options to speak to an agent who's trying to apologize and get you off the phone as quick as possible so they can apologize to the next confused and disgruntled customer. Whether it's a message on your website, a tweet, a post on this forum or an announcement to the news agencies, all that's really needed is some form of communication to say we're having a problem, we're working on it and we'll let you know as soon as we've fixed it. Instead I had card declined then got told explicitly that, oh yeah, there's a problem, we've no idea how long it will be before it's fixed and there's no where I can watch to find out when it will work again.   

Trying to fix the problem in the background and hope no one notices or kicks up a fuss is just not acceptable.

It's easy to apologize for the inconvenience but it's important the real inconvenience is not knowing what's going on. Have a simple system in place for proactively communicating with customers and I can guarantee it would generate some real good will among customers rather than begrudging the company because they've no better choice. Would probably save a lot of stress and money for the bank too.

No need to copy and paste the response, I'll assume you thank me for the post, I know the cards are working now and maybe the feedback will go somewhere that it will be heard and some effort is made to improve the service. I'll believe it next time something happens and I find out before it affects me.

Bank of Ireland: Alison

Hi wjj

Totally understand your frustrations. Thanks for taking the time to give us your feedback and your concerns will certainly be directed to the relevant department.


Thanks again
Alison