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Computer Glitch Leaves Some Australians Without Cash
An anonymous reader writes "National Australia Bank payments to customers were again delayed today after a computer glitch yesterday morning due to a corrupted file in its mainframe computer. Upset consumers are now demanding compensation for any fees for late mortgage and credit card payments, overdrawn accounts or bounced direct debits charged by any institutions as a result of the mess."
Still the safest place until you house burns down
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Maybe some other big banks could copy this computer glitch and wipe out the billions of pounds /dollars /yen / euros / gold pieces that everyone owes each other, we could get back to some kind of normality.
Ide have had the first post, but my ISP payment bounced...
It looks like consumers aren't demanding it so much as the bank is promising it, which is no surprise. Even if Australia doesn't have laws protecting consumers in that sort of event, the bank will do it anyhow because they have to.
As a practical matter all it'll likely take is phone calls/letters to creditors explaining that it was a glitch and no fault of the person involved. As a somewhat related example a friend of mine got hit because of a glitch years ago. The power company double debited his payment. That happened right about when a number of other transactions came which caused some of them to bounce, including his rent check. All the fees from the bank overdrew his account, he had other fees from the people he owed money to, and his landlord notified him he'd be evicted if he didn't pay. Well, the power company made things right and gave him back his money. They also called the relevant parties saying "Sorry, it was our fuckup." Every single one canceled all the fees. Since it wasn't his fault, they didn't fine him. Had they not, the power company said to send them the bills for the fees and they'd reimburse him.
So while this is doubtless a stressful time for those involved, in the end I have to imagine it'll all get worked out. Goes double since this is a major fuckup, and going to be well known.
Something tells me a system administration job just opened up.at a major Australian bank.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
This actually happened on Thursday. Some people are still waiting for their money, with 40,000 or so likely to still be waiting on Monday.
Advanced users are users too!
If you have a payment due on X date, you wait until day X - 1, and something goes wrong and delays you by one day, this is your fault, not your bank's fault.
I disagree entirely. In todays age of electronic payments and daily interest, it's important to pay things ON TIME. Paying early for most people means losing interest elsewhere. I pay on X date, not even X-1. I schedule most of this. Noone pays me 7 days early, the banks certainly don't clear a cheque early on assumption it'll be fine. The NAB appear to be acting very fairly on this matter, which is more than I've seen other banks (CBA) doing when a computer glitch duplicated a debit on my account. I was 50k down on an interest bearing mortgage offset account for a week - they didn't even remotely entertain my request $60 interest it lost me. They don't waste any time when the shoe is on the other foot though so good on NAB.
Only big ligs use sigs.
RTFA
The problem was not that they "left it too late" - the problem was the money that should have been put into their accounts to cover the bills (from paycheques, etc) did not actually make it into the accounts.
If the money that was supposed to go in the account did not actually make it in, then they would not have anything to be able to pay the bills as they became due.
Keep in mind also that many repetitive payments, such as like credit card repayments, are often timed to come out automatically the day after payday - this is not a matter of personal decision, therefore not their fault.
Yes, any responsible adult will have enough in savings to pay bills/mortgage/etc. for *at least* one month. That will be impossible for some adults, but it is what you ought to try to save up at the very least. You should do just fine scraping by like you describe, but I hope you are able to figure out why it's a bad idea before you're too old to do anything about it son.
Yes, many people do live from paycheck to paycheck. You've probably seen them but don't recognise them, they are the people who man the cash registers, cut your hair, keep your office clean, serve you drinks and food, cut your lawn, and take away your garbage.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
and it's normal not to have any money on your accounts and live from payday to payday?
For some people, yes.
Welcome to the real world.
okay, the banks made an error and should compensate... but do people really find it normal not to save any money and be screwed when the tinyest thing goes wrong?
Some people don't earn enough to "save any money". When 90% of your income goes in basic and essential expenses, being able to save even 10% is a luxury not always afforded should any emergency expenses come up.
If you take everything down to the wire to maximize interest, fine, but you are gambling the gains in interest vs the potential loss in terms of fees. If you are ok with that, fine, but then don't cry when you do get hit with fees and lose out. Personally I think the other way is smarter. I keep an amount of money in my non-interest bearing checking account since that is where all my transactions draw from. That way if there is a miscalculation there's no overdraw, no bounced payments, no fees. Likewise I pay things before the drop dead date.
Do I miss out on some interest? Sure, if I messed with funds all the time and tried to keep everything in savings till the last second I'd get a bit more interest. However it wouldn't take much in the way of a fee to negate any of that.
So I think there's some real validity to the GP's statement. Don't take things down to the wire, build in time to make sure if there's a glitch, there's no problem.
Stupid fucking poor people! *shakes fist*
> ...any responsible adult will have enough in savings...
More than 50% of the children in my country will grow up in poverty. That's 50% will grow up beneath the poverty line. 50% will grow up in families that are unable to meet the bills on time. Over here, the cost of living increases at a notably greater rate than the median wage.
Hell, the last time my job got a pay increase was when minimum wage was increased this year. The time before that was two years ago, when minimum wage was increased. You can bet your arse the board members get increases every half hour.
And no, getting an education didn't help one little bit.
You know... you're right, besides you normally don't get any interest on the deposit anyway.
BUT: you're being pedantic and acting righteously... Ok, so you pay your bills in advance and accidents such as this wouldn't affect you? Fine, good for you... want a pat on the back? ;)
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
This entire thread you've been racing to the defense of the banks. If I have money in the bank, and cannot use it due to a corrupted file on the bank's server or whatnot, THEN IT IS THE BANKS FAULT.
Its that simple.
Its not that I didn't have enough money, or that I didn't initiate the transfer. The bank fucked up. They sure as hell want to charge me for everything under the sun when I'm late. If they are late its their fucking fault, and I will pass the late fees on to them.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Of course you can do so, but it is not advisable, and you bear the risk if you choose to wait to the due date, you are the one taking on the risk, and you get to pay late fees if your bet was wrong about how long the payment would take.
Why, exactly? Banks are perfectly capable of scheduling transfers to happen on a certain date. Banks are perfectly capable of keeping their systems running 24/7. If they didn't the modern banking system would not function. Now I would agree that it's risky to wait until the due date to schedule a transfer; in addition to the reasons you listed you could have some personal emergency disrupt your day... But if I have scheduled a bill to be paid automatically on a certain date, then by god it better happen (and in fact it does, every month, multiple bills, for years and years now). Seriously, in what scenario would it be excusable for a bank to say "whoops, well, we know you scheduled your transfer, but we just didn't do it"? How exactly is that different than saying "whoops, well, we know you had good funds in your account, but we returned your check anyway"?
I don't know what country you're in, but do know what can happen in the U.S. to a bank that fails to process checks for 24 hours? Do you think maybe they know how to keep systems up and running?
Unisys has been slogging their large scale x86 machines running Windows Datacenter Edition as mainframes for almost a decade.
Few people take that claim seriously, any more than they would believe a claim that a 32 CPU Sun or HP server was a "mainframe". Such machines are just mid range servers with a larger than usual number of CPUs.
The basic difference is that mid-range servers (system software and hardware) are more "commodity-ish" (and much less expensive) than true mainframes where companies spend on the order of ten times as much just to gain additional advantages in reliability, availability, and serviceability. If you don't spend at least $1M on a computer it probably isn't a mainframe.
Even if you do, by convention Unix is a mini-computer operating system, and Windows Server even lower down the scale, and systems running those operating systems aren't generally considered mainframes no matter how much extra RAS effort is put into them.