Barclaycard drops offline

Barclaycard's UK website has been unavailable for most of the day and the company isn't sure when it's coming back. The company apologised to frustrated customers but said it was too soon to say what had gone wrong. The website went down this morning and is still unavailable at 3.00pm. The last time we reported problems - …

[Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse]

Month end?

Financial month and quarter end processing perhaps?

[Andus McCoatover]

Lucky...

"Barclaycard's spokesman recommended the credit card company's call centres for customers with urgent queries. Presumably its own staff have some access to its systems."

...the Indian connection still works.

[Anonymous Coward]

can still access

using

https://bcol.barclaycard.co.uk/

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't Barclay's dramtically cut...

it's IT staff a year or two ago? Whether they did or not they've had some real issues over that time period.

[Anonymous Coward]

only harry knows how it works

Obviously the bloke that knows how everything works has took his holidays and everyone else is off sick or walking around with their hands in their pockets.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly

worked fine for me when I paid my bills at 9:30 this morning

[Mike Gravgaard]

RE: Didn't Barclay's dramtically cut...

"Didn't Barclay's dramtically cut it's IT staff a year or two ago? Whether they did or not they've had some real issues over that time period."

Yes and this is the second time they have had problems this year - I believe it serves them right. The first was with their ATM network if I recall correctly.

I know a lot of people whom fled to Barclays for jobs and it's quite depressing really..

Mike

[kain preacher]

So

How many IT people can you fire before you go tits up.

[Bad Fish]

Their customers are lucky it is down

A few weeks ago they sent me an email inviting me to click on the link in the email to access my account. The link wasn't to www.barclaycard.co.uk. I was about to delete it when I noticed it included my real name: it turned out it was genuine! I can only conclude that they *want* to teach their customers to fall for phishing attempts.

If their web site goes down and stays down, perhaps their customers will learn sense instead.

[Simon Preston]

strange,

Was working just fine for me today. Odd.

[dogbone]

what a surprise....NOT!

...this is exactly what happens when your systems are run by the lowest bidder!! I'm sure some VP in head office has calculated that customers might moan, but heh, they'll stay put.....

....not me! I moved my busines elsewhere the last time this happened. Never looked back either!

[Paul Stockwell]

Verified by Visa is worse

No surprise there then.

Their verified by Visa scheme is even worse. Even after I looked up the password I hadn't had to use for six months their website crashed taking the insurace company website with it. Phoning them took 12 minutes to get a response. I could literally have driven to Northampton and seen them in person quicker...

Eventually I managed to get through paying for insurance when the card went throught without verify by visa interfering. I am changing accounts to get rid of Visa's inept security precautions as soon as I can find a bank that doesn't use it...

Mines the one with cut-up Barclaycard in it.

[Zeus]

Keeping a steady online presence

Despite having web traffic problems in the past, Barclays still seems to be having problems preventing downtime. Customers who have experienced an outage once will be understandably frustrated. As a result, the bank will have to work especially hard to regain trust from those who have experienced difficulties for a second time. A stable online presence will significantly improve customer confidence that Barclays can offer a safe and secure online banking environment.

Graham Moore, e-retail Specialist, Zeus Technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Access

> Presumably its own staff have some access to its systems.

Hah! They probably have at least 10 systems to access in order to provide a "single view of the customer", no single sign-on so plenty of passwords to stick under the keyboard, and multiple cutting and pasting of data from one screen to another as the standard data integration mechanism.

The web site is usually just an illusion that systems are integrated - that integration probably only happens within Apache just as the page is transmitted.