'Tis the season to be wobbly: HSBC online and mobile banking services suffer not one but two major outages in 12 hours

HSBC’s mobile and online banking services went absent without leave in the UK last night and are missing in action again this morning, just as Brits begin panicking about any last minute buys they need to make for Chrimbo. According to outage reporting tool DownDetector, HSBC's – and its customers' – troubles began shortly …

[Groove-Cat]

Cash is King.

that is all. :)

Happy Fridays, everyone.

[Claverhouse]

Re: Cash is King.

Are you paid in cash ? Straight from the cashier's cage ?

[Richard 12]

Re: Cash is King.

Comes in a pneumatic tube and everything.

[PhilipN]

Re: Cash is King.

Away - back to the ‘50’s with you!

Nobody knows what pneumatic tubes are these days (except fans of “Brazil”).

[Lee D]

Re: Cash is King.

And also an absolute pain in the arse.

Sod paying my car tax, council tax, TV licence, gas, water, electricity, telephone, broadband, car insurance, etc. in cash every month.

I basically live a cash-free life. Hell, in the last three years, I literally accumulated only £65 of change... and I paid that into a bank only because I go annoyed with it building up (people giving me money for things, change from notes, buying things online for people who don't like doing things online, etc.).

Hell, I bought a Square reader cheap off Amazon for if anyone feels they need to share a bill with me.

Your cash can't be used for a lot of things, is entirely impractical, a theft target, and has no more stability or value than a number in a bank account.

Just do what any sensible person does with *any* money they have - don't keep it all in the same place. Or, given it's an IT site: Always have a backup.

[The Real Satoshi Nakamoto]

Re: Cash is King.

I might have an idea that could greatly complicate future outages ....

[juice]

Definitely annoying...

Last night around 8pm, the HSBC app was claiming that my phone wasn't connected to the internet, despite everything else working as per BAU. Around 10pm, I managed to log in to double check that a direct debit was correctly set up.

And then it just sat and timed out this morning when I attempted to log into to check on how much of the Xmas paycheck hadn't already been allocated to mince pies.

Seems to be back up again now, but definitely not the best time of year for this sort of thing to happen...

[David 132]

Re: Definitely annoying...

It's depressing how many mobile app vendors say "you have no Internet connection" when they actually mean to say, "I can't connect to my server". Because heaven forfend that the connection problem might be at the back end... much easier to blame it on the user, right?

[commonsense]

Re: Definitely annoying...

Some go the other way, apologising and even saying "it's me, not you" even when it's not.

[Chris G]

IoB

The Internet of Banks seems little better than the IoT with regard to reliable function.

My bank Caixa is constantly sending SMS messages and emails telling me how great their app is, the apps and emails also have an opt out button,no matter how many times I use it or tell them in the office that I am opting out, I stlll get the messages.

And they wonder why I have no confidence in their app!

[Julz]

Hum

Is it just the app or does it affect other web services? I've never felt the need to use a banks app. Am I missing out on some Unicorns that I don't know about.

[Blockchain commentard]

Re: Hum

I was trying web based banking this morning. Was cursing my ISP for being crap but other sites (like this worked) so I just swore at HSBC. Eventually pages updated, but it was like a MITM attack where they were using an old XT PC (remember them!!!).

[Chris G]

Re: Hum

The app supposedly can provide all of my banking needs online, fortunately, I live in the boonies and my nearest branch is a Rural (has farming services) branch so is mostly empty but even if customers are in there I rarely nee to wait more then 10 minutes or so before I can talk to a human if need be.

The ATMs are still on Win7 as far as I can tell, they drop in and out of service on a whim and at times whatever link they are on slows down to about 1byte/s so I have little confidence in the likelihood of the app being any better, in addition to which, I feel the continuing move to online banking everywhere just means less and less service and the total removal of humans in the loop .

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon wobbling as well

Just tried buying an Amazon gift card in a shop, and apparently Amazon's whole point of sale support for selling physical gift cards has been down all day.

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Re: Amazon wobbling as well

I was in the queue at lunchtime behind someone trying to buy an Amazon gift card, and the cashier said exactly what you've said. I looked on El Reg, expecting to see a story and have a laugh - but not a dicky bird.

(Are they using HSBC?)

[Ken Moorhouse]

I arrived home yesterday...

...to find a big parcel addressed to my wife on the table.

"NatWest have sent me a replacement Debit Card" she volunteered.

Speechless at this seemingly audacious attempt to deprive HP as the masters of overpackaging*, she explained that an ATM had swallowed her card in a recent outage and they had written to her separately saying "here's a new card, apologies, you will receive a hamper as compensation for your inconvenience."

* https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/22/hp_box/

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/18/hp_packaging/

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/enormouse/

etc., etc.

[LeahroyNake]

absent without leave

I assume that was originally written as AWOL then changed in a edit, editor?

I would have gone for Total Inability To Support Usual Payments myself.

Happy Christmas!

[SuperGeek]

99.999% SLA

Why can't everyday users get it in their heads there's no such thing as 100% uptime? As soon as it goes down for 10 seconds there's mass whingeing on Twatter.

[juice]

Re: 99.999% SLA

> Why can't everyday users get it in their heads there's no such thing as 100% uptime? As soon as it goes down for 10 seconds there's mass whingeing on Twatter.

In this case, it was effectively down for at least 12 hours, and on "mad friday" when people are doing lots of financial stuff, from getting an early xmas paycheck to buying presents and getting rounds of drinks in.

Definitely a pain...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 99.999% SLA

Various vendors used to be able to offer serious levels of resilience. Nowadays, not so much. Why should system designers/operators bother investing in resikience when there's no meaningful encouragement for proper design, and no visible penalty for rolling out broken systems prone to avoidable and repeated failures.

On Friday afternoon (20th) my local town's handful of cash machines had all failed. The bank and building society branches mostly moved out long ago, and the nearest back is now a half hour round trip away.

I happened to be in the Post Office (posting a package, since you asked). As people came home from work ready for the pub, they had no access to cash machines to get at the afternoon's beer/Prosecco/gin money.

This Post Office has a counter cashback service when the shop is open. I'd never seen/heard anything quite like it e.g. "can I have four hundred pounds cashback" (similar amounts every few seconds). I thought maybe another RBS-style banking collapse was immintent, but no suich luck, this was a different kind of management failure in the bank boardrooms.

ps

don't even think about combining this picture with Post Office's Horizon accounts management system :(

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 99.999% SLA

"the nearest back is now a half hour round trip away."

Apologies for the poor standard of my typing, in line with the community's policy of continuous pridoct and service improvement. I'm hoping for a marketing job soon.

[low_resolution_foxxes]

Honestly, I'm not sure I've had a single problem with my HSBC mobile app in the years I've had it.

Minor gripes perhaps when I broke my phone and had to reinstall the account with a new sim (time consuming, but straight forward) and the mobile cheque-cashing camera app can be s*** (it wants a photo of the back of the cheque, except it's usually blank, but the app doesn't like a plain white photo... Agh! Death to the UI testers on that one).

[low_resolution_foxxes]

Although, I have to say Revolut pisses all over any banking app I've used. Add in the fact it doesn't charge me any foreign exchange fees and I heart it (foreign purchases are consistently 4-8% cheaper in £ compared to my HSBC and Amex accounts).