Black horse down: Lloyds online banking services go dark UK banking giant Lloyds is struggling to account for malfunctioning online services today as customers report being unable to view transactions through the app or website. In a statement to The Register, a spokesperson for Lloyds Banking Group said: "We know some of our customers are having issues viewing their recent …
This looks like it might have been a repeat of the Azure FD etc. issues from July 30th as the Microsoft Azure portal and numerous other sites were down and came back up at approximately the same time which chimes with the July 30th incident. Not that I'm implying correaltion=causation but just that it's a strong possibility IMO.
This is much more convenient than using cash in your own under the mattress bank.
I mean if you look at cash you can't see transactions either, just you get the sense of money missing.
Also if you cannot see your transaction history, that's just something you don't have to worry about.
That £200 withdrawal last night? Now you can't see. Less guilt.
I'd say banking apps should go offline more often.
and if you can't make payment? You could get to talk to actual human about it!
Earlier this morning, no transactions were showing up under the 'All' tab (Android app, so not just an ios problem), but as stated in the article, they showed up under the September and August 'tabs'.
Just tried it again and all seems to be back to normal.
Technology - marvellous when it works...
As Lloyds gets rid of all its branch network, how long do you think it will take for them to realise that the comment from many years ago that banks are 'IT companies with banking licences' is actually true?
And that to outsource your core function should make you question why you exist?
"IT companies with banking licences" is only true so far, because banks still make their money on the balance sheet, by lending for more than the loaned capital costs them.
The point is valid that IT is absolutely central to any large customer service outfit or transaction processor, but it's not usually what makes them money - although done badly it usually loses them money. If you look at energy suppliers they might seem to be "IT companies with an energy supply licence", but again, poor IT loses them money, good IT doesn't make them more money.
I think the definition of an IT company is that they intend to make money from either selling software (outright or SaaS) or from data processing.
"And that to outsource your core function should make you question why you exist?"
That is true, but I think that banks (energy suppliers etc) all still see their IT assets as a big, complex, ugly, expensive cost that they don't understand - and don't want to understand. They outsource it not really to save money (made up business cases notwithstanding) but because they don't want to get their hands dirty.
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"That is true, but I think that banks (energy suppliers etc) all still see their IT assets as a big, complex, ugly, expensive cost that they don't understand - and don't want to understand. They outsource it not really to save money (made up business cases notwithstanding) but because they don't want to get their hands dirty."
I think you nearly got it right there, they outsource it because they dont understand what IT does for their company, and as such, see it as a cost to be minimised rather than THE asset that makes them a shed load of cash.
Which is why it took years to get my boss to view our time on the PCs as "not wasting time" and to get a decent backup regime going since "How many man hours in programs do we have? and how much would it cost to replicate them?'
But that sort of thing doesn't matter to the C level idiots who outsource to 'the cloud' because the cloud salesmen and consultants say so....... right upto the point when 'the cloud' falls over and you're under siege from angry customers.....
Yeah. That.
IT and IT support is seen as a burden because its really difficult to see the time it saves and the resulting profit it helps create for the bits of the business which are tasked with making money so the people with the power to swing the axe try to chop it out of the business
I needed to change my address for my MBNA credit card. (MBNA are part of the Lloyds Group.)
Logged into my online account and hunted around looking for the change address section.
There isn't one!
Their online website tells you to phone or......download the app and change your details on that. Because using the app to change your details is the easiest way to change your details. It said.
So I did. I downloaded the app, put my very complicated password into it. Waited for the confirmation code number to be delivered by txt and finally found the change address section. All while being logged in to my account.
To be fair, once logged into the app changing my address was very easy. I just don't know why they can't put that simply function in their web account service.
I've now deleted the app. I think I'll soon be cancelling the credit card.
Thanks Lloyds, you're making my life easier.
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