Co-op Bank online and mobile banking goes TITSUP* The Co-op Bank's app and online services are enjoying an extended lie-in today with multiple customers complaining they're locked out. Hundreds of folks in the UK began reporting problems with the website and online banking around 08:01 UTC this morning on downdetector.com. piggy bank Guess who the Co-op Bank chose for £141m …
It's the only country in the world where there is on average an online banking snafu every quarter and yet the inhabitants just continue using those same banks.
I've never heard of the BNP, the Credit Mutuel or the Sogenal having problems with their online banking for years. Does UK banking IT use less reliable hardware, or are UK banking IT managers just not up to the task ?
BNP: https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/IT-problem-leaves-tens-of-thousands-of-French-customers-of-BNP-Paribas-bank-unable-to-access-online-services
CM: https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/creditmutuel.fr
SG: https://www.ft.com/content/b4b21832-9cda-11e9-b8ce-8b459ed04726
Sadly, most of our banks are now owned by foreign banks who seem to work on the principle that it's not the "home country" so it really doesn't matter...
And the excuse that it's down to the antiquated hardware and software our banks use is complete garbage because they knew the state of the IT when they took their controlling share - if the situation was so bad that a fool should have seen the problems that would soon occur, what does that say about the executives who were only too pleased to acquire the additional customers... sorry, investment opportunities?
ING Direct in Spain has spent the past few months taking a day-long bath about once week with minor 1-2 hour outages filling up the remaining days stopping people logging on or transferring money. It doesn't seem to be making many headlines in the local press though.
It appears to be linked to their decision to use push notifications to their banking app to allow website access for PSD2, their data centre just can't cope with it.
I've never heard of the BNP, the Credit Mutuel or the Sogenal having problems with their online banking for years.
Credit Mutuel & CIC, October 2019
They're just as bad.
Credit Mutuel & CIC, October 2019 <---- the banks offer mobile phone services, as in, you can get a SIM card from them for your phone, these mobile services were down, customer could no longer call or send SMS messages ... nothing to do with banking going TITSUP.
Then again, a generous ATM was found in Marseille, spewing x2 of what was requested.
https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-divers-justice/marseille-un-distributeur-automatique-de-billets-donnait-le-double-de-la-somme-demandee-1575793159
"Credit Mutuel & CIC, October 2019 <---- the banks offer mobile phone services, as in, you can get a SIM card from them for your phone, these mobile services were down, customer could no longer call or send SMS messages ... nothing to do with banking going TITSUP."
Hang on! The bank supplied a SIM which stopped working, so the user could no longer do mobile banking?
There are two factors to consider. Amongst the European and US banks as comparators, the UK had 24x7 payments capability 11 years ago, whereas most European and US banks are only now adding such capabilities. So the expectation of availability was not the same in all cases.
But certainly UK banks are no worse, and in my experience, are actually a lot better, than most of the European and US competition. You can look across US, Europe, and especially Australia and see many instances of outages.
Before you trumpet the UK too much it was and in many ways still is in the dark ages compared to NZ. Long before we left in '93 the ATM's had buttons to enable you to transfer money. So you could use an ATM to transfer money from your savings to your current account for eg. Or if you had both cards with you could pay your credit card bill at the ATM. Also everything was EFTPOS without chips.
We get to the UK, the ATM's are really dumb machines and we had to remember our signatures all the time as no EFTPOS.
And in related tech when you drive into a petrol station in NZ you put into the pump exactly how much fuel you want, stick the pump in the tank pull the trigger and lock it and do other stuff like clean the windscreen or just not stand there holding the pump. It finishes dead on then you remove and pay. That is apparently too sophisticated for UK petrol pumps, or something. The tech though definitely exists. Very useful if you are on a limited budget and want just $20 of fuel and no more.
It’s not too sophisticated for UK pumps, if you look at some of the triggers you can see the little metal catch that keeps the triggers pulled has been removed. I think we don’t do it for some kind of safety reason from when there was a time when pumps were not self service and the transition to self service.
It compels the person to be in attendance where the highly inflammable liquid is transferring, rather than walk off and leave it. It might not be necessary but at the time when the laws were made it was considered to be.
If you look at youtube cctv of cars driving off with the pump nozzle still in the car, dragging the pumps and pipes, then tend to be from countries where people can walk off and forget what they were doing.
Some countries still have full service where an attendant does the filling for you.
There is also the problem when setting the nozzle locked into dispense mode punters tend to go back and sit in the car. When they return to the nozzle they have gained a static electricity charge which then discharges and ignites the fumes from the tank when they touch the nozzle handle. This was the first story I could find that discusses the problem - it seems to be a bigger problem in the US than GB. I'd also suggest that if you're pumping highly explosive liquid, that boils around 23C in the case of Petrol/Gas, at high pressure you really should be 100% focused on that!
As for pumping a certain amount of fuel - I've seen quite a few Sainsbury's (a UK Supermarket Chain) fuel pumps have buttons to cut off at popular amounts like £10, £20, £50 etc. Not fully custom but it is an easy single button push if that's your thing.
"That is apparently too sophisticated for UK petrol pumps,"
No, they just put the filling data as an overlay on an LCD panel that plays overly loud adverts at you so it's almost impossible to not see the advert and very impossible not to hear it. All the same advert on all the pumps, all out out of sequence because the ad starts when you start to fill up. Looking at you Shell!!!
I've been a coop bank customer for donkeys but ever since they updated their phone app earlier this year, I've been unable to use it. For some reason it won't work on an iPhone 5c any more (but apparently works on the 5s (I think that's right) which as far as I know is identical apart from the cosmetics). After waiting for a fix (and yes - they DO know about the problem) I've given up and ordered a new phone.
And just for the record, Barclaycard has bust their phone app as well in almost the same way.
Unfortunately the coop have a very crappy record when it comes to their online services.
I have no idea why people should be obliged to buy new phones. The government finally obliges banks to offer basic bank accounts and banks come up with yet another way of locking people out. Any mobile website + authenticator app will do the job for a non-card reader solution on a mobile phone. Well yes, I do have an idea, the marketing possibilities are fewer.
The site doesn't work in Safari either. I have to use Firefox for it since I CANNOT login in Safari. I recently tried to move to paperless statements on my CC but they kept sending me paper statements and no notification emails. Eventually turned out that while the button to go paperless was there in the online account (why I was directed to get an online account, the paper statements were going missing) it wasn't live yet.
So not only is their IT crap but they don't inform their phone handlers about what is going on either.
Around 2009 I took over as treasurer for a charity. I asked Coop Bank for a passcode reset for the organisation's online & telephone banking. I was sent a paper form asking me to fill out the Business Name & Address, my Name and Position in the Organisation, my Signature, The Account Sort Code, Account Number AND THE PROPOSED NEW PASSCODE.
This was to be returned to them via snailmail.
I gave them a call to voice my concerns about the security implications of having all the account details and the passcode on one form. Their response was that everyone working for them was trustworthy and this was not a problem.
I took the organisations banking elsewhere.
Nothing I've heard since has improved my opinion of them.
If they are supposed to be sending you a check number by text or email and it hasn't arrived and you click on the send again and they both come the numbers are identical. Clicking the send again button should change the numbers and it does for other banks I use.
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