A&L online bill service DISAPPEARS!

anadin_2

Just want to vent my spleen re my A&L "online" account - this weekend I went to pay an urgent bill online and, lo and behold, found that the 'create a new payee' option is missing.

I had to phone up (we're talking about my online account here) to find out what on earth was going on. The woman on the phone informed me, "the option has been removed this weekend". Just that - no apology, no email or at least warning posted on their website - nothing. The woman acknowledged that there had been NO warning given to the customers. When I told her that the least she could do was apologise, she told me she 'already had'. Funny that I don't remember, then, eh.

An online, main current account, supposed to be 24/7 - incredible. I emailed via their online 'contact us' box - huh! doubt I'll get much joy out of that. Or I could write to their customer 'services' address in Bootle. And for what?

Just to let you all know anyway, what a load of B*LL*CKS A&L is - a real mickey mouse outfit.

melancholly

Did she say if it was just for this weekend or if it was permanent?! They can't seriously remove it altogether.......that would just be ridiculous.... wouldn't it?!
I'll be logging in in 2 mins to send an equally polite email to their customer services!

desiman

I noticed this on Friday evening, and rang A&L (not using the 08xx number of course and they said there had been an attempt to hack the website and so the technical team had removed the option ! Scary huh, upon asking whether at any point any of customer details would've been at risk, I got the reply, no of course not, but they removed the Create New Payee option anyhow to 'minimize the risk of funds being transferred'

I havent heard anything else about it, and even when you phone they ask you every possible security question they can, which is fair enough i guess, but they could be a bit more straighforward about it

desiman

I dont imagine they will remove it altogether. Im also miffed that you cant remove any 'payees' from the payees list, you have to ring up for that!

melancholly

OK, well at least there's a reason then......... Here's hoping they sort it out asap....... It wouldn't kill them to email all the users and explain the situation though....

anadin_2

She said it's 'just for this weekend' (we shall see...) but what really gets me is that no warning is given. How much would it have put them out to issue an email re a major outage to their ONLINE account service for this weekend..? At least then you'd know. But of course they wanted to keep their security problems quiet, and s*d the customers.

Yes, Desiman, I too am worried about what details may have been hacked... the whole episode and how it has been handled is totally unprofessional.

melancholly

It's working for me now...... I guess they hoped most people wouldn't use the service at the weekend and as they aren't banking days then it wouldn't matter too much......... It doesn't seem to matter which bank/bs you're with, customer service sucks!

robnye

i have an a&l and a natwest bank accounts.

natwest have done this quite frequently in the past and the only notice was one when you logged into your account.

this is the first time i have heard of A&L doing it.

at the end of the day they have to be seen to be proactive in the fight against fraud.
even if you had set up the payment, it wouldnt have been actioned until monday, so nothing lost really.......