Natwest Technical Issues

bluenitsuj

I will go £9000 overdrawn anyday. I was expecting 2 international transfres of £9000 to go into my account on 22nd and 23rd ( one each day ). They went into my account, I withdrew one of them as it is to pay for something in September so stuck it in a savings account.
The other £9000 I have sent a cheque to pay something else. In the meantime, Natwest has, without my consent, taken £9000 back, so when my cheque clears, I will then be £9000 overdrawn. Can they just take the money out without prior warning?

it appears that one of the £9000 went through twice, I was not aware as I was expecting two payments.

Agricolae

cottager wrote: »

Thanks for explaining.

Do you know what the situation is in reverse? -- cheques we have written to other businesses where we don't have monthly accounts. We just seem to have one or two more than usual which haven't been presented yet.

I suppose in one way it's quite nice these amounts are still in our account, but on the other hand I prefer it when they're presented/deducted quickly so I don't have to keep making allowances for them still to go out.

As it is, without contacting the payees I don't know if they're stuck in the system as part of the NatWest problem, or simply haven't been paid in yet.

If they have been presented, but NatWest haven't been able to process them, are they queued up to be dealt with, or will they have been returned to payees' banks for any reason?

I'll be honest with you and say that I don't know. Predictions from a very experienced IT consultant (not an RBS employee mind) on The Register were that he expected there to be a high chance of further problems once the original problems were fixed.

The reason he gave was that he was certain the teams responsible for fixing the initial problem would have been under massive pressure to work quickly and have likely been working quite literally around the clock. As a result there would be extreme fatigue and a higher probability of mistakes being made. This all sounds logical and the problems this week with duplication of certain payments and missing deposits would seem to lend credence to his predictions.

I'll try to answer your question though. I have not heard of any problems with cheques being paid from NatWest accounts. The issue has been with cheque outclearing (i.e. cheques paid in).

If you've drawn cheques to be paid to these other businesses then firstly we need to know the way cheques are handled. There is an excellent explanation here.

From the diagram we can see that there will only be potential problems if the businesses also bank with NatWest, and the problem should only affect how the cheque appears in their account and not yours. This is because on their side they will go through the outclearing process, and on your side it will be the inclearing process which has not been affected as far as I'm aware.

My suspicion is that the businesses haven't yet paid in the cheques but I am willing to be proven wrong given the multitude of issues over the past two weeks.

Agricolae

bluenitsuj wrote: »

I will go £9000 overdrawn anyday. I was expecting 2 international transfres of £9000 to go into my account on 22nd and 23rd ( one each day ). They went into my account, I withdrew one of them as it is to pay for something in September so stuck it in a savings account.
The other £9000 I have sent a cheque to pay something else. In the meantime, Natwest has, without my consent, taken £9000 back, so when my cheque clears, I will then be £9000 overdrawn. Can they just take the money out without prior warning?

it appears that one of the £9000 went through twice, I was not aware as I was expecting two payments.

The cheque is not going to clear. When the cheque presents it will bounce.

I'd recommend getting in touch with the person who was paying the other £9,000 and get them to send it ASAP. Am I right in thinking that you saw two lots of £9k come in with exactly the same details? That makes it seem like the other person didn't actually pay you.

cottager

Agricolae wrote: »

I'll be honest with you and say that I don't know. Predictions from a very experienced IT consultant (not an RBS employee mind) on The Register were that he expected there to be a high chance of further problems once the original problems were fixed.

So it would seem -- been following the threads there.

The reason he gave was that he was certain the teams responsible for fixing the initial problem would have been under massive pressure to work quickly and have likely been working quite literally around the clock. As a result there would be extreme fatigue and a higher probability of mistakes being made.

Indeed: have to feel for the poor s*ds drafted in at the coal face to sort it out.

I'll try to answer your question though. I have not heard of any problems with cheques being paid from NatWest accounts. The issue has been with cheque outclearing (i.e. cheques paid in).
...
My suspicion is that the businesses haven't yet paid in the cheques but I am willing to be proven wrong given the multitude of issues over the past two weeks.

Yes, I only wondered if you'd heard anything specific -- thanks so much for your thoughts and all the info. I'll leave it to come out in the wash -- it's not as if I'm going to forget the money's due out. Other larger businesses sound to have much more pressing problems after very large BACS payment runs being duplicated and similar.

stormymonday

Agricolae wrote: »

I'll be honest with you and say that I don't know. Predictions from a very experienced IT consultant (not an RBS employee mind) on The Register were that he expected there to be a high chance of further problems once the original problems were fixed.

The reason he gave was that he was certain the teams responsible for fixing the initial problem would have been under massive pressure to work quickly and have likely been working quite literally around the clock. As a result there would be extreme fatigue and a higher probability of mistakes being made. This all sounds logical and the problems this week with duplication of certain payments and missing deposits would seem to lend credence to his predictions.

I would say that it is a very real risk.I have worked through a few 'Red Team' incidents in my IT career and my experience is that adrenaline will carry IT staff through the first 48-72 hours. After that they will burn out very quickly unless they are properly rested and rotated. It will not be a problem if they have some slack built built into their manpower for such contingencies. However, if they are running on very slim staffing profile (which is likely given so many RBS IT staff have been made redundant in recent years) then the technicians will be beyond the point of exhaustion by now. This makes further unforced mistakes highly likely. Just a run through this thread shows that there are still errors occurring relating to transactions made nearly a week after the initial incident. This suggests all is probably not fixed behind the scenes. Certainly we know that Ulster Bank problems are not resolved as their own web site admits that the account records will not be upto date by Monday 2 July 2012.

cottager

stormymonday wrote: »

I would say that it is a very real risk.I have worked through a few 'Red Team' incidents in my IT career and my experience is that adrenaline will carry IT staff through the first 48-72 hours. After that they will burn out very quickly unless they are properly rested and rotated. It will not be a problem if they have some slack built built into their manpower for such contingencies. However, if they are running on very slim staffing profile (which is likely given so many RBS IT staff have been made redundant in recent years) then the technicians will be beyond the point of exhaustion by now.

Don't know if you'll have caught it earlier in the thread when it was mentioned, but someone working at the sharp end made a few posts somewhere quite different, and said last Sunday he was then on his 5th 12-hr shift in 4 days. Hasn't posted anything since about mid-week, so hope he was then on a well-earned break rather than fallen in a heap. He said some made redundant only very recently had been asked to return on short-term contracts to help, and in fact he'd also been due to be 'let go'.

trikidy

What date did all these issues start?

chambta

I wonder how news of an extra day off as a bonus to hardworking RBS group staff will be received?

Got my letter today.

falko89

No well in fairness to staff they have been great. It's the big balls at the top.

chambta

falko89 wrote: »

No well in fairness to staff they have been great. It's the big balls at the top.

I agree. Personally I'm exhausted (yeah I appreciate it's not a 'proper' man's job') after the early starts and late finishes this week.