MSE News: NatWest customers in lurch after meltdown

kittiej

Sorry I've missed something, what's NW got to do with Santander pls?

Edit

Sorry guys I looked online and found the answer. I wouldn't be happy about this if I was a customer tbh even more so now!

coldhandoff

RBS England & Wales branches and Natwest Scotland branches are being sold to Santander.

bobblebob

majjie wrote: »

That rather implies that we should have enough money to pay all our bills twice!

People who are on low incomes - or who have spent their savings because they're out of work - or have used all their savings building up a business (like me) - just don't have that amount of spare cash.

You dont need much in it, just enough to cover for a few days food etc in an emergency. Get an arranged overdraft on it to cover you further. Its only once in a blue moon you would need to use it anyway, most banking problems are fixed in a few hours

I find it hard to believe some of the stories ive heard on the news that people are going without food because of this issue. Friends, family, neighbours im sure would give you abit of cash until the problem is fixed rather than see you starve!

bobblebob

JuicyJesus wrote: »

At the same time, they provide a service, and it is reasonable to expect them to provide that service to a competent standard. They are not doing so. So far on this thread we have seen examples of incompetence from RBS' own IT staff being the root cause of the issue, as well as confusing and incoherent information being given to front-line staff, leading to a mishmash of different policies and procedures being in operation, and in many cases pretty bad service being provided to customers (although staff are, understandably, under pressure - I can imagine a lot of RBS Group frontline staff's weekends have just gone up the shoot due to a problem they had nothing to do with.)

If I put my money in an institution, and have my wages mandated to that institution, then at the very least I would expect them to do this competently. If they don't then it's not my fault if they don't.

RBS' reputation is going to take a BIG hit on this. The fact that they decided to upgrade a critical piece of payment infrastructure on a major processing day and then seemingly did not have a valid regression plan in place reflects extremely poorly on them (although I am not an expert, and no doubt I am being somewhat short-sighted here.)

I do agree with what you're saying, but there isnt a business out there that doesnt have issues from time to time, especially when technology is used in the way banks use it. Yea its not your fault if the system goes down, but unfortunately, its you that has to pick up the pieces

KxMx

I always thought I was a good emergency planner, but obviously I am lacking in that department instead lol!

I guess keeping a large box of the only dry food cat will eat- and feeding her from a second box which gets renewed- isn't good enough:rotfl:

Off to open a basic account with another bank next week since I have 2 with HSBC.

Also an emergency giftcard for a supermarket is a great idea, although we always have plenty in the cupboard and my problem is not always being able to get out hence the cat food and other items kept in bulk.

majjie

KxMx wrote: »

Also an emergency giftcard for a supermarket is a great idea, although we always have plenty in the cupboard and my problem is not always being able to get out hence the cat food and other items kept in bulk.

I hadn't really thought of that. I'm fairly mobile and live in a city - with about six supermarkets within easy reach - which is probably a factor in me having very little in my store cupboards!

Anyway - off out to visit one of those supermarkets now - with my gift card.

Tommaso46

KxMx wrote: »

I always thought I was a good emergency planner, but obviously I am lacking in that department instead lol!

I guess keeping a large box of the only dry food cat will eat- and feeding her from a second box which gets renewed- isn't good enough:rotfl:

Off to open a basic account with another bank next week since I have 2 with HSBC.

Also an emergency giftcard for a supermarket is a great idea, although we always have plenty in the cupboard and my problem is not always being able to get out hence the cat food and other items kept in bulk.

If things get really bad you can always eat the cat.:T

majjie

bobblebob wrote: »

I find it hard to believe some of the stories ive heard on the news that people are going without food because of this issue. Friends, family, neighbours im sure would give you abit of cash until the problem is fixed rather than see you starve!

Ooh - just noticed that comment before I left.

As I said - I have a gift card I can use - and could probably get cash from NatWest, if I was desperate.

There is no way, however, that I would be asking friends or neighbours for help. I would rather boil up some plain pasta - which is probably all I do have in the cupboard - and suck on that. For people with kids it might well be different - but us poor people (or ex-poor people - although I'm certainly not rolling in it) have our pride you know.

Tommaso46

dazza12 wrote: »

ISome idiot applied an untested update to their clearing system that corrupted a load of data. It has taken until today to unravel this, and put in place a new system. The delay is now down to approximately 200 million transactions queued in the system.

I hope that idiot has now been sacked.

MoneySaverLog

Tommaso46 wrote: »

I hope that idiot has now been sacked.

Don't blame the monkey, it's the fault of the organ grinder cutting corners to get code into production before properly testing it.