Ulster Bank

[screenexile]

The software thing sounds pretty bogus to me! They know that the average Joe will just accept that while anyone with a bit of knowledge of computers knows that had there been a problem they should have been able to revert back to previous settings and continue as normal until the problem got sorted.

Will we ever know the truth . . .

[Bensars]

What price was that double?

Black Caviar was 6/4 and Spain around 5/6 individually

Black Caviar was 1/6 not 6/4, quare difference.

Bit of an Urban Myth me thinks about this story

Is 5 grand not the limit in cash over the counter per day ?

[imtommygunn]

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2012/06/25/rbs_natwest_what_went_wrong/

[AZOffaly]

If it was a batch scheduling problem there is no way it would have taken so long to sort out. Schedulers just kick jobs off. If they've an issue with schedulers is can only be that the job didn't kick off, or perhaps a batch suite kicked off in the wrong order.

EITHER WAY a simple restore and restart should have sorted it out. This wouldn't make sense. Should be a day downtime at most.

[Cold tea]

Why has the ATM issue not been in the news?

[ludermor]

Because it is horseshit?

[Cold tea]

I have first hand evidence that it is not, maybe some of the amounts are but there were issues on Friday and people could take out money without their accounts being debited.  So your amazing view on it aside, why has the ATM issue not made the news?

[oisinog]

I have first hand evidence that it is not, maybe some of the amounts are but there were issues on Friday and people could take out money without their accounts being debited.  So your amazing view on it aside, why has the ATM issue not made the news?

The media could have caused a riot if this made the news.

[camanchero]

If it was a batch scheduling problem there is no way it would have taken so long to sort out. Schedulers just kick jobs off. If they've an issue with schedulers is can only be that the job didn't kick off, or perhaps a batch suite kicked off in the wrong order.

EITHER WAY a simple restore and restart should have sorted it out. This wouldn't make sense. Should be a day downtime at most.

i'm sure the real truth will get out at some point - bu what I hav heard/read so far.

yesterdays press carried a story where a former employee cited the problem being the IT programming and support being outsourced abroad to India.
The ex employee mentioned that the code etc was such that another company without proper experience couldnt have handled this IT support/coding.

On its own thats lame - but I was talking to someone this morning who reckoned that ex employees had bolted on additional modules, functions and features for years and that the entire system was a timebomb waiting to happen.
Again, on its own I dont think it could have been that bad.

but add these two togther, plus add either a failure in DR or restoration or even server farm holding the original code/systems and these contributing factors could have caused the problem.

Every IT disaster is the culmination of a few different problems happening at the smae time- otherwise such problems in isolation can be recovered from.

OR
they were hacked and they are not letting on as this would panic customers even more....

[el_cuervo_fc]

I have first hand evidence that it is not, maybe some of the amounts are but there were issues on Friday and people could take out money without their accounts being debited.  So your amazing view on it aside, why has the ATM issue not made the news?

It's a strange one.  Unless the Ulster Bank have requested that it remains out of the news to keep other towns from trying it out as well.

It did happen in Armagh

[DickyRock]

Having worked in software development in a large bank these batching systems process some amount of data. A lot of these systems do not have checkpoints where they can easily roll back to. So they probably had to diagnose the issue, workout how to get back to a good point ( all the time the volume of transactions to be process would've been growing ), then start running again.

Add to this the outsourcing where a load of banks have now lost the knowledge on these systems built up over years. Coming back to bite them now.

Also when you look at the way banking has gone over the last 10 years you'll find that a lot of banks we're bought over/merged. Ulster bank - nat west - rbs, northern bank by ?, heap of wee building societies - bank of Scotland/Halifax -llyods. All these companies went through major integration projects moving to one system for all their customers. So now if a couple of banks hit problems then it would affect nearly every customer in the uk

[Cold tea]

Outsourcing coming back to bite them, you pay peanuts you get monkeys!

[Billys Boots]

Ah here - a creditor who's owed us since January had the cheeck to tell us today that he'd paid us last Wednesday, from his Ulster Bank account.  Jaysus.   

[Cold tea]

Ah here - a creditor who's owed us since January had the cheeck to tell us today that he'd paid us last Wednesday, from his Ulster Bank account.  Jaysus.   

That's a gas; the honesty of folk is inspiring!

[Billys Boots]

Ah here - a creditor who's owed us since January had the cheeck to tell us today that he'd paid us last Wednesday, from his Ulster Bank account.  Jaysus.   

That's a gas; the honesty of folk is inspiring!

It stops being funny when pay-day arrives.