Halifax cuts investment accounts off from the web until April 2012
A British bank is closing off web acces access to its investment accounts while it works on "a fresh new site which is more secure and easier to use". The only downside is that this process will keep Halifax Bank of Scotland busy until April 2012. So anyone with an investment account at the banking group will need to manage …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Halifax Bank of Scotland twunts
I cannot believe that Halifax Bank of Scotland is going to be without a website for so long... what jackass at that bank thought of this? Any bank that cuts off a service of theirs that is nowadays akin to not being reachable by phone surely deserves to be given a wide berth? What next? No computers or calculators, all of their bankers must now rely on abaci??
a title
"No computers or calculators, all of their bankers must now rely on abaci??"
if that was the case, i'd prefer them to the "computer says no" gimps in most other banks. atleast then you would also be able to watch them do their sums, so they wouldn't get away with anywhere near as much theft as they do now.
also, i suspect giving a bank a wide berth in the current economic climate would be akin to sanctioning another bailout.
just my 0.5% APR of my 2p
...investment accounts...
Not current accounts. I doubt they are *that* stupid.
It's not HBOS's fault
It's Lloyds TSB, who bought them over.
In January last year I spent a couple of months working with one of their programmers. They've transferred all the HBOS systems (which have served me well for the last few years) over to the Lloyds system (which so far has approximately bugger all of the useful stuff aside from showing you your account balances).
A lot of their techies were really pissed about it- they didn't see why HBOS had to downgrade. And as a customer, neither do I!
Also, HBOS isn't going to be without a website. Online Banking will still be available. It's just a bit of it- the investment banking- that's going to be offline for a year.
It's not always as simple as all that
It may be the case that the back-end systems at Lloyds are superior/more cost efficient thus they will cut over to the Lloyds set up across the board. This was done when NatWest and RBS merged, the RBS model was picked and everything was migrated over. This meant, for example, the NW branches which had fancy new Windows-based GUIs were suddenly suddenly working on "green screen" terminal emulators, much to their chagrin. However in the long run the integration was a commercial and corporate success and widely hailed as an exemplar in the industry.
By contrast the Lloyds TSB integration was a disaster as they tried to cherry pick the best systems from each bank, by some accounts they were never able to fully integrate them and the costs were prohibitive. So perhaps they've actually learned a lesson there. Of course going without an investor Web site for a year or more does seem like cutting off the nose to spite the face.
a commercial and corporate success?
That would be the RBS of which I am a shareholder by benefit of my status as a UK taxpayer?
And the Natwest which my daughter has to appear in branch to do almost anything with her account as almost nothing can be done on-line?
Stripping out functionality until you reach the lowest common point only appears a success until you realise your customers are ex-customers and your "successful" system is part of the reason.
It's worse than that
My BoS current account online service has been "upgraded" recently and will also lose all historical statements data on 18th April. It's lost a number of other features too that are apparently to be reintroduced in the coming months. They've royally screwed up across their entire online banking system, not just the investment accounts.
back office...
I suspect that in your case, they'll be moving your account from the old HBoS system to the Lloyds system. There's no point running two sets of applications for managing current accounts, after all, but removing functionality isn't the most user friendly way of doing it.
Taxing
.....lose all historical statements data on 18th April......
Should be fun explaining that to the tax man when he call and wants to see 7 years of records.
re: back office
It seems they are moving every system across to the Lloyds equivalent. In branch procedures recently changed as well. My guess about the length of down time for the web site is that it is to ensure everyone has forgotten what went before, so that when the "new" (ie rebadged Lloyds) offering is "unveiled" everyone will acclaim it.
The greed of the managers who destroyed the rather successful Halifax Building Society should be recorded in the annals of British financial mismanagement.
The stench of Bwankers
The loss of historical data is indefensible and surely cannot be attributed to any kind of insurmountable technical problems. More likely it's just the same old penny-pinching and utter contempt for its customers that Lloyds brings to the banking scene.
The BoS on-line banking site that existed prior to the Lloyds intervention was a model of user friendliness and functionality which has now been reduced to a pile of unadulterated shit that looks likely to persist for a long time.
Re: You're SURE they didn't mean April 2011?
I did phone and check, honest. My first thought was that it was a typo...
cheers
How to cause a run without really trying
Seems like a very good time to move to another bank. Would you stay if you needed a modern service?
Now is not the time; then was the time
It was time to move to another bank a couple of decades ago. They (Halifax) sent me a statement about six months late, with someone else's statement stapled to the back of it. I moved bank (around 1990 I think).
Then there was the Munden case.
Humph!
If ever proof were needed of the contempt the *ankers have for the rest of us, this is it.
Glad I switched to the Co-op some years ago.
Coop
Just remember, the Coop has loaned vast amounts of cash to NuLabour.
Will it get it back, and if it doesn't, will you?
Seriously?
I've been banking online for just under 10 years - I cannot imagine having to go back to a situation where I couldn't manage my money that way. I don't have a branch of my bank within 20 miles - my "home branch" is nearly 90 miles away.
Although there are probably a number of people that won't use the service, I'm betting the number that do use it is higher than they are prepared to admit. Basically, HBoS is prepared to treat its customers with utter contempt.
I would suggest that anyone with an account with them might want to consider switching to bank that can offer these services.
Anyone who banks on-line...
Deserves everything they get. Including contemptible customer service and data loss.....
What do you think you're paying for? Service!!?
If you can't engage on the banks terms then why are you using them. Remember, you bank with them, they don't have to offer a service. The taxpayer will bail them out. If you didn't need them you wouldn't bank with them, would you?
Now **** off and get on with paying taxes you whinging gits. We are developing the future of Finance.....
Re: Anyone who banks online...
I was getting ready to call you all kinds of names, downvote your post, everything, until I continued past the first paragraph and caught the sarcasm...
Instead of name-calling, have a beer.
Exciting?! They should get out more ...
The statement 'an exciting new mobile banking service' fills me with dismay on 2 levels.
Firstly the overuse of the word exciting by marketing types is doing my head in. Every new product, service, programme, application, opportunity, thing, etc is now described as 'exciting' by default as if that's the only word available and NONE of them ever are! Secondly, if anyone thinks that a financial services product or facility is likely to be 'exciting' then they really really need to get out in the sun, listen to some music and understand a little more about life.
I Blame Lloyds
By the looks of it, the "upgrade" is really a migration onto Lloyds systems.
Re: I Blame Lloyds
You're right it has been "upgraded".
This is a bank where before they "merged" with HBOS used to batch up their cheques, send them via air to India where data entry clerks input them into the system, before sending the cheques back to the UK. It might be cheaper to an accountant but in terms of management it was a nightmare. Also, are bank tellers that overloaded with work that they can't enter the odd cheque (it's not a huge number) into the system directly. No, they're not. but the computer systems wouldn't have been able to cope - and no that's not a joke.
@AC 1608
Are you sure?
Cheques have magnetic ink, so are readable by machine. As far as I am aware pretty much all other banks have cheque image systems which allow processing to be carried out at least semi electronically. Also, sending cheques to India for keying is of dubious legallity.
Oh and it's not bank tellers that process cheques, it's the people in the cheque and cash processing centres, who then hand them on (physicall and/or electronically) to the clearing houses.
Wow
I thought a 2 day outage by my bank was annoying.
Presumably they're too poor to buy a few development servers?
Complain!
I rang HBOS the day after receiving the letter. Very nice chap I spoke to said that they'd only found out the same day and were expecting a lot of complaints.
I will of course be considering moving my money elsewhere ASAP.
Mind you, this is the same bank who a few years ago could not place the decimal point correctly on their website, so that the two pence digits would be the pound column, then the tens of pence, so that a balance of £1,234.56 would appear as £1,234.45.
Re: Halifax Bank of Scotland twunts
It's only the *investment accounts* that'll be without online access - regular current and savings accounts will continue to have access to an online banking system.
You are assuming
that people read the article and thought "oh, its investment accounts so it's not a problem for "normal" people rather than just read the headline and then came to post knee jerk comments ;-)
And?
Why should that make a difference?
Being offline for a year for ANY account in this day and age is unforgivable... And how long before the same ridiculus outage is foisted on their other account customers...
Two points
1. BoS calls a significant part of their range of savings accounts "investment accounts", so it IS ordinary savings accounts that are being cut off for a year.
2. While not covered in the story, this same migration is affecting ALL accounts including current accounts, with features like historical statements being removed.
So all BoS customers are affected, in fact, not just some perceived elite.
It's still a problem because...
...like it or not, even *investment* account holders (presumably not you then?) deserve service that is newer/better than the telegraph...
"in the short term"
Means 12 months of no access for your customers? No wonder they needed bailing out.
Let us know what you find out...
Let us know what you find out...
And...
And please provide your bank account details and credit card number as i Mr Mtababo from Ivory Coast would like to share the 100 million ponds I have taken from the government during the current coupe. If you agree to helping me, i will give you 10%....
Bugger
HBOS are one of the few UK high-street banks that didn't have a problem when we (as overseas investors) wanted to manage our UK savings somewhere. All the rest just looked frightened at the idea of not having a UK address for an account holder.
How am I supposed to manage things now? Twunts indeed.
Try HSBC
They're probably more used to overseas investors than any other.
One way of keeping your cash
It's one way of keeping your cash, by making it very difficult to let you get it.
No doubt they have a funding problem as well as a techie problem.
And another way is...
...Vilified by Visa.
Seemingly designed to stop any Internet based transactions from succeeding.
Works fine here...
and it's the only available guarantee for the merchant that he won't get a chargeback a month down the line because the customer claims he never made the transaction...
Leaving Halifax
I don't have much luck with banks. I left Lloyds and moved to Halifax about six months before they joined into the same thing.
This change to the online banking means I will now be leaving Halifax too. Not only are they saying you won't be able to manage investments online, they're also removing access to all your old credit card statements.
I honestly don't understand how they can be so shit.
I wonder if Google Bank will be any better when it rolls out next year.
Ooh, Google Bank!
I can see it now... I'm browsing the web and I get two adverts side by side. One is pushing sports cars because I've looked at too many BMW Z4 and Lotus Exige pictures, the other is from Google Bank saying "go on, you know you want one, we've already pre-approved your loan, credit checked you, and we also know you're not currently thinking of changing job..."
So
No real difference to current banks then? Apart from better computers and websites. And probably better customer service too. And they won't have been responsible for the financial crisis either. Yeah, evil Google bastards.
Simples
It is as the article suggests very simple, Lloyds waded in and fired all of the developers or annoyed them into moving. Those that are left were then left babysitting offshore developers, now we see the results!
Ex-Halifax Employee
HSBC is pretty good
Although they screw you over just as much as the next bank. Apart from that, truly global presence, and never even came close to asking for bailout money, from any government. Plus, they give you proper VISA debit cards now, rather than Maestro, which gets puzzled looks whenever you try to use it abroad. They're also rolling out 2-factor authentication systems for internet banking.
Barclays probably also not bad, but I really really would like to punch Bob Diamond*
* Note: this is not a threat. I just would like to do it, not that I ever would. Can't be too careful these days. Also, Bob, if you're reading, any jobs going?
Puzzled looks abroad?
You aren't trying to use it somewhere backwards like America are you? My French bank offered Visa Debit. Works just fine, both online and in the chip&pin reader. These days, the checkout girls don't even bother trying to see what sort of card it is, either it works in the reader or you can take your sorry ass to the cash machine...
@heyrick
Slight misread - no problem with VISA debit, used that on 4 continents. Maestro used to get strange looks wherever I used it, which is why I'm glad they no longer issue them.
?12?
Never had any problems with Maestro in the countries I've visited. Like the other guy said - they either work in the machine or they don't.
This topic is closed for new posts.
