Nationwide UK web bank and app take unscheduled nap Nationwide UK’s online presence is anything but this morning, what with an unspecified tech infrastructure glitch that has prevented customers across Blighty from logging into their accounts or using ATMs. Sorry, Internet Banking & the Banking app are currently unavailable. We’re working to get them back up and running ASAP. …
This is what happens when risk management is allowed to determine criteria for managing technical operations rather than solid engineering expertise. NW have moved from being under technical control to being under the control of risk managers. Once outsourced it will get worse, just look at the banks who already did this.
Once outsourced it will get worse, just look at the banks who already did this.
Once? I thought Nationwide had been progressively outsourcing via CrapGemini and Computacenter for several years now? The latter definitely had a hand in the DC build on Greenham Common Air Base (as was).
I was outsourced in 2008.To BT. Under Nationwide the team I was in had 8 engineers and a manager and too much work. Under BT, we moved to 3 engineers, 4+ project managers and a whole host of BT "paperwork" overheads. And even more work that wasn't getting done.
I eventually managed to escape after my manager insisted I detail what I was doing in a month. The management couldn't tell me what my priorities were for the next week. And "whatever work is highest priority" wasn't a good enough answer. I said "if you can't tell me what I'm doing I'll do nothing" and hung up. And true to my word, in a month I sat in the office and did nothing. Mainly because I was about to leave and didn't care. But it was nice to be right. :-)
Logged in just fine to check I have sufficient funds to cover the direct debit paying off my creditcard this week. Evidently not a prolonged outage.
Hypothetical: if I'd been in urgent need of cash and had had to resort to the desperate measure of using the creditcard in an ATM, would I have been able to get them to refund the cash-onna-creditcard charges?
Hypothetical: if I'd been in urgent need of cash and had had to resort to the desperate measure of using the creditcard in an ATM
Not hypothetical: having worked in quite a few Bank DCs I keep a grand in cash in a secure location[1] at all times.
[1] The fire safe in my office. If burglars get to that they'll be blagging a lot more than £1000 worth of computer equipment anyway.
Unverified users' comments, I should add. Maybe a piece of investigative journalism into the manipulation of Down Detector in order to negatively impact organisations reputation might be interesting. Might involve some actual work on the part of the journalist mind you.
I used to do a lot of travel for a big American bank.
The advice was always take two cards, two providers, two different networks, perhaps a visa debit card and a mastercard credit card from different banks.
This was great advice and I would recommend in normal life too.
My job is in IT and I would not trust any deployment to be permanently available for reasons both in and outside my control.
Quote from Red Dwarf along the lines that "Computers are not Infullible" comes to mind.
I'd rather have Nationwide's incompetence than that of the other usual suspects, if only because Nationwide is the only large mutual still offering banking services (though one or two smaller building socs still do).
Despite which, I think Nationwide's board are the same overpaid banking sector freeloaders as anybody elses board...
Anybody who utters this as an explanation deserves a swift kick in the blx. We used to get it at work now and then from the techies who ought to know better. PLEASE just say "The cleaner accidentally unplugged the mail server" or "The web computer stopped working" or whatever. Anything other than that utterly useless "technical issue" shyte. Thanks
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