Cost cutting to blame for RBS's Cyber Monday card glitch, says union
Royal Bank of Scotland apologised to customers and promised to compensate those 'left out of pocket' by a technical fault which left them unable to pay for purchases on one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
Customers of RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank were not able to complete transactions using their debit cards, or withdraw money from cash machines on Monday, dubbed 'Cyber Monday' because it is traditionally the busiest day of the year for online shopping as consumers prepare for Christmas.
Susan Allen, director of customer solutions at RBS, said it was still unclear exactly what went wrong.
'We put all our focus on getting it fixed and we now start the detailed work on what went wrong. We understand the impact on our customers. It is completely unacceptable that customers couldn't access their own money,' she told BBC Radio 5 live.
'The investigations would suggest it is completely unrelated to the volumes on Cyber Monday.'
RBS said the majority of the problems were experienced over a three hour period between 6.30pm and 9.30pm on Monday evening, although problems were also reported at other times.
It is thought millions of customers were affected as card payments were declined and some customers could not access the banks' websites or smartphone apps. Typically around 250,000 RBS customers will use a cash machine every hour.
Allen insisted the bank would 'put this right for customers'.
Earlier on Tuesday RBS took to Twitter to apologise to furious customers.
'The systems issues that affected our customers last night have now been resolved and all of our services are now back working normally,' the bank tweeted.
'We would like to apologise to our customers. If anyone has been left out of pocket as a result of these problems, we will put this right.'
RBS advised any customers still experiencing 'issues' to get in touch with its call centres or branches, despite saying the problems were now resolved.
Guardian readers reported they were still experiencing problems accessing their accounts on Tuesday morning, while others expressed anger about the lack of communication from the bank.
One reader, petey123, wrote:' So nothing on their website or by email about this, until I find out on the Guardian why my card wasn't working. Oh, but you put it on twitter. great.'
The failure is a huge embarrassment for RBS, following similar glitches 18 months ago when IT problems locked many customers out of their accounts for several days. It cost the bank £175m to fix the problem and pay compensation to those customers affected. Stephen Hester, RBS chief executive at the time, waived a bonus potentially worth more than £2m as a result of the disruption in June last year.
It comes at a low point for RBS amid allegations that it is deliberately wrecking viable small businesses to boost profits. City regulators and the bank itself are investigating the allegations.
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