By Andy McCue, 4 January 2005 12:10
NEWS HSBC has admitted that hardware failure was the cause of a major computer systems crash yesterday that hit thousands of customers trying to use the bank's cash machines, credit and debit cards, and online services.
Many services went down at midday on the New Year public holiday leaving customers unable to withdraw money from cash machines while others had their Switch and credit cards refused in shops.
HSBC's internet banking service was also hit and people were unable to access their personal accounts or pay bills online for much of the day.
The bank has admitted that the outage was the worst in its history but a HSBC spokeswoman told silicon.com services were restored late in the evening and are fully operational again today.
"There was an outage due to a hardware failure and we do apologise to all of our customers," she said.
There are no further details available at the moment on the exact nature of the hardware failure but the HSBC spokeswoman said it was not related to usage volumes or the new chip and PIN cards.
Comments
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1. Iain Benger-Stevenson
It always annoys me that one cannot buy goods if the computer has failed, or the phone goes down. Shops used to be able to do busines with paper packs that they could slip into a machine, and then swipe the card. You simply signed the docket, and hey presto, you became the possessor of the goods.
Many years ago, I wished to make a purchase in the Haute Savoy, on top of a mountain. My credit card was refused, because they did not have a telephone. Just how scared are these shopkeepers?
2. anonymous
Still problems this morning (5/1/2004) - Restrictions making it hard to log on. Got in on 6th attempt
3. anonymous
They are still down. I called HSBC in the morning GMT, and they told me this was a "routine" maintenance. This was after being down for more than 12 hours. I've just called again, more than 24 hours after I first noticed my account was inaccessible, and now they are finally telling the truth.
Apparently they're not comfortable with being up front with everyone, they told this journalist that they have fixed the problem. Well, it's not fixed, most if not all of the US accounts are still completely inaccessible to online banking users and the HSBC employees tasked with providing information to it's customers via its online database systems.
Hope my money is still there if/when they get this system back online.