UK Barclay bank glitch leaves families "homeless"

HELLFIRE

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/barclays-it-glitch-leaves-family-homeless-as-bank-outage-derails-house-purchase/ar-AA1yf3AT?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds – Barclays IT glitch leaves family ‘homeless’ as bank outage derails house purchase

Civil Servant Paola Mereu, 39, sold the house her and her husband and their two daughters, aged one and seven, lived in at Uxbridge and were meant to buy their new home in West Sussex on Friday. However, a major IT glitch which has hit Barclays has seen customers unable to make payments or access their accounts, including Mrs Mereu. …

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c983ge165zlo – Barclays tech outage leaves family without a home

A woman was left without a home for three days after Barclays was hit by a technical issue just as she was completing the purchase of her new house. …

/fights urge to unleash 4letter torrent of explitives

Guess this is the bank’s equivalent of “the dog ate my homework?”

/sarcasm

Regards

Somewhat-Reticent

Liabilities - transportation & meals, hotel, 'special' childcare, petcare … adding up …
How far to nearest local branch for Real-Human® solution?

HELLFIRE

Somewhat-Reticent How far to nearest local branch for Real-Human® solution?

Is a solution to be found in person though? "If the computer is down, it's down" and all that...

Granted, there's zero details given in either article what exactly is happening on the Barclays backend -- hardware / datacenter failure, ransomware, failed data storage / backups. Either way, as the saying goes, "it's a s**t sandwich and everyone has to take a bite..."

My Cynical IT 00000010bits

Regards

px_eliezer_

Barclays Bank sounds as messed up as Lieutenant Barclay from Star Trek.

HELLFIRE

FWIW, to dive down the rabbit-hole, I got these links :

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/barclays-it-glitch-money-access-cashless-b2691255.html -- The Barclays IT glitch exposes a major flaw in our cashless society

... On Friday, Barclays became the latest financial institution to be the subject of a major IT outage: for three days, Barclaycard apps, online banking and services, cards, payments and transfers, branches and telephone banking were all “areas affected”. Worse still, the problem emerged on what is traditionally payday for many Britons. As of Sunday morning, some customers were still experiencing problems accessing their funds and making payments (though the bank said ATMs were working as normal). One family even became temporarily homeless as the glitch derailed a house sale. ... Barclays now says the issue has been resolved – and that it wasn’t a cyberattack, rather a “technical issue”. But things went south for other banking customers on Monday morning, with some Lloyds/Halifax customers reporting issues with payments. This was a mercifully short snafu and even the Barclays outage pales by comparison to the disastrous situation at TSB a few years ago, when the botched migration of its customer records from a platform operated by Lloyds to one provided by Spanish parent Sabadell went badly wrong and left some customers locked out for a week or more. ...

https://www.accountancyage.com/2025/02/04/when-banks-fail-businesses-pay-the-barclays-outage-lesson/ -- Barclays outage lesson

On Friday, January 31, 2025, Barclays experienced a significant IT outage that disrupted various banking services, including online and mobile banking platforms, as well as payment processing systems. This incident coincided with the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) deadline for self-assessment tax returns, leading to considerable inconvenience for many customers. The technical issue, which Barclays confirmed was not due to a cyberattack, left numerous customers unable to access their accounts, make payments, or view accurate account balances. Some individuals reported failed transactions, including critical ones like property purchases, and businesses faced significant financial disruptions due to rejected payments. ...

... The Barclays outage is the latest in a series of banking IT failures that have disrupted businesses and individuals at critical moments. As financial institutions continue their push toward digital-first banking, incidents like these raise a key question: how accountable should banks be when technical failures disrupt financial transactions? For consumers, a service disruption is an inconvenience. But for businesses, accountants, and financial professionals, an outage can mean missed payroll deadlines, rejected tax payments, and stalled supplier transactions. Finance teams increasingly rely on real-time digital banking, but when these systems fail, there are few protections in place to shield businesses from financial loss. A decade ago, most businesses still had access to in-person banking services as a fallback. ...

px_eliezer_ Barclays Bank sounds as messed up as Lieutenant Barclay from Star Trek.

More like Lt Larkin from the Trek Shorts eyerolls -- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Edward_Larkin

Regards

GrumpyCanadian

HELLFIRE For simpler transactions, maybe the lesson is "have more than one bank account at banks not owned by the same corporate monstrosity". At least that might help, as long as it's not the entire payment network that goes down, like when we discovered that the entirety of the Interac network was powered by Rogers and no one else.