Fragile Technology

Macys double bills customers

Retailer Macys has asked customers to check their bank statements after a computer glitch led to customers being billed twice for purchases made with debit cards used in stores in their eastern and central districts.

The company says a system error caused some debit cards to be double billed. The mistake also caused some customers to have overdrafts on their accounts.

The glitch only occurred for a 1 3/4hour window on 20 December - of course one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

Singaporean insurance customers pay double

Customers of Prudential Assurance Singapore have been hit by a computer glitch with their monthly premiums being deducted twice by mistake. Whilst admitting a glitch was at fault:

Prudential said a technical glitch had caused the Giro banking error.

The company won't elaborate:

Prudential declined to give further details on the glitch. It is still investigating the source of the error and the number of affected customers.

Ohio insurance customers duped by maths error

An Ohio insurance company is setting letters to 21,000 people who potentially have been affected by a basic maths error on its web site's comparison calculator. The calculator compares prices from Progressive Insurance against some of its competitors. However, what the programmers failed to deal with was that Progressive quotes rates over a 6 month period, compared to its competitors' 12 months.

"Our system is programmed to divide the Liberty and Commerce rates in half so that consumers see apples-to-apples comparisons," Cristy Cote, a Progressive spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. "Because of a programming error, the competitors' annual rates were shown."

According to boston.com this is the second such problem with the Progressive web site in recent times, and the calculator is being discontinued until the programmers pass their primary school maths exams.

Of course there's nothing on the Progressive web site 'Newsroom' page, either in the form of a news item from the company, or in the section where it tracks mentions about itself in the media.

Citibank customers can't access their money

Embattled Citibank, already buffeted by the global financial crisis, now can't even let customers access their funds, due a computer glitch.

According to the report, Citibank lost access to its account records in what sounds like a database or a backup corruption incident. The report was unclear of the root cause, but the problem did not appear to be the result of a security breach.

Computer glitch closes Candian stock exchange

A full day of trading on the Canadian stock exchange has been lost due to a computer glitch. The market operator says it was something relating to data feeds, the problem hit soon after opening.

In a statement, market operator TMX Group, which runs the Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange, said the company intends to open the exchanges Thursday morning. It said trading was halted at 9:48 a.m. "due to technical issues with data feeds.'"

Traders are obviously not impressed.

"I don't know if a mouse crawled in and bit through a piece of cord or what the Sam Hill happened. But obviously, it's a data disruption and it leaves you all standing around picking your seat."

As one blogger says:

The exchanges have actually failed to open at the regular time of 9:30 a.m. EST, and as one reporter put it "have been dead in the water since." If this is frustrating and stressful for me, I can't imagine what the mood is like on Bay Street; how traders and other market professionals must feel.

Tax payers told to check their bills

"The Hays County Tax Office is reporting that some people might have received incorrect tax bills due to a computer problem, according to a statement released by Hays County Tax Assessor-Collector Luanne Caraway."

Computer glitch causes errors on some tax bills

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British Financial Advisors can't type

Apparently thousands of British financial advisors are completely useless when it comes to using online systems.

"About 285,000 inaccurate valuation requests have been made by IFAs to Norwich Union during the year to the end of October, resulting in clients being unable to receive product information.

This is according to data produced by the insurance giant, which also showed 57 per cent of the 116,000 electronic applications made by advisers for product prices across its range received in October contained errors, to a total of 66,120."

The bulk of the errors can apparently be traced to 'human error'. EG They can't type. Or they forget to reset their PIN. And these people want us to let them manage our financial affairs....

IFAs riddle NU requests with errors

When bank passbook is lost, and when it's not lost

A customer of Britain's Halifax Bank received a letter from the bank the other day saying that because she had lost her passbook, she'd have to apply to open a new account. All of which was a surprise to the woman because the passbook in question was safely in her possession and not lost at all.

Turns out several years ago a staff member at the bank may have inadvertently flagged it as lost. Which SHOULD have meant the customer could not use the account. But a flaw in the system prevented this, so the customer merrily continued to use her account, despite the bank's system believing the passbook was lost.

Halifax errors that cost a saver time and worry

National Bank sinks the Canadian stock exchange

National Bank Financial caused the Canadian stockmarket indices to jump around after a computer glitch caused $5billion of incorrect trading activity.

National Bank glitch sinks TSX -- briefly

"It looked like they put a sell order in, which drove the price down. When they got filled, they realized that they had to buy it all back. When they bought it all back, it forced the stocks all the way back up," said one trader who heard that NBF incurred trading losses in the range of $10-million to $50-million.

"One of our programs malfunctioned and sent a bunch of buy and sell orders [to the TSX] at the same time. The system didn't work."

Never ever again, well, til next week anyway

Australia's Commonwealth Bank must be wishing it never got out of bed this month. The other day they managed to double debit 200,000 customers. And vowed it would never happen again.

"We're currently auditing our process to ensure it doesn't happen again," said a spokesman for the bank. "We're trying to ensure our customers are not put out again by the fees."

So course, it's happened again.

"The Commonwealth Bank is at a loss to explain the cause of a technical glitch which has crippled its online banking system for the second time in two weeks.

Since 9am, customers logging onto the CBAs online banking portal, Netbank, have been met with an error screen stating that the site is temporarily unavailable."

Commonwealth Bank crippled by online glitch

In their defence this seems to be an unrelated issue. Last week it was due to a transaction file being processed twice inadvertently. Today's problems are centered around their online banking system.