Fragile Technology

City Double Charges Residents For Water Bill

Thousands of families in the City of Casselberry in Florida have been worried they'd have their water supply cut off after receiving bills that said their water would be cut off. The City has owned up to double charging more than 2,300 people on their water bills following a computer glitch teamed with human error (double whammy!).

View Larger Map

Mississippians not receive unemployment payments has

A computer glitch has meant some 2,000 people in Mississippi have not received their unemployment checks.

Applications for assistance have doubled over last year due to the recession officials say.

Veterans Affairs hospitals experiencing medical data problems for months

It's been revealed that at least a third of the 153 Veterans Affairs' hospitals around the USA have been experiencing problems with incorrect medical data on the VA computer system for several months. VA says the glitch is now fixed.

Medical data -- vital signs, lab results, active medications -- sometimes popped up under another patient's name on computer screens. Patients at Veterans Affairs centers around the country received incorrect doses of drugs, faced treatment delays and possibly were exposed to other medical errors because software allowed faulty displays of their electronic health records.

The glitches date back to a software upgrade in August 2008. Steve Buyer, the top Republican on the Veterans Affairs House Committee has demanded an explanation.

"I am deeply concerned about the consequences on patient care that could have resulted from this 'software glitch' and that mistakes were not disclosed to patients who were directly affected," said Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind. "I have asked VA for a forensic analysis of all pertinent records to determine if any veterans were harmed, and I would like to know who was responsible for the testing and authorized the release of the new application."

It's been claimed officials knew about the problem, and lied to cover up.

Customers receive late bills

Customers of the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority have been receiving their power bills up to two months late due to a computer glitch. The Authority services customers in the City of Wilmington and New Hanover County in North Carolina, USA.

Spokesperson Carey Ricks said the department is still playing catch-up, but they hope to have all backlogged bills sent out by April. Ricks said about 70 percent of the bills have been sent out.

View Larger Map

Hundreds battle health payment system

Thousands of patients and providers have been battling Florida's Medicaid computer billing system since was introduced seven months ago. In many instances the state government has had to make emergency payments to health providers, because glitches with the computer system has led to delays in payments for services flowing through.

Since July, the state Agency for Health Care Administration has provided nearly $500 million in emergency reimbursements to nursing homes, home health agencies and other providers who couldn't get their claims through the new computer system.

The system has been provided by computer giant EDS under a $300 million contract signed three years go, to provide a billing and financial platform for the state's $15 billion Medicaid program

Mayor apologizes for late payroll

The Mayor of New Bedford, Massachusetts, has been forced to apologize to the City Council's staff after a staff member failed to check that payroll direct deposits were processed correctly by the bank.

Normally this would not have been a problem - except a glitch at the bank meant that one of two batches of direct deposits did not go through to employee accounts. The Mayor says the responsible employee realized their error and went to work early the next day to start correcting the issue.

One of the batches failed to go through and the employee responsible for confirming that the funds had reached the destination bank and deposited failed to do so.

Holidaymakers double booked at South Dakota park

Campers booked into Wylie Park in South Dakota found themselves without a spot after a computer malfunction resulted in some sites being double booked. Officials say two of the six computers were not transfering data to the central server, leading to the error.

Camping reservations were halted Monday morning - the first day reservations could be made - after officials realized two of the six computers being used to book the reservations were not feeding into the main server. They've since resumed.

Those who can't be rebooked are being placed on a waiting list. Managers say they are glad the error was picked up early, the overbookings were for weekends in June and July, including the Fourth of July, when presumably demand would be high.

View Larger Map

Glitch hits bank customers

It's been reported that hundreds of customers of Abbey bank in the UK jammed the phone lines after their ATM cards stopped working and transactions were declined, despite having sufficient funds in their accounts.

An Abbey spokesman apologised for the problem, saying: "We had a minor system incident and it did affect a small number of customers for a very short period of time at ATMs and at point of sale. "It has been resolved and we apologise to those customers affected."

Computer glitch strikes housing trust's online system

People applying for their entitlements from Jamaica's National Housing Trust's new online system have been incorrectly receiving emails advising their applications have been rejected.

Officials blame a new online refund system that launched at the beginning of the new year. The system received 3,000 applications on its first day.

It is reported that the glitch, which surfaced late last week, resulted in persons who applied for their 2001 contribution refunds receiving incorrect e-mails advising them that the applications had been rejected.

Taiwan's immigration computer system hit by glitch

A disgruntled employee may have planted a bug that led to Taiwan's immigration computer system crashing. Apparently the National Immigration Agency recently terminated its computer systems maintenance contract.

The failure meant major delays for passengers entering and leaving the country, as documents and people had to be checked manually. The system first malfunctioned at 6.45am, a peak travel period.

All travel documents were being hand-checked by immigration officers yesterday, causing long lineups and leaving thousands of passengers frustrated. Officers wrote down passengers’ travel information, which the NIA said would be entered into the system once the computers had been fixed.

UPDATE The problem was finally fixed more than 30 hours later. Officials traced the issue to hardware issues, and despite the system being backup, estimated it would take another couple of days to fully repair the damage.

“faulty hard drives” were responsible for the system problems, dispelling rumors that a disgruntled individual was responsible for the glitch. All hard drives in both terminals at Taoyuan had been replaced by yesterday afternoon.