A Virgin Money subsidy is facing harsh customer criticism after transfers into their accounts failed to materialise.
To make it worse, the outage came as lawmakers are seemingly gearing up to change the rules regarding digital service outages.
It all kicked off on Friday January 3 when some Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank customers noted that their wages and other payments failed to get into their accounts.
Some have taken to social media to vent their frustration, saying that not only did they not get their money, but that the British bank also allegedly blamed others for the service outage, saying that people should just talk with their employers about the lost wages.
“We are aware of the issues some customers are having with transactions coming in to their accounts,” the bank said in a statement on Twitter. “We are doing a full investigation and ask that you please bear with us whilst we find out what is causing this. Any further information will be provided as soon as we have it.”
It later added, “We want to reassure customers concerned about potential charges as a result of the current issue. Customers will not be negatively impacted financially and we will make good on any charges automatically generated. We are sorry for any inconvenience customers are experiencing.”
However, it seemed as if this did not cool down the affected customers’ emotions.
“So when did the penny drop that it’s your [fault?]” asked one customer. “[How] about saying sorry to your frustrated customers for mugging them off [and] instructing them to take issue with their own payroll depts when this all blew up this morning?”
A second wrote, “As long as its sorted by [let’s] say 7pm [as] I can’t buy anything on my card as it keeps getting declined and like most of the population I don’t have cash. I fancy a nice greasy [kebab] tonight so make sure it works by then.”
A third tweeted, “[How] a bank doesn’t have a contingency plan in the case they can’t perform [their] job is beyond me!”
Lawmakers have recently expressed similar concerns about digital financial services outages. In October, the Treasury Committee suggested that Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SM&CR) should be amended to include digital outages.
The SM&CR change would, was the argument, force financial firms to take more responsibility when situations like these occurs and actively work to prevent them.
The suggestion came after a series of highly publicised outages has affected UK customers in the past.
“The number of IT failures that have occurred in the financial services sector, including TSB, Visa and Barclays, and the harm caused to consumers is unacceptable,” said Steve Bake, the Treasury Committee’s lead member for the inquiry, at the time.
Just days after the announcement, Revolut suffered a glitched that caused its customers to be locked out of their accounts.
A few weeks later, TSB Bank experienced a similar outage.
Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank’s umbrella group CYBG changed its name to Virgin Money in 2019. The entire group is expected to swap their old names to the new by end of 2021, according to the BBC.
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