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Barclays Outage.
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@PrincessFiona You did say ' If you want a single back up current account, keep £500 in it', For many people that is impossible, they live from one pay day to the next, so is having a credit card if you have a low credit score.PrincessFiona said:
I never said I expected anyone to do anything. I never said have £500 balance.shine166 said:
There are nearly 9m people with zero savings, expecting them to have £500 sat in a account 'just incase' is not realistic.PrincessFiona said:
you don't have to spread any money to have a backup credit card so you can at least pay for things. If you want a single back up current account, keep £500 in it - that is all. Just ensure they are from different banking groupsshine166 said:
I get what you're saying, but exactly how much money are people supposed to spread over how many accounts ?. Barclays online was down too, so if that's your main bank you're fkd no matter what is all I'm saying.PrincessFiona said:
Highly unlikely internet banking would be down across multiple banks though and you don't need internet banking to pay a bill by credit car - hence why the second payment card needs to be with a completely different banking group. For us it has proven worth doing on so many occasions, I honestly couldn't tell you how many times - many of which were when overseasshine166 said:
Stating 'common sense' is victim blaming. Do you have 2 cars incase one breaks down ?PrincessFiona said:
I don't think it is victim blaming to suggest it is sensible to have a second means of payment - it is just common sense. If you lose, damage or have a card stolen, it takes at least a few days to get a new card. The impact is far more if you're overseas. Same could be said if you are a victim of cloning,shine166 said:
Personally I find it bizarre that this situation has happened and we are blaming customers for being too dumb to have multiple accounts, rather than than calling out the systems we have in place.Algarveaddick said:On the multiple bank account thing. 50% of people are below average intelligence. Many people struggle to manage their finances with one account. Most of the people who contribute to this forum are fairly bright, and I bet many of them wouldn't dream of having six or seven accounts.
I am not knocking it, Canters, it's brilliant that you play them at their own game and make some cash for yourselves, but not everyone has your ability, so you shouldn't be surprised that not everyone does what you do, mate.
Kinda turned into victim blaming which i think is unfair on millions of people.
You could have 10 cards if you like, if you can't access Internet banking as its crashed, you can't move it anyway (which is also what has happened).
I use a Revolut card abroad, but that's a completely different kind of situation.
Lots of ways to do it. Looks like you are confusing a balance of £500 with an emergency credit limit on a credit card of £500
There is a lot of good advice on this thread for those who have plenty of money, but the reality for a huge number of people in this country is very far removed from that.0 -
Yes, IF you want a backup CURRENT account - it doesn't have to be 'spare' £500 though does itME14addick said:
@PrincessFiona You did say ' If you want a single back up current account, keep £500 in it', For many people that is impossible, they live from one pay day to the next, so is having a credit card if you have a low credit score.PrincessFiona said:
I never said I expected anyone to do anything. I never said have £500 balance.shine166 said:
There are nearly 9m people with zero savings, expecting them to have £500 sat in a account 'just incase' is not realistic.PrincessFiona said:
you don't have to spread any money to have a backup credit card so you can at least pay for things. If you want a single back up current account, keep £500 in it - that is all. Just ensure they are from different banking groupsshine166 said:
I get what you're saying, but exactly how much money are people supposed to spread over how many accounts ?. Barclays online was down too, so if that's your main bank you're fkd no matter what is all I'm saying.PrincessFiona said:
Highly unlikely internet banking would be down across multiple banks though and you don't need internet banking to pay a bill by credit car - hence why the second payment card needs to be with a completely different banking group. For us it has proven worth doing on so many occasions, I honestly couldn't tell you how many times - many of which were when overseasshine166 said:
Stating 'common sense' is victim blaming. Do you have 2 cars incase one breaks down ?PrincessFiona said:
I don't think it is victim blaming to suggest it is sensible to have a second means of payment - it is just common sense. If you lose, damage or have a card stolen, it takes at least a few days to get a new card. The impact is far more if you're overseas. Same could be said if you are a victim of cloning,shine166 said:
Personally I find it bizarre that this situation has happened and we are blaming customers for being too dumb to have multiple accounts, rather than than calling out the systems we have in place.Algarveaddick said:On the multiple bank account thing. 50% of people are below average intelligence. Many people struggle to manage their finances with one account. Most of the people who contribute to this forum are fairly bright, and I bet many of them wouldn't dream of having six or seven accounts.
I am not knocking it, Canters, it's brilliant that you play them at their own game and make some cash for yourselves, but not everyone has your ability, so you shouldn't be surprised that not everyone does what you do, mate.
Kinda turned into victim blaming which i think is unfair on millions of people.
You could have 10 cards if you like, if you can't access Internet banking as its crashed, you can't move it anyway (which is also what has happened).
I use a Revolut card abroad, but that's a completely different kind of situation.
Lots of ways to do it. Looks like you are confusing a balance of £500 with an emergency credit limit on a credit card of £500
There is a lot of good advice on this thread for those who have plenty of money, but the reality for a huge number of people in this country is very far removed from that.
Else a credit card with a low credit limit in another option.
Just because the advice won't be possible for everyone, doesn't mean it isn't good for most.
I am agreeing with advice given by others on here, even if it doesn't solve the issue to every single person1 -
@Jessie
On the competition debate; I definitely recommend paying attention to @cafcfan on that topic, he knows his stuff. There is a problem with natural inertia of customers. People are worried about shifting all their standing orders and direct debits. I know that banks offer to do it all for you if you switch, but a lot of people don't know that or don't believe it will be that easy. People switch insurance companies easily but that's because the contracts are renewed annually.
The other thing to say is that compared with mainland Europe, Britain is way ahead, as it is in associated financial services such as platforms for your investments. There are of course big banks dominating here, just not the same as the ones in the UK, and its the same story. None of the banks I use here match HSBC overall when it comes to the tech. Raifeissen is nowadays the best of those I've used, but it took them long enough (and meanwhile they continue to make loads of wonga in Russia). Unicredit, my word, what a shower that was. Doing stuff that in the UK simply would not be tolerated. I quit them within 12 months. I really wanted to complain about them but there is no independent body to complain to. My wife had an account with ABN Amro for a while simply because she had Unilever shares which they held. Just leaving them was a load of pain.
I think that unless there is a tough and accessible (for ordinary retail customers) regulatory regime, they all take the piss, at least in Europe, I have no idea how well it works in the USA.1 -
I would say that competition between the banks is very much alive. I deal with direct debits in my job and I see people frequently changing banks to make use of the cash they offer for switching.0
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You cannot possibly say 'this has nothing to do with politics' when every single thing you do and say online is monitored by your government, you have no democratic elections, your economy is built on indentured servitude and your citizens post from the safety of a VPN in case they say something the CCP doesn't like and they get disappeared. Even your own foray into OpenAI rewrites history to deny recent political dissidence ever took place.Jessie said:
This has nothing to do with politics. There was very little competition many years ago. But in the recent 10 or 20 years a lot of smaller banks have opened which, naturally, changed the market dynamics completely.Leroy Ambrose said:
With the best will in the world, you're in a *slightly* different situation in China...Jessie said:I work for a bank here in my country. We don't charge anything for personal current accounts/debit accounts, credit accounts or online banking services like domestic money transfer. And this is the standard practice among all banks here. An outage like this one with Barclays would be simply unimaginable here (meaning it can't happen at all). The food bank answer to customers is... wow, I'm speechless. Your banks really got some nerve... They literally treat the customers like idiots... Or there's simply no competition in your banking industry? It beggars belief.
Come off it 🙄2 -
PrincessFiona said:
I never said I expected anyone to do anything. I never said have £500 balance.shine166 said:
There are nearly 9m people with zero savings, expecting them to have £500 sat in a account 'just incase' is not realistic.PrincessFiona said:
you don't have to spread any money to have a backup credit card so you can at least pay for things. If you want a single back up current account, keep £500 in it - that is all. Just ensure they are from different banking groupsshine166 said:
I get what you're saying, but exactly how much money are people supposed to spread over how many accounts ?. Barclays online was down too, so if that's your main bank you're fkd no matter what is all I'm saying.PrincessFiona said:
Highly unlikely internet banking would be down across multiple banks though and you don't need internet banking to pay a bill by credit car - hence why the second payment card needs to be with a completely different banking group. For us it has proven worth doing on so many occasions, I honestly couldn't tell you how many times - many of which were when overseasshine166 said:
Stating 'common sense' is victim blaming. Do you have 2 cars incase one breaks down ?PrincessFiona said:
I don't think it is victim blaming to suggest it is sensible to have a second means of payment - it is just common sense. If you lose, damage or have a card stolen, it takes at least a few days to get a new card. The impact is far more if you're overseas. Same could be said if you are a victim of cloning,shine166 said:
Personally I find it bizarre that this situation has happened and we are blaming customers for being too dumb to have multiple accounts, rather than than calling out the systems we have in place.Algarveaddick said:On the multiple bank account thing. 50% of people are below average intelligence. Many people struggle to manage their finances with one account. Most of the people who contribute to this forum are fairly bright, and I bet many of them wouldn't dream of having six or seven accounts.
I am not knocking it, Canters, it's brilliant that you play them at their own game and make some cash for yourselves, but not everyone has your ability, so you shouldn't be surprised that not everyone does what you do, mate.
Kinda turned into victim blaming which i think is unfair on millions of people.
You could have 10 cards if you like, if you can't access Internet banking as its crashed, you can't move it anyway (which is also what has happened).
I use a Revolut card abroad, but that's a completely different kind of situation.
Lots of ways to do it. Looks like you are confusing a balance of £500 with an emergency credit limit on a credit card of £500
Its literally the exact thing I replied to and quoted, I'm confusing nothing... just replying to your solutions of customers avoiding being in the shit if the bank goes down.
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not in contextshine166 said:PrincessFiona said:
I never said I expected anyone to do anything. I never said have £500 balance.shine166 said:
There are nearly 9m people with zero savings, expecting them to have £500 sat in a account 'just incase' is not realistic.PrincessFiona said:
you don't have to spread any money to have a backup credit card so you can at least pay for things. If you want a single back up current account, keep £500 in it - that is all. Just ensure they are from different banking groupsshine166 said:
I get what you're saying, but exactly how much money are people supposed to spread over how many accounts ?. Barclays online was down too, so if that's your main bank you're fkd no matter what is all I'm saying.PrincessFiona said:
Highly unlikely internet banking would be down across multiple banks though and you don't need internet banking to pay a bill by credit car - hence why the second payment card needs to be with a completely different banking group. For us it has proven worth doing on so many occasions, I honestly couldn't tell you how many times - many of which were when overseasshine166 said:
Stating 'common sense' is victim blaming. Do you have 2 cars incase one breaks down ?PrincessFiona said:
I don't think it is victim blaming to suggest it is sensible to have a second means of payment - it is just common sense. If you lose, damage or have a card stolen, it takes at least a few days to get a new card. The impact is far more if you're overseas. Same could be said if you are a victim of cloning,shine166 said:
Personally I find it bizarre that this situation has happened and we are blaming customers for being too dumb to have multiple accounts, rather than than calling out the systems we have in place.Algarveaddick said:On the multiple bank account thing. 50% of people are below average intelligence. Many people struggle to manage their finances with one account. Most of the people who contribute to this forum are fairly bright, and I bet many of them wouldn't dream of having six or seven accounts.
I am not knocking it, Canters, it's brilliant that you play them at their own game and make some cash for yourselves, but not everyone has your ability, so you shouldn't be surprised that not everyone does what you do, mate.
Kinda turned into victim blaming which i think is unfair on millions of people.
You could have 10 cards if you like, if you can't access Internet banking as its crashed, you can't move it anyway (which is also what has happened).
I use a Revolut card abroad, but that's a completely different kind of situation.
Lots of ways to do it. Looks like you are confusing a balance of £500 with an emergency credit limit on a credit card of £500
Its literally the exact thing I replied to and quoted, I'm confusing nothing... just replying to your solutions of customers avoiding being in the shit if the bank goes down.
I quoted you - I used the the word 'expect' because you used it. I don't expect anyone to do anything, so I didn't use the word 'expect'
The options are still options. You don't have to have a 'spare' £500 to have 2 current accounts. And you don't even have to have 2 current accounts to have an alternative option0 -
Can we please give @Jessie a break here, everyone? She's already made it clear she's not able to respond to a post like that. What's more I think it is quite possible for banking to work better for ordinary citizens in China despite everything you say about the regime being true. At the very least it's interesting to hear. There are a lot of things we don't know about ordinary middle-class Chinese life.Leroy Ambrose said:
You cannot possibly say 'this has nothing to do with politics' when every single thing you do and say online is monitored by your government, you have no democratic elections, your economy is built on indentured servitude and your citizens post from the safety of a VPN in case they say something the CCP doesn't like and they get disappeared. Even your own foray into OpenAI rewrites history to deny recent political dissidence ever took place.Jessie said:
This has nothing to do with politics. There was very little competition many years ago. But in the recent 10 or 20 years a lot of smaller banks have opened which, naturally, changed the market dynamics completely.Leroy Ambrose said:
With the best will in the world, you're in a *slightly* different situation in China...Jessie said:I work for a bank here in my country. We don't charge anything for personal current accounts/debit accounts, credit accounts or online banking services like domestic money transfer. And this is the standard practice among all banks here. An outage like this one with Barclays would be simply unimaginable here (meaning it can't happen at all). The food bank answer to customers is... wow, I'm speechless. Your banks really got some nerve... They literally treat the customers like idiots... Or there's simply no competition in your banking industry? It beggars belief.
Come off it 🙄
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Client setup a payment to me mid Friday afternoon - as far as I know it shows as left his account but there's no sign this end - what usually takes a matter of minutes is still out of commission 70 odd hours and one full banking day later. I'm not (and never will again be) a barclays user/victim, but their inability to reliably do basic stuff while never giving a fig about said users will remain until the users all eventually drift away to less shitty providers.
Sounds like Lloyds group banking technology showing signs of similar failure.
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No problem Jessie, there are plenty of people on here who would dispute those words in bold, mind😉 But in your case I've got the advantage of having lived among (and indeed am married to one) people who had to suffer a totalitarian regime. Many of them still look up to Britain and the way we do things, and they are equally as perplexed as you are to learn that some things don't work properly at all.Jessie said:@PragueAddick Thank you so much. You're one of the kindest members on here and have been extremely considerate. I really appreciate your support. Your previous post in reply to my comment is informative and thought-provoking. Cheers.🙏🙏🙏
I'm looking forward to your observations when a thread is started about the state of our railways, especially the failure to build any high speed lines (but not now! we have a funny relationship with that topic, on this forum🤣)2 -
So what, are we not supposed to point out the quite obvious lunacy of somebody who is posting from a country that deliberately keeps it's citizens from asking questions about their banking and finance industry telling everyone that banking is better in a communist country?
I'm sorry, but am I losing my fucking mind here? 🤣🤣🤣4 -
Nobody is stopping you making your observations, because we do not have to worry about doing so. However she is unable to reply effectively - for exactly the reasons you’ve mentioned. I suppose you might then say, well she shouldn’t have posted at all. But that would be a pity because as I said, it is perfectly possible that on a day to day level, retail banking works better there than here. Maybe the tech is generally better? I suppose the issue is, if you do have a problem with a Chinese bank, whom can you turn to, but it can be a question in the UK too. We are lucky to have the Consumers Association, and to a less reliable extent, a strong media, but the FCA seems like an under- resourced and possibly captured organisation.Leroy Ambrose said:So what, are we not supposed to point out the quite obvious lunacy of somebody who is posting from a country that deliberately keeps it's citizens from asking questions about their banking and finance industry telling everyone that banking is better in a communist country?
I'm sorry, but am I losing my fucking mind here? 🤣🤣🤣1 -
But what would be the end game/point in that? She's offering an at-best naive, and at-worst CCP-propaganda influenced assessment of something so complex that it can't possibly be boiled down to 'ATM always works'.PragueAddick said:
Nobody is stopping you making your observations, because we do not have to worry about doing so. However she is unable to reply effectively - for exactly the reasons you’ve mentioned. I suppose you might then say, well she shouldn’t have posted at all. But that would be a pity because as I said, it is perfectly possible that on a day to day level, retail banking works better there than here. Maybe the tech is generally better? I suppose the issue is, if you do have a problem with a Chinese bank, whom can you turn to, but it can be a question in the UK too. We are lucky to have the Consumers Association, and to a less reliable extent, a strong media, but the FCA seems like an under- resourced and possibly captured organisation.Leroy Ambrose said:So what, are we not supposed to point out the quite obvious lunacy of somebody who is posting from a country that deliberately keeps it's citizens from asking questions about their banking and finance industry telling everyone that banking is better in a communist country?
I'm sorry, but am I losing my fucking mind here? 🤣🤣🤣
And using the example of our embattled, under-resourced financial services regulator doesn't exactly wash, when the alternative being tacitly proposed here is: NO REGULATOR, EVERYTHING IS FINE, SHUT UP IF YOU DON'T AGREE'
It's ludicrous 🤣2 -
When you enquired earlier "am I losing my fucking mind here?" I thought you were just asking rhetorically 😉Leroy Ambrose said:
But what would be the end game/point in that? She's offering an at-best naive, and at-worst CCP-propaganda influenced assessment of something so complex that it can't possibly be boiled down to 'ATM always works'.PragueAddick said:
Nobody is stopping you making your observations, because we do not have to worry about doing so. However she is unable to reply effectively - for exactly the reasons you’ve mentioned. I suppose you might then say, well she shouldn’t have posted at all. But that would be a pity because as I said, it is perfectly possible that on a day to day level, retail banking works better there than here. Maybe the tech is generally better? I suppose the issue is, if you do have a problem with a Chinese bank, whom can you turn to, but it can be a question in the UK too. We are lucky to have the Consumers Association, and to a less reliable extent, a strong media, but the FCA seems like an under- resourced and possibly captured organisation.Leroy Ambrose said:So what, are we not supposed to point out the quite obvious lunacy of somebody who is posting from a country that deliberately keeps it's citizens from asking questions about their banking and finance industry telling everyone that banking is better in a communist country?
I'm sorry, but am I losing my fucking mind here? 🤣🤣🤣
And using the example of our embattled, under-resourced financial services regulator doesn't exactly wash, when the alternative being tacitly proposed here is: NO REGULATOR, EVERYTHING IS FINE, SHUT UP IF YOU DON'T AGREE'
It's ludicrous 🤣
Who is arguing "no regulator"? Not me, I'm arguing the opposite, and certainly not Jessie, she's like everyone else here, offering an opinion based on, in most cases, nothing more than personal experience. I wanted to DM you a link to her contribution on another thread, which might modify your concern that Charlton Life has been infiltrated by CCP propaganda, but I can't because your profile, like hers, is private.0 -
Fookin Hell, CL.0
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If Barclays problem had to be resolved, by going to a clean database copy from a the previous day or even several hours back, that would be an issue. Whilst actual problem resolved, re-applying all the transactions since that backup, would be a complicated and time consuming recovery.0
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Jessie said:
Hey... please read my comment again. I never said any sort of outage can't happen here. I specifically referred to this one with Barclays. How long was this outage? 24 hours at least? This scale of an outage has never ever happened in my 16 years of working for my bank, nor any other bank around the country. In fact, IIRC the longest "outage" any bank has had in the past decade or two lasted less than an hour. It was not even a complete outage, just some people having issue accessing their accounts online and it got viral within like half an hour on social media. No banks would let that kind of situation continue over a couple of hours. You should really take into account how many people would be affected if a complete outage took place - we have 1.3b people and most of us have at least one account with one of the biggest five or so banks. Every single second, there're countless transactions happening. We simply won't let this kind of disaster happen. I can't go into detail about this topic but I majored in Finance in university, studied the banking business and have been working in the banking industry since graduation. Absolutely no offence but... surely no-one knows more about the banking business in my country than me on this forum? So to say I'm the one that has the naive view is, well, I don't know what to say really.Athletico Charlton said:Jessie said:I work for a bank here in my country. We don't charge anything for personal current accounts/debit accounts, credit accounts or online banking services like domestic money transfer. And this is the standard practice among all banks here. An outage like this one with Barclays would be simply unimaginable here (meaning it can't happen at all). The food bank answer to customers is... wow, I'm speechless. Your banks really got some nerve... They literally treat the customers like idiots... Or there's simply no competition in your banking industry? It beggars belief.
The UK also does not typically charge, there are certain credit cards you can opt to pay for as they give you rewards for doing so but we have a free personal banking service in the main.
To say a banking outage cannot happen at all in China is an incredibly naive view.
I think some of you simply don't want to accept the fact that there's a lack of competition in your banking industry (thanks to @cantersaddick BTW, a very informative explanation) or else, Barclays don't give an F about their customers - excuse my language. And in particular, you don't want to hear it from a foreigner. Things like this, of this scale, and the subsequent responses by Barclays would be a complete suicide here. If I told my colleagues about this whole thing, especially the customer service you had there, they wouldn't even believe their ears. I sometimes read posts on the 'Danger of a cashless society'. I have to admit we're years ahead of you in this area, especially the attitude towards technology. I just never wanted to point it out because I didn't want to offense anyone. @cantersaddick proposed an idea/solution of opening accounts with other banks (this is the very basic thing) yet met with some counterarguments. So I guess that's partly why Barclay treated their customers the way they did. They are not afraid of losing business.
ICBC is one of the 4 biggest banks in China I believe. In late 2023 it suffered a major disruption when communication systems collapsed (sounds like an outage to me!). Why? A Ransomware attack... Then it happened again about a year later, so Chinese banks can be affected by outages (that one caused by malign influences). These happened outside China so maybe the Chinese banks simply don't care about their overseas customers if they have such rock solid, fail safe systems in place that could have prevented it.
Not to mention you can buy customer details of over 2 million Chinese customers of ICBC, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, China CITIC Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, China Merchants Bank, and China Construction Bank after a data breach in December '23.
Thankfully there is increasing competition in the UK banking industry with more diversity of choice but our banking industry still has many improvements to make.
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the amount of clips floating online of people queuing outside ATMs to withdraw cash, because it wasn’t debiting their balance at the time I think are soon to regret that decision1
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The problem is that you won't know it's down until it's down. I use more than one bank, but if my main bank where my salary lands goes tits up and my pay, linked payments, direct debits are stuck in limbo, not a lot I can do other than use my credit card as a work around. Thats still far from convenient - and if you are on a low income, without access to credit and can't open an account anywhere else, you're a bit stuffed to say the least.cantersaddick said:Genuine question. You do all your banking with one bank?
Mostly due to trying to get better deals on savings rates, international travel, credit card cash back/points and account add ons like travel insurance I have accounts with 7 different banks 5 of which I have ability to spend money on a card with. My main one is santander. But also have amex, monzo, nationwide, Halifax.
If one of them went down I'd just use an alternative.
Truth be told, most banks depend on very aged mainframe computer systems which are more than long overdue for replacement. The cost of the projects to move over to new tech is ridiculously expensive - and banks make a fair bit of profit which they like to keep rather than spend on tech. They're also risk averse and don't want to have the problems that TSB did when they'd been bought by Spanish Banco Sabadell and moved from the old legacy TSB systems to new stuff Banco Sabadell used. That took weeks to sort out for some poor folk. There's always the new "Challenger Banks" like Starling and Monzo which are built from scratch on current technology - less likely to have issues than Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and NatWest - although not so great at offering the portfolio of products that regular banks do.
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