Courtesy of our Irish colleagues over on Tuppenceworth.ie comes yet another tale of poor quality information in financial services. Although this time it is at the lower end of the scale, at least on a per customer basis. However, the impacts on a customer are still irksome and problematic. And the solution the bank has put in place is a classic example of why inspecting defects out of a process is never an exact or value adding science.
It seems that Bank of Ireland has recently introduced some new software. Unfortunately, a bug in the software has resulted in certain transactions (deductions) being posted multiple times to accounts, resulting in cash-strapped Irish people being more strapped for cash than they’d expected.
Simon McGarr, (one of the authors over at Tuppenceworth) sums up the story and the reason why this is an IQTrainwreck:
I spotted a double charge on my account, for a pretty significant sum of money (is there any other kind?).
When I rang up to query it, I was told Bank of Ireland have changed their computer systems recently (Two weeks or so).
As a result, some transactions are being applied to accounts twice if they were processed through Laser [a debit card system in Ireland — ed.], or if they were a Pass machine [what the Irish call ATMs –ed.] withdrawal.
They say that if you spot the double charge, and ring them up to complain, they’ll send an email to their programmers to reverse the second charge.
I suggested to the polite customer services person that the bank might want to warn their clients to be alert for these double charges, as they could suffer additional charges (from appearing to breach their overdraft limits, for example) unless they spotted the bank’s mistake.
(Emphasis is added by this author)
Simon goes on to add (in a comment) that he has been without the benefit of his hard earned cash for 10 days (and counting).