WELLS FARGO CRIPPLED BY SYSTEM FAILURES
August 20th, 2007Via: CNN:
Service problems disabled ATMs and online accounts at Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) for at least 24 hours starting Sunday afternoon, leaving some customers of the nation’s fifth-largest bank unable to get cash or use debit cards to pay for goods.
San Francisco-based Wells Fargo wouldn’t say how many customers or machines were affected but acknowledged that services were down throughout the company – from personal banking Web sites and ATMs to the processing of mortgage and student loans.
“Customers may continue to experience transaction difficulties or delays in our stores, at ATMs and at the point-of-sale…and processing for some mortgage, home equity, student loans and remittances,” Wells Fargo spokeswoman Julia S. Tunis said. “Our systems teams are working to fix those problems and we hope to have all channels fully available soon.”
Angry customers complained Monday at many of the bank’s 6,000 branches nationwide. Customers could get cash if they went into a branch and talked to a teller – but they had no way of getting cash after-hours.
Nice bank-run test-run. Expect more “outages” if the Market continues its slide.
I believe it was in early 2006, when there appeared to be an imminent danger of a dollar collapse, I looked at several websites that described how this would play out. As in, how it would affect you and me….
What happened at Wells Fargo exactly fits the description: Your ATM card doesn’t work; you can only get access to your money by going to the bank in person….
An additional aspect of the “bank run/bank failure” scenario would be shorter banking hours, with banks open fewer days a week. Yet another is that you would be unable to access your safe-deposit box.
Wish I could provide links to some of these sites.
Yes, this Wells Fargo thing is indeed a suspcious event.
I gotta tell ya, Kevin, it’s getting pretty hard to post on this site. I keep getting error messages….