St George Net bank makeover disrupts service - News

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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St George Net bank makeover disrupts service

By Rachel Lebihan, ZDNet Australia News
September 04, 2001
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/soa/St-George-Net-bank-makeover-disrupts-service/0,139023165,120258489,00.htm

St George Bank said intermittent problems with its Internet banking services that have frustrated users during the past couple of weeks are due to an overhaul of its online operations.

For a number of weeks, St George's online banking customers have been suffering irregular Net banking services, including sporadic up-time, pages timing out and slow connectivity.

-Problems over the past couple of weeks are linked to future enhancements and improvements," St George corporate affairs manager Adam Cook told ZDNet Australia.

According to Cook, the bank chose not to take its online service down entirely whilst it upgraded the system with new facilities such as a third-party payee facility, the ability to edit your own contact details and an online account opening functionality. However, -the last thing we want is to put something out there that's faulty," he said.

According to Cook, the bank chose to test the new facilities - which have yet to be made accessible to customers - in a live environment, resulting in a bumpy ride for users.

Cook also admitted that St George's Net banking operations -ran out of capacity", resulting in slow Internet service, earlier this year. This was due to the exponential growth of Internet banking which has seen St George's online users grow from 220,000 in January 2001 to today's 360,000, Cook claims.

St George's new online banking facilities will be available to customers "very soon", according to Cook. -We want to stay ahead of the pack," he said.