The Commonwealth Bank's Netbank Web site suffered a major outage yesterday, keeping customers from sorting out their Christmas finances for up to four hours.
"We had some intermittent problems, both due to hardware and software," a Netbank spokesperson told ZDNet.
The Commonwealth Bank's online banking service - which has 500,000 customers nationwide - experienced technical problems at around midday, and was offline until 4.30pm.
"Sometimes it can't be helped, as long as you rectify the problem as quick as possible for the customers," the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson told ZDNet, customers would have been able to access the site on a second attempt due to the service being down "intermittently" throughout the day.
However, according to one customer the service was down from 10am, and continual attempts to get online throughout the day were unsuccessful.
"I needed several transactions and payments to be completed but I was unable to do so because the system was shutdown completely, with no explanation," Commonwealth customer Denis Cambridge told ZDNet.
"An intermittent service, where your bank accounts are concerned, is not a very safe and practical answer."
"If the machine goes down while a transaction is in progress, you are left with floating data, which I would consider not to be safe," Cambridge said.
Less than a week ago, the Commonwealth Bank re-designed the Netbank Web site www.commbank.com.au aiming for a more customer friendly service. However, the Bank says it was just a coincidence that the site went down.
One press release sent out on December 13 stated that the Bank is "set to boost its number of online registrations for Netbank with an innovative campaign providing compelling reasons to bank online this summer."
"We have just changed the homepage on the Web site to be more customer friendly," the spokesperson said.
Telephone safe, internet terror. I have been using the phone for about 33 years and never had any trouble at all. Never got cut off. Phones always working anywhere in OZ and part of the world.
Have been using the Net for about 4 years and it is still sheer terror. Never know when you will be cut off - AND it's NO ONE's fault.
Solar activity on Sun most likely.
What if it cuts out halfway through bank transactions?