CommBank customers have been issued with $50 and an apology from the bank for last week’s IT outage.
The meltdown affected internet banking, ATMs, money transfers and payroll.
Most services came back online over the weekend but some were still not working on Monday morning.
One CommBank customer contacted Information Age about receiving the $50 into her account.
Sorry... Here's $50.
Despite being pleasantly surprised by the extra money, the customer was disappointed she didn’t hear from the bank sooner.
“The outage happened on Thursday afternoon and I got a text on Sunday afternoon. That was the first communication other than when I tried unsuccessfully to login online,” the customer said.
“CommBank could have done better by covering their communications over a number of channels – email, text, app notification – to ensured they reached their whole audience.”
The bank sent a text message days after the outage began.
“We heavily rely on our online banking and I was very let down,” the customer said.
“It caused many inconveniences and I’m considering moving to another financial institution.”
We get it, you're sorry.
A CommBank spokesperson could not confirm for Information Age just how much apology money the bank paid out, but did say it went to “a small number of our customer base” that had not been able to access money over the weekend.
The number of customers is believed to be more 100,000, which would cost the bank in excess of $5 million in compensation.
For the most part, these were customers who didn’t receive their pay on-time.
“We have also been proactive in refunding any fees and charges incurred as a result of the outage,” the CommBank spokesperson said.
IT systems crashed from a botched upgrade that CommBank bizarrely rolled out on Thursday – traditionally a day when a high number of payroll transfers are made.
Frustration abounded online as customers vented on Facebook and Twitter about not being able to buy groceries and petrol.
For the past week, the CommBank social media team has been in overdrive responding to irate customers – who are now asking where their $50 is.
“We have targeted these payments to those customers who could not access their money over the weekend, as we believe these are the customers most disadvantaged,” CommBank’s default Twitter respond goes.
“If you haven't received this payment but think you should, please call us on on [sic] 13 22 21.”
Of course, not everybody took the sorry money seriously.
Note: it was only $3.50 but a MAJOR inconvenience.
— kevin truong. (@kkevintruong) October 22, 2019