A botched IT upgrade late last week brought several CommBank services to a halt, with customers still waiting on Monday for some to be restored.
Around noon on Thursday, CommBank announced a technical issue that affected thousands of customers.
Branches and call centres closed, internet banking stopped working, and money transfers were halted – causing major delays for payroll across the country.
By the time functionality was restored, processing was still slowed.
“It is now Monday morning and I STILL haven’t received my pay from Thursday,” said customer Alayna Lapwood. “How much longer do we have to wait? This has gone well beyond a joke and I am far from impressed with the service!”
In a statement on Friday, CommBank said the outage “related to an upgrade implemented on Thursday” and a spokesperson confirmed for Information Age that the issue was “categorically” not caused by an data breach.
CommBank customers took to Facebook and Twitter to vent their frustrations, leaving CommBank’s social media team with the unenviable job of allaying concerns in comment sections.
“Not happy,” said Juleah Doornbusch on Facebook. “I’ve been stuck at the servo with two young children unable to transfer money from one account to another to pay for my fuel. All I got on the phone is ‘I’m sorry’.”
CommBank encouraged customers to contact them via direct message or on the phone, even offering to pay back late fees that were accrued during the outage.
The public outcry during CommBank’s IT outage comes at a time when major banks are dealing with criticism on all sides.
Early last week, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced an investigation into why the financial sector has failed to fully pass on interest rate cuts to customers.
Consumer Data Right laws have passed into effect and are expected to make it easier for Australians to compare and switch financial services.
