Tragic Blogs or
A Matter of Confidence...At the beginning of the month, one of Canada's larger banks had a systems error that resulted in updating of accounts being delayed by a few days. Deposit money into your account and it wouldn't appear for another few days. Pay a bill and the money would sit in limbo for a while before ending in the hands of the person you were paying.Now money, whether in coinage, writs of paper or electronic bits, is only as good as the confidence one has in it's ability to be exchanged for goods and services. When if I go to an instant teller and try to withdraw $10 from yesterday's paycheque, only to be told 'insufficient funds'... I have to tell you that my confidence in said currency is very shaken.Now, technical glitches are going to occur. It's unavoidable and a given. But could the bank have done anything different to better assure it's customers during the crisis, and to placate them after the fact?A PR person from the bank sent an early version of a news release with a quote attributed to the bank's vice-chairman. The same quote appeared in a later release attributed to president & CEO. Was the quote mis-applied - or was the quote cooked up by the PR dept. and applied to whomever seemed appropriate at the time?When the problem extended over a 48 hour period, why would they not make their chief technical staff member available for comment? The CEO assuring us that the money is all safe and secure is nice, but I'd be amazed if the CEO has the technical skill to reinstall Windows let alone know the ins and outs of what's going on with this system. Let's hear it from the guy who's working on the problem and knows what's what. The bank tells us that their tech staff were unavailable for comment as they were all working hard on correcting the problem. You know, if I were on the PR dept. of the bank, then I would have made sure to issue a photo or two of that tech staff, diligently working into the night to resolve the problem.The problem has been resolved. The bank has promised to issue a refund for anyone who had service charges or fees associated with the glitch. Full page ads have been taken out in all of the major papers, apologizing for the inconvenience.But the next time someone drops an envelope full of cash into an ATM, are they going to be confident that that currency will end up in their account?